Architects and Artisans

Editor’s note: In just a few days, up there in 2011, Achitects + Artisans will be observing its first full year of publishing works of architecture, art and design. So far, it’s been quite a ride – from the hills of Carolina to the skyscrapers of Dubai, by way of Shanghai, Beijing, Paris and Rome [...]

The unlikely Brussels sprout – that tiny cousin to a cabbage once maligned by diners everywhere – is now celebrating a chic and elevated status as icon for excellence in international design. In April 2010 architects Cesar Bustos and Ignacio Gomez, both located in Dubai, launched brussels sprout curatorial magazine, a quarterly publication for  contemporary thinking and [...]

Daniel Bluestone, who directs the historic preservation program at the University of Virginia, has published a new book that seeks to articulate the values inherent in preserving our buildings and landscapes. “It’s an ambitious book, but not a ‘how-to’ book,” he said.  “Part of its challenge was to carve out space for a different kind [...]

With his House of Trough in Hokkaido, Japan, architect Jun Igarashi chose to ignore the less-than-desirable surrounding context of garage, junkyard and iron factory nearby.  He set a buffer zone on each of the south and north sides, then placed his client’s living/dining/kitchen area at the center of the two buffers. The two mezzanine-like volumes [...]

A 1960 intervention by Robert Moses at Lakeside in Prospect Park is now being reversed, its original design by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux soon to be restored. A year-round destination for recreation, Lakeside will replace the winter-only Wollman Rink, which Moses created by filling in part of Prospect Lake. It’s to include a [...]

Steven Semes has a job that most architects would covet. He’s academic director for the Rome Studies Program for the University of Notre Dame. That is, he teaches architecture.  In Rome.    Since South Bend, Indiana is not exactly an in situ place to study architecture, the university mandated a full year in the Eternal City [...]

In Anacostia, a section of Southeast Washington D.C. where HOK designed and built a new baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals in 2008, the firm also built a pair of required, prosaic and six-story parking decks. Knowing what they’d look like, the city held a competition for public art to adorn the entrance plaza between [...]

Snohetta, the New York- and Oslo-based architecture firm selected to design the only building on the National September 11 World Trade Center site, is making a major statement about Nordic art and design at Scandinavia House, at 58 Park Avenue. “Nordic Models + Common Ground: Art and Design Unfolded” was curated and designed by Craig [...]

The Weekly Standard calls Witold Rybczynski “architecture’s voice in the world of letters.”  He writes about design and planning for The New York Times, the Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Slate.  He’s been awarded the Vincent Scully Prize by the National Building Museum, and he’s the author of a number of award-winning books. He also [...]

Once craftsman Evan Lightner had built his first piece of furniture, he began to focus solely on custom woodworking. He restored antique furniture. He learned from independent craftsmen. And he developed his own techniques When he’d reached a plateau of learning, he enrolled in the Penland School of Craft in the mountains of North Carolina, [...]