Architects and Artisans

Giovanni Barbieri has been working in his family’s Italian stone business since 1975, when he was 14 years old.  By the time he was 18, he was made partner. He’s known as a cutting-edge innovator when it comes to stonework, marble and tile He strives for products and processes that no one else can reproduce. [...]

It may have taken six years to finish Anne Fougeron’s new library in the Ingleside section of San Francisco, but the end product was worth the wait – for architecture buffs and book lovers alike. “We were trying to give the neighborhood a new civic building,” she said.  “It’s open to the public for long hours.  Anybody can [...]

By JoAnn Locktov Bobby Silverman thought he wanted to be a social geographer – to study spatial patterns and investigate how and why we live and work where we do. On the way to get his degree, though, he took a detour to Japan.  There he witnessed the daily use of handcrafted objects, born of traditions thousands [...]

Their collaboration got its start with a challenge. Ed Mayes, prize-winning poet, had taken time off in the wake of the phenomenal success of “Under the Tuscan Sun,” a memoir-turned-film written by his wife, Frances. “His wife’s career launched, and he took a sabbatical to help manage it,” said architect and artist Alberto Alfonso.  “It [...]

Henry Smith-Miller grew up in the village of Mount Kisco in Westchester County, N.Y., near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonia, with its 19 small and inexpensive homes set in the woods, two of them designed by the master himself. “They were an alternative to suburbia,” Smith-Miller said.  “They had no front yards.” He took his cues [...]

On a site in Paris near the Neuilly Bridge, aligned with the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe, stands the tallest (and newest) building in the city, designed by Kohn Pedesen Fox (KPF). It is, in fact, the adaptive use and addition to an existing building designed in 1974 by Pierre Dufau.  Where the original [...]

For five years now, Thomas Fuchs, former design director at Donghia, has been selling his products directly to architects and designers for residential and commercial use. In October, though, his new line of tabletop designs will be offered at four locations of Barneys New York.  “I wanted to come out with refined luxury items – [...]

In South Beach, Jennifer May, a project manager for Italian furniture manufacturer Poltrona Frau, has completed the firm’s fifth project with architect Frank Gehry. New World Center on 17th Street in Miami Beach is a 756-seat symphony hall.  It follows Poltrona Frau’s work with Gehry on the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and his [...]

By Frank Harmon, FAIA I recently attended my daughter Laura’s graduation at Harvard University, where more than 7,200 fellow students received their diplomas and honors in a daylong ceremony attended by family and friends. Like many commencement ceremonies, there were speeches, recognitions, honorary degrees, and closing remarks. Graduates received advice about life, the world, jobs, work, and [...]

When New York real estate developer Michael Bolla decided to renovate the late Federal row house now known as the Chelsea Mansion, he called in architectural colorist Carl Black. Built in 1835 by Donald Cushman as a single family residence for wealthy merchant John Smith, the five-story structure had been broken up into as many apartments [...]