Architects and Artisans

By Wendy Bright When Henry Clay’s two-story Federal style house near Lexington, Ky. was finished in 1809, he and his family settled there for the remainder of his life.  While the original Ashland structure was of a relatively simple design (possibly by Benjamin Latrobe), it was more spacious and substantial than most Kentucky homes of [...]

Charles Bloszies’ epiphany arrived in 2004 on the wings of a Lamborghini languishing in a Florentine piazza. “It gave me an enlightened, enhanced appreciation,” he says.  “It was an inspirational moment – I realized that the contrast of a new building of its time with an old building of its time could yield exciting results.” He [...]

He may be trained as a designer, but Sean O’Hara thinks like a sculptor. The 1996 industrial design graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design went to Austria for graduate studies, then settled in at Dansk, designing flatware, cookware and tabletop products in a variety of materials. In 2002 he set up his own [...]

Pioneering sound and light artist Christopher Janney needs to hit things. “I’m trained as a musician and an architect, but I’m really into percussion, like drums and a mallet,” he says. In 1984, Esquire magazine named him one of that generation’s individuals most likely to change the world.  A few years ago, he published “Architects [...]

By Ralph C. Muldrow, RA Well-known classical New York Architects Richard Sammons and Anne Fairfax (of Fairfax & Sammons Architects) noted the way that well-known architects couched their connection to Postmodernism with qualifiers that were more focused on what was not in their schemes during that era than what was in their schemes – something [...]

By Ralph C. Muldrow, RA When famed architect Robert Venturi claims that he “is not now, and never was, a Postmodernist,” he’s evading the blanket label that architectural historian Charles Jencks once threw over a design movement’s entire body of work - including that of Venturi.  Jencks, of course, coined the term for the new architectural direction in the 1970s. On Nov. 11 and 12, [...]

Before there was a Google or a Xerox or a Kleenex, there was the ultimate American brand known as Duncan Phyfe. An impoverished Scottish immigrant, he was a woodworker who arrived here just prior to the turn of the 19th century to set up shop in New York City. He soon become known as the [...]

A noisy 3.5-kilometer stretch of the Autobahn that splits a section of west Hamburg from the rest of the city is about to receive the ultimate in noise abatement treatment. The city-state’s parliament has elected to cover the six-to-eight-lane highway, set in a 40-foot valley, with a green, noise-controlling canopy. “We’re going to put a [...]

For the record, Thais Fontenelle believes in understanding the difference between art and design. “A design piece actually has to have a function,” the creator of Inventory design collaborative in Miami says. To prove her point, she’s invited 11 designers and artists to display their work in “Inventory 02: Soul Does Matter,” scheduled to run [...]

So what do Grace Kelly, Princess Diana, Jackie Kennedy and John Lennon all have in common? For starters, there’s the fame, the success, the celebrity – and the tragedy. And then there’s Andy Warhol, who not only obsessed over it all, but turned it into an art form too. “Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune,” which opens [...]