Architects and Artisans

Out of a recently excavated cemetery on the Russian/Chinese border, dating from the third century and preserved by permafrost, a number of stunning hand-crafted artifacts now shed new light on the meaning of a nomadic lifestyle. “They change the common view about nomads,” says Soren Starke, Assistant Professor of Central Asian Art and Archaeology at [...]

In an ambitious effort to create a flagship medical center for Abu Dhabi, SOM faced the daunting task of simultaneously uniting and separating three hospitals on one site. With 850 beds, the Sheik Khalifa Medical center will handle about a quarter-million patients annually.  Atop a three-story plinth that accommodates expensive medical functions are three separate [...]

Julie Taraska is a globe-trotting design journalist with a good eye.  Her partner in Product Placement, the Manhattan-based lecture and exhibit initiative, is design publicist Kimberly Oliver.  Between the two of them, they’re changing the way American designers look at the world. “I go to Milan, to Amsterdam, to Finland and Stockholm, looking at new [...]

Back in 1995, Hirosuke Kitamura came to a fork in the road of his professional career. “I wanted to learn either hair design or photography,” the Japanese/Brazilian artist says.  “I wanted to do something special, something high-tech.” He chose photography – in Brazil.   And on Feb. 1, his work will be on display at 1500 Gallery [...]

Carlos Carcas is an independent filmmaker based in Madrid. Born in Miami, Florida in 1968, he began working in film production after graduating from Boston Universityʼs College of Communication. In 2009, he co-directed “How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?” about the life and work of British architect Norman Foster, which premiered in February [...]

Filmmaker Laura Israel isn’t tilting at windmills – but she does want to cast a critical eye in their direction. And she’s done that with “Windfall” – her first documentary film, art directed within an inch of its life – and one that delivers a profound message: Look before you leap into wind power. “People who are [...]

Perhaps no Southern city ever found its fate so entwined with the Arts & Crafts movement as did Asheville, N.C. Its moderate summers appealed to tourists from the South and its short winters were a balm to their counterparts up North. A visiting George Vanderbilt liked the area so much that he bought 125,000 untamed nearby [...]

Truly one of the giants in post-World War II experimental photography, Jerry Uelsmann perfected the art of combining negatives in the darkroom to create new compositions. “He took a different tack – that the negative didn’t have to be the departure point,” says Phillip Prodger, exhibition curator and PEM’s curator of photography.  He’s currently pulling together [...]

Chattanooga-based artist Daryl Thetford’s work has evolved in the past six years, from photographs of vintage southern Americana like juke joints, Mississippi Delta scenes and roadside attractions, into mixed media informed by his own language of signs and billboards. It’s as though he’s still gathering information as he’s photographing the grit and rust of urban [...]

Jim Berger was 12 years old in 1956 when he put pencil to paper, wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright and asked a favor. He had a paper route, he said, and hoped that the architect might design for Eddie, his black Lab, a house “which would be easy to build and would go with our house.”  His father had commissioned Wright [...]