Marcello Becchi remembers his days as a child when he’d walk into a toy store with his parents and see things that they couldn’t. “It was a fantasy,” the Italian-born vice president of business development for the international firm Trend Group says. “I was a fan of Legos – not as blocks,...
Ellen Blakeley’s works in glass initially were fueled by bursts of vandalism in 1994 San Francisco. “There were teenage boys there shooting out the bus shelters, just because they liked watching them blow up,” she said. “So there’d be these piles of beautiful glass lying there on the sidewalk,...
Not by a long shot. The three Philadelphia partners in MODA botanica derive their pleasure and inspiration from art, from architecture, from the auto supply store and from Home Depot. In the case of the Philadelphia International Flower Show, where they’ve just racked up five major awards – including...
The Richmond Olympic Oval is not just a careful and dramatic response to the needs of the International Olympic Community and the City of Richmond in British Columbia. It’s a response to current issues in the Canadian forest too. The Olympic Winter Games will begin there this Sunday, Feb. 13 and end on Saturday,...
Vinny Petrarca got into design/build because too many of his projects were being shelved. “By the time we’d gone through three meetings with the client and the builder, the costs to build were too high,” he said of his early experience with a respected Raleigh-based firm. So the self-described...
Jacob Marks is a history major turned furniture maker. He sees similarities between the two fields that may not be obvious to most. “Both require skill, discipline and attention to detail,” he said. “But the design of furniture comes more easily to me than the writing of history.” It shows....
For the past six years, Judith Shatin, professor of music at The University of Virginia, has enjoyed an office in the Stanford White-designed Old Cabell Hall on the Lawn. She has an inspiring view of Jefferson’s Rotunda. “I happened to be sitting in Old Cabell, looking at that beautiful scene, when...
House 6 in Menlo Park is a tactile excursion into the sensuous appeal of concrete. At the heart of the 4,000 square foot home is a hybrid core of concrete and wood framing. While some of its walls are rough, board-formed concrete, others are hyper-smooth and seemingly polished. Still others are articulated...
