Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan, is something of an acquired taste. “It’s kind of a bizarre city, but not in an all-bad way,” says author John Lancaster. He’s penned a piece for this month’s National Geographic on a city that, like Brasilia or Washington D.C., was invented basically from...
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...
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...
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,...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
Sometimes, adversity stimulates a sharper focus. That’s certainly the case with the new 57,000 square foot campus center at Molloy College on Long Island, designed by BRB Architects. They started out designing a 75,000 square foot building in 2005, only to get tangled up first in environmental reviews,...
