For New York’s ODA Architects, practice really does make perfect. Seven years ago the firm was challenged by a developer to design an apartment building in Queens – on a budget, with smaller spaces. “We came up with the idea that you can project with concrete up to seven feet and it doesn’t cost...
A native of Great Britain, Tim Street-Porter studied architecture there before arriving in Los Angeles four decades ago – along with his wife, writer and designer Annie Kelly. He immediately fell in with an unknown group of makers and designers in Venice Beach. Among them: Artist Ed Ruscha, and an unknown...
In a virtual era dominated by Zoom, Twitter, and TikTok, a design firm called Roto is breathing real-world fun into public spaces. Since 2004, they’ve been creating unique experiences for museums, zoos, aquariums, attractions and brand destinations for clients worldwide. Kids’ museums are a specialty...
It’s not enough that Arkansas is home to Fay Jones’ Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs. Or that 2020 AIA Gold Medal winner Marlon Blackwell is teaching and practicing in Fayetteville. No. Now Little Rock is reaching for its own architectural zenith, with a new design for the Arkansas Museum of Fine...
Designing for life in the mountains means a marriage between beauty and danger. That’s the thesis of a new book from Phaidon Press called “Living in the Mountains.” It features 50 homes on six continents – built in both tropical and alpine environments. “They’re challenging places to build...
Before she founded Pillow Pops, Shani Moran was designing wholesale fabrics for fashion houses – and soaking up all she could about the industry. Then she spent two years designing fabrics and color palettes for a new line she calls Pillow Pops. It consists of 24 collections of pillows designed not just...
Last Saturday, I had took a virtual tour of Venice during its time of the Bubonic Plague in the 14th and 17th centuries. It was guided by Luisella Romeo. who’s a native of Venice, has been a registered guide in the city since 2000, and is fluent in Italian, English, and German. Since the pandemic,...
Alas, Amtrak Joe’s arrival yesterday at the nation’s capital was not by his favored mode of travel: a train slipping into Daniel Burnham’s exquisite Union Station. Instead, he flew into Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, via private jet – yet another victim of the Late Unpleasantness fomented by the outgoing...
Photographer Paul Clemence’s sense of timing is pretty much impeccable. In Washington, D.C. recently, he spent hours shooting one of Mies van der Rohe’s final projects. The Martin Luther King Jr. Library at 901 G Street NW was completed in 1972 and designed mostly as a book-lending library, with...
Two new projects for Lamplighter School in Dallas by Marlon Blackwell Architects illuminate why the firm won the 2020 AIA Gold Medal. Lamplighter is a progressive, pre-K-through-fourth-grade school, founded in the late 1960s by Texas Instruments executives. It’s about applied learning. “There’s...
