Exploring the California Academy of Sciences, the greenest museum on earth. The California Academy of Sciences, which reopened in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this past fall, is now in a new building that resembles a high-style space station — all glass and recycled steel and capped with an undulating green roof
THE BASICS The Good Hotel, which opened last November, claims to be the first “hotel with a conscience.” Anthropomorphizing aside, the hotel does have many admirable qualities: low prices (rooms start at $89), eco-friendly touches and a philanthropic streak.
With its architectural mishmash of storybook English cottages and Swiss Alpine chalets, the small town of Carmel-by-the-Sea in Northern California resembles a Disneyland version of Europe. You half expect a bereted Parisian to saunter out of one of the ridiculously cute
My best-laid plans were scrapped the moment I arrived in Oaxaca City. “You want to see the real, authentic Mexico, right?” asked Alejandro Ruiz, one of the city’s most renowned chefs, as he giddily steered his SUV through narrow cobblestoned streets
Today, if you tallied the world’s design capitals, you’d be forgiven for overlooking Honolulu. But when it came to modern architecture in the 1950s and ’60s, all eyes were on Hawaii’s capital city. After World War II and prior to Hawaii’s statehood in 1959, an influx of young modernist architects poured
Could a Northern California backwater become the next Napa? My first glimpse of Lake County, California, was a flash of silver through the trees. Clear Lake, the second-largest freshwater lake in California, shimmered and rippled in the sharp afternoon sun. Two hours into my drive north from San Francisco, the familiar sights of Napa — …
As the pace of change quickens in Bhutan, so do efforts to preserve its centuries-old Buddhist art. Jaime Gross heads into the Himalayas to report. Driving Bhutan’s single highway, a serpentine road hacked precariously into the side of a mountain and perpetually under repair, is an exercise in nerve. It averages 20 curves per mile, …
A determined group of midcentury modern devotees is helping this kitschy desert city embrace its future while preserving its past. “Modern architecture is like a black dress or a trench coat: it’s classic, and you can’t get tired of it,” declares Los Angeles fashion designer Trina Turk. We’re sitting in the living room of her …
THE BASICS The “art hotel” concept has arrived in Australia. The Melbourne-based A Hotels Group, run by an avid art collector, is planning seven art-themed hotels across Australia by 2010. The first, the Storrier, opened in Sydney
Australia’s answer to the Galapagos Islands makes a giant leap forward. “People always tell me, ‘Finally I feel like I’m in Australia,’ even if they’ve been in the country for weeks,” Craig Wickham said as we barreled down a red dirt road on Kangaroo Island. Wickham is tall and graceful, with tan skin and a …
