When Jay Atherton and Cy Keener met in grad school at the University of California, Berkeley, they discovered in each other a rare constellation of common interests: minimalist architecture, rock climbing, and “not talking.” After graduation, Atherton moved back to his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, and purchased a downtown lot. Wanting to build a house, …
In late 2008, Jon Rubin, an artist and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, took over a vacant Pittsburgh storefront with his students and opened the Waffle Shop, an experimental art project in the guise of a cafe. Inspired by the Seinfeld episode where Kramer rescues a Merv Griffin Show set from the trash and sets …
In the land of large mountain lodge wannabes, two California natives tuck Utah’s first LEED for Homes–rated house onto the side of Emigration Canyon. “Our fireplace is going through a bit of an awkward phase,” apologizes Anne Mooney, nodding at the hearth anchoring her family’s great room. It’s true: The shiny steel surface is mottled …
In construction-mad Beijing, “development happens at a crazy speed, like a tsunami,” says Matthew Xinyu Hu, the former managing director of the nonprofit Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (BCHPC). This was especially evident in the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics. The government poured more than $40 billion into improved infrastructure, razing much of the …
Gesturing at the wood-and-iron house he designed for his family three years ago, the Buenos Aires–based furniture designer and architect Alejandro Sticotti declares, “It was like putting in a UFO, like something from Mars.” True, with its clean lines, open floor plan, and raw finishes
A modern eccentric with an architectural sensibility drawn from ancient Japanese traditions, Terunobu Fujimori designs projects that are exercises in playful experimentation and sophisticated craft. One of the first things you notice about the Japanese architect and architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori is his voracious appetite. His particular brand of hunger extends not only to food—which …
Few people would spend their life savings on a plot of land they’d never seen. Two exceptions are Adrienne Webb and Stefan Dunlop, who, while living in a loft in London, snapped up an acre of land in northeastern Australia, 10,000 miles away.
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
Set atop a 1908 warehouse in the Courtenay Precinct of Wellington, New Zealand, the three apartments by Architecture Workshop glow like lanterns at dusk, signaling a new day for this once-derelict neighborhood. Approaching downtown Wellington, New Zealand, from the airport, you curve around the city’s glittering bay and land in Courtenay Precinct, a stylish neighborhood …
