This founding partner of Kliment Halsband Architects teamed with the head of surgery at Mount Sinai to create a hospital in Uganda and fight crime in outer space. One of those. The former. Their solar-powered facility, in the village of Kyabirwa, provides surgical services for a long-underserved community. A conversation (in the Zoomian sense) at the Center for Architecture. Continue reading »
He is a co-founder of KPF, architects of buildings worldwide, including One Vanderbilt, rising near Grand Central. “It’s very tall at over 1,400 feet, but it’s not the tallest building in New York, and we weren’t trying to make it the tallest,” he told the Center for Architecture. “We didn’t want to get into a … Continue reading »
She’s created graphic identities for Citibank, Tiffany, the Public Theater, and, well, everybody, but will be remembered for one album cover, she tells the Museum of Arts and Design. “It was dumb; it was a dumb idea; the whole thing was dumb.” The triumphs and discontents of a great designer. Music: Piedmont Bluz. Continue reading »
Trained as an engineer and architect, she is the president of Pratt Institute and offers this precept: “If I didn’t do something really bad or evil, then it was a good design.” Practice and pedagogy at the Center for Architecture. Music: Cleek Schrey. Continue reading »
His 60 years as an architect (the Rose Center at the Museum of Natural History, the Clinton presidential library) and dean of Columbia’s graduate school of architecture brought him to this modest conclusion: “It’s not a high art; it is really a craft.” A conversation at the Center for Architecture. Music: Caitlan Warbelow. Photo: Harry … Continue reading »
This cultural historian regards Coco Chanel as a titan of fashion but notes, “Like Picasso or Wagner, she was really really brilliant and just an absolutely despicable human being.” Anti-Semite, union-buster, Nazi spy: when great artists are bad people. Plus music from Eléonore Weill and Ali Dineen. Photo credit: ©2019 The Museum at FIT Continue reading »
The designer of widely-used typefaces, including Surveyor, Tungsten, and Retina, he draws on the history of his native Brooklyn: old subway signs, old newspapers. More surprising, his fonts are also inspired by Walt Whitman. A conversation at the New York Transit Museum. Music from Rahiem and Amiri Taylor. Continue reading »
This landscape architect embraces the principles that underpin Olmsted’s Central Park. “He wanted the wealthy to mix with the poor; this was supposed to be a place where everybody came together.” Public parks as an institution of democracy, a conversation at the Center for Architecture. Music from Hubby Jenkins. Photo: Harry Wilks Continue reading »
Our conversation with this terrific designer was part of the Museum of Arts and Design’s exhibition Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics 1976-1986. The musician was Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group, a luminary of that era, who made a shocking revelation: he played in a fraternity band. Continue reading »
He created book jackets for Michael Crichton to John Updike, without bloody conflicts: “It’s the author’s book, and if I’m not taking them where they want with the cover, they have every right to say so, and then we figure it out.” Talent and humility. Imagine my disappointment. A conversation at the Museum of Arts … Continue reading »
The architecture critic for the Times loves the winding streets of Greenwich Village where he was raised, yet he also admires the city’s street grid: “New York makes itself so comprehensible and available to people, partly through the grid.” Urban design as a force for democracy. A conversation at the Center for Architecture with music from … Continue reading »
Perhaps best known for his work on the September 11 Museum, he is a partner at Davis Brody Bond, architects of record for the new Irish Arts Center, currently under construction. We spoke around the corner at the old Irish Arts Center – the one with a roof and walls and floors. Music: Caitlin Warbelow. Photo: Harry Wilks. Continue reading »