In addition to his work for corporations (Nike, Apple) and non-profits, this graphic designer documents everything, not just as a way to record an event but as an act of meditation: “Documenting allows me to slow it down and to sit in that space a little longer.” Produced with the Type Directors Club, part of … Continue reading »

Speaking at—and of—Gansevoort Plaza, a public space he designed, landscape architect Ken Smith considers the implications of the past as well as the needs of the present: “Land has memory. It’s really a crime to erase the memory of a place.” Produced with Meatpacking-District BID.  Continue reading »

The president and CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust offers a too-modest explanation of its popularity: “I think there’s a universal urge that people have to see and connect with water.” Melville writes something similar at the start of Moby-Dick. Different ending, though. Continue reading »

Through her many projects, this landscape architect has learned a lot—about nature, about human behavior, about their intersection. Her hope for the future: “Can we just make better mistakes? Can we not make the really really dumb mistakes?” Setting achievable goals. Produced with Open House New York. Photo: Harry Wilks. Continue reading »

On March 2, 2023, the acclaimed architect Rafael Viñoly died suddenly, at 78, just two weeks before our scheduled conversation at the Center for Architecture. Rather than cancel, his son Román used the occasion to reflect on his father. Music: Rich Jenkins. Photo: Harry Wilks. Continue reading »

I respect her as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, admire her as a practicing architect, but flipped for her when she said, “There are two versions of the story, and both of them are true.” Not contradiction, nuance. The joys of complexity. Presented with the Center for Architecture.  Music: Hubby Jenkins. Photograph: Harry … Continue reading »

No first glimpse of a building was more exhilarating to me than his 1975 Best Products facade in Houston, designed with his firm, SITE. And he did it the old-fashioned way: “I’m probably the last architect on earth who still draws by hand.” Ideas and how they get that way, presented with the National Academy … Continue reading »

These architects, partners in life and work, are interested in how other couples manage that duality, particularly Michelle and Barack Obama, with whom they worked to design his Presidential Center. Good times at the Center for Architecture. Music: Stephanie Jenkins. Photo: Harry Wilks. Continue reading »

This graphic artist, a cofounder of Champions Design—clients include Apple, the NBA, the Girl Scouts—traces his love for design to the baseball cards and comic books of his childhood. “I’ve been surrounded by these little gems all my life.” Produced with the Type Directors Club. Continue reading »

“I have no interest in completing projects,” says this architect, winner of the Pritzker Prize. “A lot of our stuff just keeps moving; it refuses to have an edge, a boundary; it’s in constant change.” For someone who feels that way, he’s completed an awful lot of them, and to great acclaim. Presented with the … Continue reading »

She heads New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, safeguarding 36,000 buildings. She loves them all, of course, but one material has a special claim on her heart. “We have terra cotta everywhere in this city, architectural terra cotta. It’s structural, it’s non-structural, it’s ornamental.” That fabulous clay, that magical goo, that stuff that makes Manhattan. … Continue reading »

This terrific graphic designer loves, without nostalgia, the world of print magazines where she began. She cautions her students, denizens of the online realm, “Everything looks cool on screen.” Her prescription: “Buy a printer, buy a printer, buy a printer.” The seductive deceptions of the digital, the bracing revelations of the physical. Presented with the … Continue reading »