Shortly after the 2004 AIA Accent on Architecture dinner in Washington, D.C., editor in chief Robert Ivy visited I. M. Pei at his office in Lower Manhattan, where they discussed the evolution of Pei’s design thinking, the importance of working abroad, and his current slate of projects.
Three years ago, 1994 Rome Prize in Architecture winner Garrett Finney was happily designing furniture in New York City when a former classmate from the Yale School of Architecture called him to see if he was interested in becoming part of a new NASA program.
Within the span of a few years, Marcel Wanders has made the transition from brazen, young upstart, with his novel designs for the Dutch avant-garde label Droog, to become a leading figure in contemporary design, all the while creating innovative, often quirky objects.
Initially an artist who worked in the humble mediums of dust and rice paper, Ayala Sefarty’s multihued, multifaceted design career started while she was snorkeling in the Red Sea.
From tables and chairs to buckets and shoe racks, the young German designer Konstantin Grcic (pronounced gir-chic) has an ability to inject both beauty and wit into the objects he creates.
Frank “Chip” Briscoe has politics in his blood and preservation on his mind. Born to a Texas political dynasty—his father was a district attorney, his cousin a governor—he got his feet wet last spring by challenging the congressional seat held by House majority whip Tom DeLay (he lost the Democratic primary by a razor-thin margin).
When the Philadelphia City Planning Commission’s executive director, Maxine Griffith, was serving in the Clinton administration as HUD’s assistant deputy secretary, somebody once said that she was “either a spokesperson for the new paradigm or she just can’t keep a job."
Architects tend to describe client Marion O. Sandler, the C.E.O., board chairman, and cofounder of Golden West Financial Corporation and World Savings—the nation’s second-largest savings institution—as, by turns, their toughest critic and greatest champion.
RSS
