by Laura Rote | Dec 19, 2020 | Design
“I’ve always considered myself an amateur historian, especially as a Black American in the US, where histories are very conflated,” says artist Umar Rashid. “It’s not like, ‘Hey, I’m Irish.’ Nobody really knows where they come from. In the case of African-Americans... 
by Laura Rote | Dec 31, 2020 | Design
Part house, part art gallery. That’s the premise behind JARtB House, architect Billy Kavellaris’ family home on a tree-lined street with an eclectic mix of housing typologies in Melbourne, Australia. Completed in 2020, JARtB House is an acronym for all the members of... 
by Laura Rote | Dec 24, 2020 | Design
“It was inspired by my parents’ passion for finding and collecting minerals,” says graphic designer Élise Rigollet of her latest work—a 60-page Risograph-printed zine called Rockie. Élise fell in love with the Risograph—essentially a stencil duplicator that’s a cross... 
by Hailey Hinton | Dec 23, 2020 | Design
Some people prefer a valley view when they look out their window; others want to see a city skyline. At architecture studio Bureau Fraai’s Black Gems townhome in Amsterdam, one couple sees their most prized possession on display—a Jaguar XJS convertible. The... 
by Laura Rote | Dec 9, 2020 | Insights
The drape of fabric, sheen, texture—fashion elements like these show up in designs that go beyond clothing. Some of the best designers working today say researching across mediums keeps design interesting, and fashion is a top influence in works that span from... 
by Stephen Gossett | Oct 14, 2020 | Design
One of the jobs of a good designer is to fight cliché—and few spaces carry as much preconceived baggage as a cannabis dispensary. Nina Grondin, cofounder of Chicago-based hospitality design firm Curioso, knows this firsthand. Her studio sidestepped the hazy,... 
by Grace Perry | May 27, 2020 | Studio Tours
“I was influenced somehow or another by doodads,” art dealer Rhett Baruch tells me, utterly sincere. “Doodad,” by definition, means (literally) nothing. It’s a placeholder for words we cannot recall, like a gizmo, a whatsit, something Ariel would collect in The Little... 
by Jane Gayduk | May 7, 2020 | Studio Tours
There’s a little bit of chaos pervading the office of writer Emily St. John Mandel. When we visit, her Greenwood Heights home is under construction and, space being a complicated issue in Brooklyn, her office room has become a defacto storage room. A couch turned on... 
by Emily Gosling | May 5, 2020 | Design
Right now, things are hectic,” graphic designer Na Kim tells us from her current home/studio in Stuttgart, Germany. Frankly we’d be surprised to hear things weren’t, considering the breadth of her work and the places it takes her. Na currently spends around half the... 
by Kimberly Hughes | Dec 5, 2019 | Design
The award-winning architect is known for projects like his stacked rock house in Chile, a music hall that opens into a Hungarian forest, and minimalist homes all over Japan. He has a global following, with one fan describing the effort to find one of his Tokyo... 
by Laura Rote | Nov 1, 2019 | Studio Tours
When it’s nice out, Sharm Murugiah bikes or runs the six or seven miles to his studio in a 19th century library building in southeast London. Advertisement He calls the neighborhood a “leafy part of London,” about a 20-minute train trek from the Shard; it’s a place... 
by Chris Force | Jul 16, 2019 | Studio Tours
“So, what you’re telling me is you don’t know what you like, or why you like it, you just know what you like when you see it?” This, hurled at me by an overeducated, under-successful graduate school art professor, hit me dead between my eyes. “Um, yeah,” I replied. My... 