August 15, 2012

Water Colors

The spire of the Empire State Building. The peaked arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. The rooftop water tower. For New Yorkers, all three are synonymous with the city’s skyline. But the water tower, that humble relic from a bygone era when any building o...
August 14, 2012

Showroom Special

Christopher Guy, the Florida-based luxury home-furnishings brand, recently put its glamorous stamp on an expansive new flagship in the center of West Hollywood. Designed by founder Christopher Guy Harrison, the 10,000-square-foot bright-white space sho...
August 14, 2012

Assouline publishes a vibrant examination of French modernist Fernand Leger

A figure of boundless curiosity and creative brio, French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Fernand Léger blithely moved between abstraction and figuration, sidestepping the debates that stirred the 20th-century avant-garde. Identified as a Cubist earl...
August 13, 2012

Beijing’s CCTV building turns the skyscraper on its side

The CCTV building may well feel familiar. Long an eye-catching presence on Beijing’s skyline, it broke ground back in 2004. Still, that hardly makes its completion—in May, after eight years and one devastating fire—any less significant. Designed ...
August 10, 2012

Gold Medal Buildings

Gymnastics? Check. Pole-vaulting? Check. Architecture? Architecture? Believe it or not, that field—as well as town planning, “mixed sculpturing,” compositions for orchestra, and various other creative subcategories—was part of the Summer Olympi...
August 10, 2012

Burning Genius

Innovative British designer Thomas Heatherwick may be known largely to the cognoscenti, but his latest creation recently caught the attention of an estimated 900 million viewers around the world—the 16-ton Olympic Cauldron, a massive, multiarmed scul...
August 9, 2012

The return of a dramatic 1970s decorating trend: uplights

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been a revival of all things 1970s lately—lighting by Venini, photography by Willy Rizzo, furniture by Pierre Cardin and Guy de Rougemont. Fashion has been dipping into the disco era for quite some time, and l...
August 9, 2012

George Lucas, Roseanne Barr, Richard Meier, Susan Sarandon, and others’ favorite museums

View SlideshowIn a former potato field in Water Mill, New York, the endless roof of what appears to be a horse barn the size of an aircraft hangar recently emerged. It’s the new Parrish Art Museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and set to o...
August 3, 2012

Curtain Call

Curtains, however pretty, have a largely utilitarian purpose: to control light and soften the architecture of a window. For 20th-century style icon Pauline de Rothschild (1908-76)—an American fashion designer turned hostess of one of France’s great...
August 3, 2012

Architectural Digest recent feature about fashion designer Oscar de la Renta garden

Architectural Digest’s recent feature about fashion designer Oscar de la Renta’s garden in the Dominican Republic (“Paradise Found,” July 2012) was the perfect welcome as I […]