For Dominique and Jean de Menil, the celebrated art collectors, developing a taste for the modern has been a life-long journey. After moving to Houston in the 40s, it was clear to them that their house would reflect their vision of pure modernism. Philip Johnson designed that dream house, a long, low, brick structure that […]
The Plan to demolish the skyscraper at 270 Park Avenue, home of JP Morgan Chase has provoked criticism and saddened the architectural community and those in support of sustainability. It will be the world’s tallest building to be voluntarily demolished in history. But this glass tower started its life in a very different way. It
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One of the most anticipated events of this spring is the opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK International airport. It is built around the historic TWA terminal, the most celebrated architecture icon of the postwar years, designed by Eero Saarinen. Richard Southwick, partner and director of historic preservation at Beyer Blinder Belle is responsible for
TWA Hotel with Richard Southwick Read More »
Since the day it opened on July 20th 1959, the Four Seasons has succeeded like no other restaurant in becoming an American icon and a seminal NYC success. The restaurant, not to be confused with the hotel chain, was designed by Philip Johnson and some of the best design legends of the time on the ground floor of the
It Happened over Lunch Read More »
Starting next week, when the Met’s Costume Institute will open its anticipated show ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion,’ camp will be the talk of the season. Named after Susan Sontag’s 1964 iconic essay ‘Notes on Camp,’ the exhibition seeks to illuminate this cultural phenomenon, which according to the exhibition’s curator Andrew Bolton is having a moment.
What is ‘Campy’ (to you)? Read More »
Congratulations to Mira Nakashima and everyone at the George Nakashima Studio in New Hope, John, Kevin, and Soomi for receiving the People’s Voice Award in Design and Architecture at the 23rd annual Webbys Awards. Lets celebrate with the video Collecting George Nakashima, which I produced two years ago with the help of everyone at the
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If you pay full attention to Aldo Bakker’s objects, you can come out different. With sharper eye, more sophisticated, more knowledgeable. Because what we can all learn from Bakker is the power of simplicity to move the soul and that what looks at first like an effortless elegance is in fact the result of tremendous efforts,
Aldo Bakker: Slow Motion Read More »
It was perhaps the best way to celebrate a beautiful spring day this morning at New York’s ultimate landscape gem, which not enough New Yorkers (and tourists) know about. When Diane Schaub, Curator of Gardens at Central Park Conservancy has lead a private tour for my group this morning, we all agreed. She has New
Spring Celebration at Central Park’s Conservancy Garden Read More »
When I have read the new book ‘The Midcentury Kitchen’ by Sara Archer (published by The Countryman Press), I was thinking about my mom’s kitchen and the first cookbooks on the upper shelf, from which I had first learnt to cook, growing up in Israel. The subtitle ‘America’s Favorite Room: From Workspace to Dreamscape, 1940s-1970s,’
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On the market for sale. Again. Any architecture lover knows that black door which says 23 (in the photo below). In fact, that 1867 town house is located at 23 Beekman Place, New York City’s finest residential block. In this famed building, American architect Paul Rudolph (1918-97) made his home, by building a glass-and-steel penthouse,
