The 2X4CHAIR | Jim Nicholls In the early 1930’s Dutch architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld, inspired by social concerns and aiming to provide well designed furniture as cheaply as possible, designed a ‘Crate’ furniture series and wrote,“… a piece of furniture of fine...

Designing Process | Making the Wawona Sculpture The Wawona sculpture, which is currently installed at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle, was a work heavily derived from the invention of process. The structural design work of ARUP was as unique as the process used by Studio...

Home Economics | The Urban Ecology Partnership at the Bullitt Center Written by Rob Peña • Associate Professor, University of Washington  For decades, the design community has debated the meanings and applicability of sustainability and corollary terms such as sustainable design, green...

The Lesson of Rome is for wise men, for those who know and can appreciate, who can resist and can verify. Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send architecture students to Rome is to cripple them for life. The Grand Prix de Rome and the Villa Medici are the cancer of French...

The Villa Pisani in Lonigo is the most celebrated of the works of sixteenth century architect Vincenzo Scamozzi.  Among its remarkable qualities, natural light is repeatedly cited for its primary role in shaping the experience of its interior spaces. While published photographs give a certain...

Personal note: in 1976 I fell in love…with a handrail, and thus discovered that buildings can be seductive in ways I hadn’t been taught. Gliding down a wide spiral stair of a London Tube station with my shoulder pressed against the smooth white tile, I began an affair that changed...