Month: November 2013

Don’t Throw Stones

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, or so we hear. And it makes sense. But maybe more importantly, they should not walk around naked. That is, unless your glass house is built in a forest, where other people are not around. Then you can feel like you live purely in nature with the greenery, […]

Silk Screened Walls Make Me Dizzy. Ain’t it Great?

Artist Dominique Pétrin likes to install insanely colored and patterned silkscreens boldly on to architectural spaces. She explained that her main influences are “the Muppet Show, Liberace, Catholic churches where I grew up and Dario Argento’s movies.” These influences have turned her into a kind of sorcerer of color and shapes, dropping patterns that are […]

Factory to Fantastic School

We read this story about a new middle school and high school in Baltimore, the Baltimore Design School (BDS). The architecture firm, Ziger Snead Architects, transfigured an old and crusty factory building into a gorgeous and sparkling school that would inspire even the most bored student into a creative genius. Taking a worn out, abandoned, […]

AHA! for Zaha Hadid

A series of buildings of circles that are piled on top of each other and all rounded structures and curves and white and swirly – that is what the Galaxy Soho building in Beijing is all about. Architect Zaha Hadid, one of the most famous living architects – is probably the most famous female architect. […]

Taller by a Needle

Since 1974, Chicago was the home of the “Tallest Building in America.” The Sears Tower, (named that because it was paid for by the Sears Company – not because Sears employees worked in all 100 floors) was crowned the tallest building at 442 meters tall. By the way, the Sears Tower is now called the […]

Pen Drawings of Architecture

The City out my Window is a sweet book about architectural views. The author, Matteo Pericoli, is an architect and a writer. He chose 63 New Yorkers to interview and to enter their apartments, so he could draw the view from their windows. The drawings are in pen and ink, done with great detail. The […]

Change Your Space

Sometimes, you can control your own architecture. What we mean is, you might not have the qualifications (yet) to design a skyscraper, but you can design and change the space where you live. So here is a teeny project that you might try if you have some space in your own room. Try this do-it-yourself […]

Sticks and Stonehenge

If you look back in the farthest history of architecture, you might discover Stonehenge. What is this collection of rocks? Well, it is not a random pile of stones that happened upon the countryside in England. Nope. Located in Wiltshire, these are a series of ancient stones that were placed in a semicircular pattern around […]