Because I am an architect, a visit to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City means I pay more attention to the booths than the furniture. Some companies put lots of money and effort into their booths, while...
How a building sits on the ground can determine much of its character, particularly if it is aggressive toward the landscape or subservient to it. For the former, a site may be leveled to build a foundation, while the latter will follow the landscape and have a minimal footprint.
As green building...
Anybody who appreciates modern architecture surely appreciates exposed steel connections, be they steel to steel or steel to another material. The material's strength makes it ideal as a structural component in various ways. Welding, bolting, bending and other fastenings and manipulations give steel...
In a previous article I focused on indoor bridges, many of which happened to use glass floors. Be they clear or translucent, glass floors enable light to pass from one floor to the one below, while also providing...
The best architectural design — modern, traditional, whatever the case may be — takes the natural environment into account. Architectural form, materials and assemblies should respond to sun, wind and other factors of climate. One means of addressing sunlight is with louvers — closely spaced slats...
All too often the ceilings of modern interiors are treated in one way: flat drywall. This treatment may coincide with a focus on minimalism, but it can also be seen as unimaginative. Crown moldings and other decorative features...
As a presentation tool, the computer rendering has effectively displaced the hand-drawn one for architects. This goes hand in hand with an increased reliance on computer technology, meaning that an architect's design that is drafted or modeled in CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software is often used to...
As I browse through the thousands of photos on Houzz, I tend to notice certain formal trends. One in the modernist vein is what I'm calling portals. These are exterior elements — walls, floors, roofs — that extend past the exterior wall to create deep frames. The reasons for this expression are varied,...
Many of the traits that define modern architecture — large expanses of glass, minimal surface articulation, exposed structure (often steel), flat roofs — keep people from considering a residence in such a style. The glass makes many people feel exposed, minimalism is at odds with the clutter that...
In the excellent book Body, Memory, and Architecture — now 35 years old — authors Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore discuss Frank Lloyd Wright's Winslow House (1894) in terms of the contrast between...
