The Art of Making ’Stone In-lay’ Each material, whether natural or man-made, used in our work can be processed or crafted in many different ways to deliver a uniqueness inherent to it. Stone is one such...Read More
Shiver Me Timbers – Boatbuilding in Maine Being on the water has always been a magical experience for me. As a member of the crew team in college, getting down to the boathouse before sunrise was never...Read More
Hues of Blue: Oil Painting in Barbados When I imagined a Caribbean Island I thought of blue skies, white sandy beaches, and turquoise waters. My first trip to the Caribbean, specifically the country of Barbados, felt like...Read More
An Intro to Commercial Real Estate: Through an Architecture Lens Having spent the last 10 years working on the design and construction of large-scale offices and mixed-use private developments, I knew surprisingly little about how owners and developers go about...Read More
Natural Ventilation and A/C in the Tropics In the last 30 years, air conditioning has gone from a rare luxury to a widespread necessity in the South American tropics. As climate change brings more extreme weather to...Read More
Art Nodes: A Lynchian Wander through Storm King After many years of working with architects, I read Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City. Paths, edges, landmarks, nodes, and districts: these concepts inform almost every design charrette I’ve...Read More
A Lesson in Watercolors: Snippets of Guatemala Admittedly, prior to touching down in Guatemala City I knew very little about the country of Guatemala. Perhaps I drew parallels to its neighbor Mexico to the north and shared...Read More
Ceramics: Legacy and Longing for Craft Ceramics, one of the oldest and most enduring forms of art and craftsmanship, boasts a rich history that spans millennia. Rooted in both utilitarian and aesthetic purposes, ceramics have evolved...Read More
Lessons of Architectural Craft from Artistic Crafts Architects commonly refer to their field as the “Craft” of architecture. Craft as defined by Marion Webster is “an occupation, trade, or activity requiring manual dexterity or artistic skill.” Craft...Read More
Oysters: Salivation and Salvation of Maine’s Coastal Environments Oysters have long been known to be “ecosystem engineers.” These small but powerful bivalves can filter as much as five gallons of water a day as they feed on algae...Read More
Novel Fabrication Method for Tafoni-inspired Seawall Blocks, Increasing Complexity and Provision of Marine Microhabitats Abstract: The aim of this research is to develop fabrication processes for complex seawall modules using biodegradable formwork, which allows for the creation of heterogeneous habitat surfaces and voids not...Read More
Danish Impact: The Architectural Inspiration of Storytellers For a small country grasping to the shores of the Baltic and North Sea, Denmark is an enthralling kingdom containing an architectural tapestry rife with inspiration. Famed authors like Hans...Read More
E-1027: Innovation and Conflict France’s Cote d’Azur is home to many famous buildings—from the casinos of Monte Carlo to museums hosting Chagalls and Picassos. But none tell a story of innovation, conflict, and perseverance...Read More
Pizza Oven Refinement: Enhancing the Dome and Cooking at Home In 2021 I set out to build an outdoor pizza oven in what I had assumed would be a roughly 1 month process. The goal was to create the pizza...Read More
Public Architecture Around The Great Lakes In between a glimmering inland sea and blocks of steel, concrete, and glass, Lake Shore Drive in Chicago endures as a reward for harnessing one of the Great Lakes. Throughout...Read More
Why Materials Matter: At Home Education During the past 15 months many of us have been stuck at home due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Some of us began sourdough starters, other learned music, and many escaped...Read More
Urban Karate / Urban Jujitsu Space, Mass, and Flows in Hong Kong and Tokyo “The problem of the architect is to deal simultaneously with the different speeds of movement and different rates of perception, to...Read More
2019 AIA Women’s Leadership Summit Thoughts: Reframe I spent my formative years in Iran, a traditionally patriarchal society on the verge of modernization. The country’s first western-style public university was established in early 20th century...Read More
Lisbon’s Azulejos I visited Lisbon recently and was quite taken with this hillside city that overlooks the Atlantic—its sidewalk cafes, narrow stone-lined streets, colorful palette and especially its distinct layering of tiles....Read More
A Legacy Build in Shiwahori-Mura Let me tell you a story: Almost two centuries ago, in a small village Northeast of today’s Hiroshima, Japan, a small, stalwart man toils away planning what will become the...Read More
Dutch at Werk: Designing with Water The Dutch have an elevated sense for planning and adapting to the will of the sea. With one third of The Netherlands located below sea level, the Dutch have been...Read More
Barcelona: City of Literature Barcelona’s narrow streets and fourteenth century stone walls contour numerous literary works, from Cervantes’ Don Quixote to Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and Goytisolo’s Marks of Identity. More recently Barcelona winds...Read More
Less is More. More with Less Lilian, for her scholarship, partnered with BuildOn, a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the international education crisis by ensuring that children living in poverty can attend school. In 2017 she traveled...Read More
Public Architecture in the Deep South Spanish moss festoon aged oak, cresting into a deep vignette of antebellum grandeur. This is the one point perspective of Oak Alley from the Great River Road — a panorama...Read More
Circular City Week: New York Pressures on our waste management infrastructure have forced industries across sectors to address conventional sourcing and disposal within their supply chains. As an alternative, the circular economy emphasizes a closed...Read More
“Freespace” La Biennale di Venezia 16th International Architecture Exhibition This past July, I spent three days exploring the Venice Biennale, or La Biennale Architettura as it is officially called. For nearly six months, 63 participating countries and over 70...Read More
Make New History: A Vertical City for the Innovation Economy “Today, history represents neither an oppressive past that modernism tried to discard nor a retrograde mind-set against unbridled progress. Instead, at a time when there is too much information and...Read More
Empathy in the Built Environment Architecture is often conveyed as a highly technical practice dealing with complex geometry and difficult calculations. However, relationship building – between site and context, architect and client, community and space...Read More
Light + Space: Irwin’s Portals of Perception Dia:Beacon The early morning sky and the beat of the steel pull my gaze to the Hudson’s flat surface, the fawn landscape. It swishes by. I’m headed up to Beacon,...Read More
Marfa is a State of Mind Having grown up the canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains and having lived for a spell in Bolinas, I’ve always been drawn to weird far-flung places full of funky characters...Read More
Marfa is a State of Mind. Art Mecca Step 2: Imagine Marfa’s big economies have been cattle ranching, war and art. Fort DA Russell’s closure after the Second World War, followed by a devastating drought in the 1950’s, took their toll...Read More
Marfa is a State of Mind. Art Mecca Step 3: Immerse “It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and...Read More
Room for Thought: a Market Street Prototyping Festival installation How do we create more opportunities for both playful interaction and quiet introspection, in an increasingly dense urban landscape? Room for Thought synthesized these two objectives in the form of...Read More
Timelessness, Beauty and Poetry in Planning “The challenge—our challenge—is to produce for generations to come—not just for today or for fifty years hence—an efficient, flexible, and simple solution to the design of your Academy; and yet—and...Read More
WRNS Scholarship In 2015, WRNS Studio started an annual scholarship program to encourage and promote inspiration and critical thinking in design and architecture. Scholarships vary widely and support things like individual projects,...Read More
