“I always wanted to have them design a house for me,” says Candy Spitzer of her friends, Juan Miró and Miguel Rivera of Miró Rivera Architects. “But as they were getting more famous, I realized that probably wasn’t going to happen.” [caption id="attachment_19478" align="aligncenter" width="500"] The...
When the owners of a parcel on Santa Barbara’s vast, historic Hollister Ranch asked Dan Weber and Steve Willson to design a guest house, they suggested the architects hike up to the site, eschewing the usual dirt road, to take a first look. Fifteen-minutes, a...
Some architects say the fun of problem-solving keeps their practices vital. But those at Prentiss Balance Wickline (PBW) say that it’s finding a site’s potential that excites them. That may sound like an optimistic way of expressing the same concept, but after a discussion with...
Jim Verdone’s mantra is “less is more.” At Verdone Landscape Architects in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he’s gained a following for creating artful landscapes that present themselves as timeless and natural: Water might tumble down moss rocks, boulders lie along a driveway as if they’d fallen...
It was a small German art school that lasted a mere 14 years from 1919 to 1933, suffered squabbles regarding its core philosophy and teaching methods, was forced to move from Weimar to Dessau to Berlin, and had three radically different directors. It certainly didn’t...
“As I get older and the firm gets more experienced,” Rick Joy says, “we’re really drawn to that feeling of creating silence and making architecture where there’s nothing you can take away or add.” It might seem odd to describe orthogonal, pared-down, minimalist design as intensely...
“Right now, all our projects are for repeat clients,” architect Brian Tichenor remarks. “Is that true?” his partner and wife, Raun Thorp, asks, not expecting an answer. [caption id="attachment_17210" align="alignleft" width="202"] A painting by Tichenor hangs in their Los Angeles office. All photos: Roger Davies for...
Just when you think you have Skylab figured out — geometric modular designs and breathtaking cantilevered extensions that appear as if they are about to take flight — founder Jeff Kovel and his team of 37 in Portland, Oregon, come up with a many-windowed, yurt-inspired...
Grant Kirkpatrick, Founder of KAA Design, describes his architectural style as “warm contemporary,” and when questioned about the firm’s philosophy, he returns again and again to the idea of timelessness. Think of that term not just as a desire to design houses that can’t be...
Some passions are born young; others are grown into. When he was in the eighth grade, David Arkin’s parents gave him a book on passive solar energy by Ed Mazria, the famed architect who, in 2006, founded the think tank Architecture 2030, which studies and advocates...