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Paul Saffo, Forecaster
For the eighth installment in the 2010 Domus interview series, I spoke with Paul Saffo, renowned forecaster. For the past thirty years, Saffo has worked with leaders in American media, business, and...
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Ai Weiwei, Artist
As a final chapter of the book MAD Dinner, I spoke with the Chinese artist/troublemaker Ai Weiwei. The intention was to have an insightful and opinionated person respond to some of the book’s central...
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Elizabeth Diller, Architect
[Photo: Iwan Baan] For the third installment in the 2011 Domus interview series, I spoke with Elizabeth Diller, the co-founder of Diller Scofido + Renfro, a multidisciplinary studio based in New York....
View ArticleIn Search of Life
At what point is a building complete? Is it when construction ends? When users move in? And how does one factor in the contributions of its occupants when assessing a building? Does an apparent...
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Article 4
Where is Ai Weiwei? The Making of an Unnamed Exhibition In August 2010, Ai Weiwei asked if I wanted to curate a section of the Gwangju Design Biennale. It was my first time hearing of the project and...
View ArticleWhy Wang Shu
Could it be coincidence that in the same year that the Oscar for best picture goes to a silent film, architecture’s top prize goes to a designer who disdains computers and claims “craftsmen are smarter...
View ArticleFavela Painting
A couple of weeks ago a minor miracle took place in Rio. In Vila Cruzeiro, a favela in the Penha section, hundreds of people gathered to celebrate the completion of a painting. Along a winding concrete...
View ArticleDesign Your Life
At a certain point in our conversation, the architect, author and TED conference founder Richard Saul Wurman decides to inform me of how little he stands to gain from the experience. “I’ve never met...
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Unnamed Design
Unnamed Design is an exhibition presented as part of the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale. My catalog text: As humankind enters the second decade of a new century, it is increasingly apparent that the...
View ArticleIt’s an Empirical Life
Let me begin by retelling a story told by Nikesh Arora, Google’s Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer, in the pages of Fast Company. Speaking of his company’s cofounder and CEO Larry Page,...
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Theodore Zeldin, Historian
For the first issue of UNIT magazine, Charlie Koolhaas I talked with Theodore Zeldin, a philosopher, historian and President of the Oxford Muse. Zeldin’s history books focus on the role of the...
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Fair Enough
Fair Enough is an exhibition presented in the Russian pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. (All photos courtesy of Strelka Institute) Curatorial statement: Since 1914 Russia has...
View ArticleGlobal Grad Show
Global Grad Show is an annual exhibition of graduate projects from the world’s leading design and technology schools, held each November as part of Dubai Design Week. Curatorial intro to the 2017...
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A Vast Conspiracy
Stanley Tookie Williams awoke for the last time on December 13, 2005.1 San Quentin State Prison’s maximum-security cells had been on lockdown since midnight, as is customary on the day of an...
View ArticleMore Is Better
You too can be a designer As writers often do, I’d like to start my essay with a quote. It comes from a TED talk by Tim Brown, CEO of the San Francisco-based innovation consultancy IDEO. Speaking...
View ArticleAi Weiwei & Norman Foster: An overview in detail
It is tempting to portray Ai Weiwei and Norman Foster as a pair of polar opposites. Foster’s public persona is that of a sober, sinewy modernist – a master of the machine age who thought his way out of...
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