Greta Garbo in a scene for The Kiss (1929) at a vanity table. I was quoted today in an article on the revival of the vanity table in the New York Times.

This exhibition reminded me how much I miss great museum shows on architecture as an agent of change — on architectural aspiration, its history, and its culture. Walking through the new exhibition at MoMA, which brings to light the built fabric of West Africa in the years when the continent celebrated its liberation and decolonization, feels like strolling through seven countries of the region — Cameroon, Ghana, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo — as they moved away from colonial rule and forged their own identities.

It is hard to believe, looking at the hundreds of bold, futuristic, ambitious modernist buildings constructed in West Africa during the postwar and Cold War years, that they once electrified the continent with optimism for a bright future and a new, modern life. In postcolonial Africa, they looked as if they had come from space, shiny, aspiring. They are now illuminated in a new exhibition, curated by Martino Stierli, MoMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design: Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa — one of the most ambitious museum exhibitions on architecture in recent memory.

The dozens of architects featured in the show saw themselves as liberators, freeing post-independence Africa from its colonial dark past and its built legacy of Art Deco and Tropical Modernism. Through modernist and brutalist hospitals, universities, housing estates, civic buildings, and cultural institutions, they sought to symbolize political freedom and a new cultural identity in the built form. It was an extraordinary period for Africa, full of prosperity and hope for an enlightened future. What we know now — and what the leaders, architects, and citizens of that era could not have foreseen — is that those promises went largely unfulfilled: this architecture became a footnote in history, aging poorly and, in most cases, falling into disrepair. But at the time, and this is beautifully presented in the exhibition, the leaders of these newly founded nations were determined to construct new identities for their countries and to erase every trace of colonial rule – through architecture (and other forms of culture).

This body of architecture — one so deeply tied to social change — has been largely overlooked by architectural historians. Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa sets out to correct that, drawing on years of groundbreaking research into never-before-seen archival materials, models, period photographs, and newly commissioned images of the buildings as they stand today. I was unfamiliar with most of the non-European architects featured, but I knew the work of the German-Israeli architect Heinz Fenchel, who was active in Côte d’Ivoire and designed the magnificent Hôtel Ivoire at the time when Israel had a remarkably strong presence in Côte d’Ivoire during the late 1960s and early 1970s, with Israeli specialists working in agricultural development, rural development, banking, and tourism.

Making an architecture exhibition speak to a wide audience is no easy task. Yet the way this show is curated — weaving together architectural drawings, models, archival photographs, and new photography, and organized into sections that spotlight individual architects or particular bodies of work — makes it dynamic and engaging, rendering architectural history accessible to the general public. The exhibition runs through January 2nd, leaving plenty of time to revisit and study this fascinating chapter in architectural history.

Join us this fall on an exquisite journey into the world of spaces, architecture, and interiors — join the course “Magical Spaces of the Past & Present.” Discover some of the finest interiors of past and present centuries, meet the world’s leading architects, writers, and curators, and expand your taste toward new horizons.

What makes a space extraordinary, memorable, and refined? An interior is a manifestation of the spirit of its age — its cultural values, prevailing technologies, social realities, tastes, and aspirations. Its defining qualities are therefore constantly shifting. Every era is shaped by different values, expressed by those who create interiors in pursuit of the idealized spaces of their time. There have been eras when interiors served as the self-expression of their makers, and others when they expressed the political values of their time.

Today, the finest interiors are those that offer a full expression — a biography — of the people who live in them. The three most essential elements of a successful interior today are a curated selection of objects, a strong presence of craftsmanship, and a sense of storytelling. Interior designers have taken on the dual role of curator and poet, striving to create spaces that are meaningful, interesting, personal, and inspiring. These are the qualities that infuse interiors with soul and contemporary identity, giving people a genuine sense of connection.

In the new series “Magical Spaces of the Past and Present,” design historian and connoisseur Daniella Ohad will host eight conversations with interior designers, historians, and scholars — exploring identity across past and present, and revealing what makes spaces truly quintessential and powerful.

Registration is open now.

The photo above: Yaw House, home of architect Robert Konieczny; photography by Jakub Certowicz (it will be included in the discussion).

Join me today at 12:00 pm for a mini-course on Mid-Century Design in the US, France, Italy, Brazil, and Scandinavia. Registration is open.

Vienna, 1900. What a magical era in design history: fresh, inspiring, and endlessly beautiful. In his memoir, the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig famously called it the “Golden Age of Security” — cultured, cosmopolitan, stable, and the birthplace of avant-garde art and architecture, music, psychology, philosophy. Upon this fertile ground, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser founded the Wiener Werkstätte, a firm that would become the cradle of modern design. What we learn from the newly opened exhibition Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte, at the Jewish Museum, is that the Workshops were far from a male-only venture, and that women — artists, designers, patrons, and tastemakers — were not merely present but central to its success, its visual identity, and its execution. While past scholarship has emphasized the role of its dynamic founders, Hoffmann and Moser, and other leading figures such as Dagobert Peche, Eduart Josef Wimmer, and Carl Otto Czeschka, as the singular figures of the Werkstätte, this exhibition reveals the extent to which women’s contributions were underrecognized — and, too often, entirely ignored.

Before turning to the exhibition in detail, let me say that this is precisely what I hope for upon entering a museum: an exquisite experience, one that lingers in memory, stirs the imagination, and brings to light unknown worlds.

Curated by Kristina Parsons in collaboration with the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (MAK) — the principal lender to the show — the exhibition could not be more timely, arriving as the growing focus on women in art history signals a broader reckoning within the art world. Why the Jewish Museum? Because a great many of these designers, artists, and patrons were Jewish. The role Jews played in Viennese modernism was illuminated in Elana Shapira’s Style and Seduction (University of Chicago Press, 2016), in which she brought to light the extent of Jewish patronage during Vienna’s golden years, analyzing the central role played by Jewish businessmen, professionals, and writers in the evolution of Viennese architecture and design. But the current exhibition focuses on the women.

“Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte” at the Jewish Museum is a rare celebration of design and beauty, featuring more than 200 works by the thirty women employed at the Werkstätte — spanning fashion, ceramics, graphic design, decorative arts, painting, and art glass, alongside one breathtaking mirror. It illuminates the full breadth of women’s contributions to one of the most significant ventures in the history of modern design during its short-lived existence, from 1903 to 1932. It is high time we learned the names of Vally Wieselthier and Felice Rix-Ueno, whose prolific work in ceramics and textile design, respectively, left a lasting mark on both disciplines; the Werkstätte’s fashion illustrators, who gave visual form to strikingly progressive ideas; Lotte Calm, Mizi Friedmann, Anna Sesznai, Hedwig Hirsch, and Maria Likarz, among others; and, of course, the critic and writer Berta Zuckerkandl, a major patron, art critic, journalist, and renowned salon host who became a central pillar of the Workshop.

These women were radical, much like their counterparts in the British Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and they held new convictions about what women of the twentieth century should be — how they might dress, how they might express themselves, including their sexuality — empowering women and carrying them out of the nineteenth century’s passive, delicate, domestic image and into modernity, giving birth to the New Woman. They liberated women from the corset and invented a new code of elegance and beauty.

In an era when design exhibitions have grown increasingly reverential and design criticism has all but vanished from the press, an exhibition devoted to the remarkable body of work produced by women at the Wiener Werkstätte feels genuinely refreshing — and offers New Yorkers a rare opportunity to encounter these treasures from the MAK’s collection firsthand. Yet if I had the chance to pose a single question to the Jewish Museum’s Director, James S. Snyder, it would be this: why has such extraordinary curatorial work not yet resulted in a publication?

As a minimalist, I regard my home as an architectural stage set—one that only truly comes alive through use. I have always been fascinated by how minimalists inhabit space, and by the way they deploy furniture not merely as function but as an element that reinforces and articulates the architecture around it. To understand how the world’s most celebrated minimalist lives, one need only turn to the new monograph on British architect John Pawson, long regarded as the godfather of contemporary minimalism. Pawson strips buildings and interiors down to their most essential elements: restrained palettes, spare formal vocabularies, an acute sensitivity to light and volume, and a material register pared down to no more than two or three elements. His most celebrated projects—the Design Museum in London and Calvin Klein’s former flagship store on Madison Avenue among them—stand as enduring testaments to his rigorous, almost spiritual design philosophy.

Pawson has been the subject of numerous monographs, yet his latest, John Pawson: The Minimalist Home—authored by the architect himself, with commentary by Deyan Sudjic, and published by Phaidon—distinguishes itself as a singularly compelling contribution to the genre. This inspiring book illuminates the manifold ways in which design shapes the texture of everyday life. Structured into six chapters that mirror the rhythms of domestic existence—living, cooking, eating, bathing, sleeping, and working—it articulates Pawson’s conviction that designing a home transcends mere elevations and floor plans. At its heart lies a more intimate inquiry: what will it feel like to sit at a table and share a meal? From where will the daylight fall—will one’s companions be cast in silhouette, or softened by shadow? How will the floor feel underfoot, and what sound will it yield to footsteps? These are the quiet, sensory considerations that form the bedrock of his exquisitely conceived houses.

To me, Pawson’s inspirations—the touchstones and points of departure for his discussions—constitute the heart of the book, and they are drawn almost entirely from history. He admires Arne Jacobsen, Shiro Kuramata, and Donald Judd. Some references are readily apparent: the meditative rock garden of Ryōan-ji Temple in Kyoto, the circular dining room of Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat, Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint’s celebrated Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen, and Adolf Loos’s own bedroom. Others are less expected—the famed poster for the 1927 Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, which disregards the cluttered interior; the Romanesque Thoronet Abbey in Provence; and the French gastronome who, in 1825, published The Physiology of Taste and, in doing so, helped establish what we now recognize as the art of eating well: design in service of life. We learn, unsurprisingly, that he prefers Mies to Le Corbusier. It is the sense of universality, the classicism that served as his tool for achieving minimalism, and the pursuit of perfection that Pawson most admires. Equally significant are Pawson’s own sources of formation—the influences that shaped his particular approach to creating homes. What emerges is a sense that many of these historical references remain deeply relevant today: the orchestration of a meal, and the manner in which we eat, ultimately signals self-identity.

I was particularly struck by the autobiographical passages in the book. Pawson recalls that in his childhood home, no one was served until everyone was seated, and no one was permitted to leave the table until the entire family had finished. This unassuming discipline elevated the meal from mere routine to something closer to ritual—an occasion rather than a habit. Reading it, I found myself drawn back into a memory of my own.

The book’s central preoccupation is how architecture and design shape the way we inhabit space, and what it means for a space to feel comfortable. “Comfort,” he observes, “means getting everything to work with everything else, and to be harmonious.” It is not a matter of how comfortable any single piece of furniture might be, but of “getting spaces to work in terms of proportions and scale, and getting the inter-relationship of spaces right—that is what creates the simplest kind of comfort.” Pawson closes with the perennial question: can anything truly be timeless? His answer is unambiguous: “there is no such thing as timeless.” To understand why, one must read the book. What a wonderful addition to any library, and with so much assets one can take from it into living life of style.

I was honored to sit on a panel - House of Oberson: A Design Legacy - in celebrating the newly-published monograph by architect Dana Oberson (founder of Oberson Archtiects), an old friend and one of Israel’s leading design figures. On the panel was her father, fashion legend Gideon Oberson and desigenr Erez Nevi Pana, who collaborated with her on Bedouin-crafted textiles for the Six Senses Shaharut Hotel, famously inserted in the Negev desert. A few paragraphs from my introduction:

“Architecture is a strange profession that does not allow its practitioners to mature early. Indeed, it requires an enormous body of work to be recognized, and long and extensive experience to achieve a reputation and to substantiate new visions. But unlike fashion, buildings are not dresses, and it takes years to complete architectural projects. To Dana Oberson, to be an architect means that one has to slowly grow within, as she enjoys embracing the process and progress of the profession. Dana Oberson is the quintessential architect for the twenty-first century. Her architecture, whether private, public, or commercial, glorifies the roots of International Style as it was developed in her homeland, Israel, during its goldenage of the 1930s, merging modernism with environmentalism. The local landscape that surrounds her, she believes, is the most substantial agent for forging personallanguage and layered interiors and architecture, filled with meanings and narratives,as reflected across her portfolio. While celebrating her own design mantra, she takes pride in making an “Israeli” architecture of continuity, soundly inserted in site, context, climate, and genius loci (aka the spirit of the place).

A native of Ramat Hasharon, Dana Oberson grew up surrounded by the localworld of fashion. Her father, Israel’s leading fashion designer, Gideon Oberson, recognized globally for his swimwear creations, raised his two daughters in his couture house. Oberson honed her skills at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Designin Jerusalem. After graduating in 1995, she joined the studio of Saadya Mandel, the late Tel Aviv–based architect who had taken a leading role in the preservation and restoration of urban plans and landmark buildings, working on some of the most ambitious projects of his time, spanning the country from Jaffa to Jerusalem, from Hebron to Safed.

Windows, long, narrow, semi covered balconies, and crispy, geometric staircases ,all of which became the ethos of the unique local interpretation of the moderncity. She finds her inspiration by walking through the old parts of Tel Aviv, built by architects who fled Nazi-occupied Europe and who built simple, white apartment blocks just like those built in Germany by the pioneers of the Modern Movement. One such site is Dizengoff Square, the white circular plaza, designed in the 1940s by Genia Averbuch, a Russian-born female architect who won the prestigious competition over the design of Tel Aviv’s main square.

To her, learning from this powerful past and its political and historical narrative,as well as from familiar architectural traditions, is a way of expanding herunder standing of possibilities without abandoning conventions. It is the “charisma”of the aged façades and the volumetric quality of the city’s earliest buildings that constitute her most substantial sources of inspiration. This architecture, she says, makes her feel connected and inspired. Her 2023 Penthouse in Central Tel Aviv is characterized by distinctive balconies, integral to the ethos of life in the city’s earlyyears. Hers is a contemporary interpretation, making the outdoor space 50 percent of the entire apartment’s square footage. In this duplex, where she sought to createa refuge loft for empty nesters, the outdoor space has come to define the lifestyle ofthe new Israeli urban home.”

The book, featuring some of Oberson’s most recent projects, is now avaialble in Amazon.

The legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon (in present-day Iraq), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, have captivated the human imagination for millennia. This series of tiered gardens, resembling a verdant mountain rising from the Mesopotamian plain, is believed to have been constructed circa 600 BCE by King Nebuchadnezzar II to assuage the homesickness of his beloved wife, Amytis. The absence of definitive archaeological corroboration for their existence has only deepened their mystique, elevating them to near-mythical status as perhaps the most sublime gardens ever conceived by human hands.

The Bahá’í Gardens in Haifa, a UNESCO-recognized terraced garden complex adorning Mount Carmel, draw direct inspiration from this ancient wonder. The site holds profound sanctity within the Bahá’í faith, a global monotheistic religion founded in nineteenth-century Persia by Bahá’u’lláh, whose teachings espouse the oneness of humanity, the equality of the sexes, and the eradication of all forms of prejudice. Comprising nineteen cascading terraces that encircle the resplendent golden-domed Shrine of the Báb—itself a site of deep religious veneration—the gardens reached completion in 2001. Spanning no fewer than nineteen terraces and 1,500 steps, the complex ascends the entirety of the mountainside, its very architecture suffused with layered symbolism.

Construction commenced in 1987 under the direction of Fariborz Sahba, the celebrated Iranian-American architect renowned for his design of the Bahá’í Lotus Temple in New Delhi, India. Sahba conceived a sequence of interconnected gardens linked by staircases flanked by twin rivulets of flowing water, which cascade gracefully down the mountainside through terraced steps and ornamental bridges. At the composition’s heart stands the Shrine of the Báb, its golden dome commanding Haifa’s skyline with quiet majesty. The design—characterized by precise geometric patterns, murmuring fountains, gravel-lined pathways, and symmetrical flowerbeds—adheres faithfully to the classical tenets of Persian garden design, themselves rooted in ancient horticultural tradition. To behold this marvel of design in person was nothing short of a transcendent experience.

Coco Chanel once declared that the beauty of white is absolute, while the American architect Richard Meier observed that white is the most wondrous of colors, for within it lie all the hues of the rainbow—a conviction he carried into the white masterpieces he built. It is in this spirit that The White, a new exhibition at Sokyo Gallery in Kyoto, takes shape.

The exhibition draws its inspiration from The White Book, by novelist Han Kang. In this autobiographical story on the death of her baby sister, the author uses a narrative on the color white to discuss grief, loss, and the fragile nature of the human spirit. Kang describes white objects such as rice, sugar cubes, salt, ice, blank paper symbolizing renewal.

Assembled from the gallery’s collection, the exhibition brings together ceramic works by some of the most compelling artists working in clay today, in Japan and abroad. Each has turned to white not merely as a color but as a vessel of profound duality—holding within it life and death, loss and renewal, purification and hope, all at once.

Taking these symbolic qualities as its point of departure, The White invites visitors into a space of contemplation, attuned to the deeper nature of human existence. At a moment when war and uncertainty continue to shape our world, the exhibition comes to ofer a space for reflection—on the preciousness of life, and on the possibility of hope for what is yet to come.

Here is what has me excited on these sweltering days of summer: Japan Society is unveiling a spectacular event, a must for any lover of Japanese culture. The Ainu Summer Festival, a multi-day program running July 22–23 and August 12–13, arrives to celebrate the story of the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan.

If you have ever visited the island of Hokkaido, you are likely already acquainted with the story of the Ainu—an ethnic group native to the island whose traditional way of life centers on hunting, foraging, and fishing, and whose spiritual culture is rooted in a profound reverence for nature. Their endangered language and distinctive tattooing customs have come to symbolize the island itself. Today, approximately 24,000 Ainu live in Japan.

The festival illuminates Ainu customs and culture, introducing visitors to their cuisine, language, woodworking, embroidery, and traditional dance through a rich array of workshops, tastings, lectures, screenings, and live performances. I am especially drawn to the screening of a documentary that traces the Ainu story, filmed in the village of Nibutani—home to the highest concentration of Ainu residents in Japan. The filmmaker, Naomi Mizoguchi, began the project in 2015, driven by an urgent desire to preserve the Ainu’s history, language, and culture on film. The documentary features four Ainu elders who recount how their people were once compelled to conceal their cultural identity while assimilating into broader Japanese society. It also captures their lived experience as Ainu today, and their efforts to pass on tradition to the next generation. Absolutely fascinating.

Wendell Castle (1932–2018) was one of my favorite American designers—not only for his brilliant oeuvre and his role in pioneering handmade art furniture in the United States, nor merely for his contribution to the narrative of modern design, which he propelled forward with an unerring attunement to the zeitgeist until the day he died. I loved him because he was, above all, a singular human being: humble, unfailingly dignified in his treatment of others, and possessed of a rare gift for making you feel that you, not he, were the one who mattered. His artistic energy was unparalleled—he never looked back, continually reinventing himself and achieving one breakthrough after another. In his eighties, he embraced digital tools without hesitation, yet remained rooted in handcraftsmanship even amid the digital age, a duality that allowed him to expand his formal vocabulary immensely.

I was delighted to learn of the Wendell Castle Project, a residency program dedicated to preserving and advancing his artistic legacy and craft. Over a three-month period, participating artists work in Castle’s own workshop in Rochester, New York, encouraged to experiment with and explore handmade wood construction—particularly the stack-lamination carving technique he pioneered in the 1960s. The residency offers artists and makers new directions and creative challenges through research, process, dialogue, and exploration, all in the spirit of Castle himself.

The most recent iteration of the project, exhibited at HB381 Gallery in New York, was created by Danish designers Mette Bentzen and Lasse Kristensen—husband and wife, and founders of the design studio Egeværk, based in Elsinore, Denmark. It came as no surprise to me that the pair secured this highly competitive residency: they are true cabinetmakers in the Danish tradition, known for hand-carved furniture of refined, delicate, and fluid form, drawn from nature’s cyclical rhythms. Where Castle famously worked in American woods, the duo favor Danish ash and other local timbers. They brought this Nordic sensibility to the residency, producing two remarkable and sculptural pieces of furniture which carry sophisticated narrative.

The curatorial decision to include historical works by Castle himself, drawn from the Friedman Benda collection, was inspired—it allows viewers to encounter the master’s works and their contemporary interpretations under a single roof.

The project’s narrative bridges Scandinavia and America almost as a parable. Titled Ontario Stones, the two sculptures—crafted using Castle’s own methods—took their point of departure from two stones the artists discovered along the shore of Lake Ontario, remnants of the cliffs at Chimney Bluffs State Park. Composed of gravel and stone deposited during the last Ice Age, these cliffs are now steadily eroding. As the artists explain: “We have deliberately integrated some of Wendell’s working processes into the construction of the stack lamination, drawing inspiration from his freedom in conceiving form and scale. Much of Castle’s work carries a distinct presence within the space it inhabits—and that is precisely what we sought to give these two pieces: a presence of their own.” I would have preferred the table's surface to be rendered in glass or wood rather than resin—my only reservation.

The exhibition will be on view at HB381 Gallery (of Hostler Burrows) through August 14^th.

My love affair with American design began in the 1990s, as a graduate student under the legendary curator Marilynn Johnson (1934–2022). She brought the full allure of the Metropolitan Museum’s American Wing, the cradle of historical American design into the classroom; her passion for American decorative arts was both inspiring and infectious. Having played a pivotal role in the museum’s centennial exhibition, 19th-Century America (1970), she possessed an unrivaled instinct for unearthing the finest American objects and, in doing so, helped expand the Museum’s collection immeasurably.

In honor of the Semiquincentennial—the 250th anniversary of the United States—I have curated a list of the most significant, celebrated, and enduring pieces of furniture in American history, from the colonial outposts of the eighteenth century to the present day. Together, these objects trace the vibrant arc of American design: the distinct eras, movements, and singular figures who have each secured their place in its history.

Newport Rococo

John Townsend was an eighteenth-century craftsman based in Newport, Rhode Island, and a leading figure among the artisanal community of cabinetmakers who gave form to the furniture of this uncommonly prosperous region. Only thirty surviving pieces bear his signature, each a testament to the highest standard of design and craftsmanship. Townsend’s hallmark lay not only in his precision and elegance but in his singular interpretation of the American Rococo—his shell motifs and blocked facades became, in time, the very emblem of Newport furniture.

The Aesthetic Movement

Herter Brothers (active 1864–1906), founded in Manhattan by the German immigrants Gustave and Christian Herter, rose to become America’s foremost interior decoration firm. The firm conceived fully integrated interiors and produced some of the most ambitious and inventive works of art furniture within the exuberant idiom of the Aesthetic Movement, shaping the taste of a new class of industrialists and the era’s fashionable elite. Their work fused elegance, style, and opulence in equal measure.

The Shakers

Few communities have left as lasting an imprint on the history of design as the Shakers. Founded in Manchester, England, the sect fled religious persecution and built its life anew in America during the nineteenth century. In their community buildings, furniture, and everyday objects—crafted in deliberate isolation from the fashions of the day—they forged a minimalist aesthetic that the design world has admired ever since.

The American Arts and Crafts Movement

Though born in England as a socialist response to anxieties over industrialization, the American Arts and Crafts Movement developed a distinct character of its own. Its adherents sought to elevate the standard of daily life through handcraft, resisting the encroachment of mechanization. Gustav Stickley emerged as its most revolutionary voice, producing furniture defined by solidity, honesty, and uncompromising craftsmanship.

American Modernism

American Modernism drew much of its language from Streamline Moderne, a sleek, aerodynamic mode, that captured the velocity of the Machine Age. The furniture of Kem Weber—a German-born industrial designer working in Los Angeles—embodied this spirit through curving forms, teardrop silhouettes, and rounded corners, accented by horizontal speed lines and rendered in the industrial materials of the moment.

Postwar Industrial Furniture

The ascent of industrial design paralleled an era of unprecedented American prosperity, as the United States came to manufacture half the world’s goods. Charles and Ray Eames stood among the era’s most influential designers, their modernist furniture embodying the surge of postwar consumerism and the pursuit of the American Dream, and shaping nearly every corner of domestic life. Pioneering the technology of molded plywood, they achieved ergonomic forms responsive to the contours of the human body.

The Studio Movement

The postwar renaissance of the handcrafted object was a distinctly American phenomenon that soon coalesced into a movement. Its adherents rejected mass production, retreating instead to the studio to craft one-of-a-kind furniture by hand. George Nakashima (1905–1990), the influential Japanese American architect, devoted his life to woodworking and became one of the movement’s most celebrated figures. His Conoid Chair stands among the finest chairs of the twentieth century.

Art Furniture

Art Furniture emerged as a global movement that reached its height in the 1970s, with a particularly powerful expression in the United States. Wendell Castle, trained as a sculptor, fused art and design as no one before him had. Attuned to the spirit of his time, he crafted his furniture in wood at his studio in Rochester, New York, achieving pieces of exquisite precision and organic forms that proved genuinely revolutionary.

Radical Furniture

Amid the fervent radicalism of the 1980s—an era defined by extremes and rebellious countercultures—American designers, in step with their European counterparts, broke decisively from convention, producing furniture that seemed to have stepped straight out of the canvases of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The movement found its most compelling showcase at Art et Industrie, a gallery in SoHo where the unconventional, sculptural furniture of Forrest Myers, Michele Oka Doner, Peter Shire, and Dan Friedman was on display.

Twenty-First-Century Furniture

In the current century, innovation in furniture design has migrated away from industry and into the studio and gallery, carrying a strong senes of storytelling. Among the movement’s most visible figures are Johnny Swing, who fashions furniture from authentic American coins; Matthias Pliessing whose bentwood techniques have allowed him to achieve architectural pieces in enormous forms; Norman Teague, who brings his identity as a Black Artist living in Chicago to bear on his designs; Carol Egan, whose strong inspiration from the art world has resulted in sophisticated minimalism; Misha Kahn, whose furniture conjures a world of fantasy; and David Wiseman, whose opulent, intricate pieces offer a fresh vision of traditional craft.

Italian architect Franco Albini (1905–1977) left an indelible mark on his native Milan. His design for the city’s metro touched the lives of millions: the modular signage and layout he created for Line 1 in 1962 set a new global benchmark for underground transit aesthetics, and it inspired the bold visual language Massimo Vignelli — who interned under Albini — later brought to the New York subway system. Albini’s totem for the 1956 Cortina Winter Olympics has since become an Italian icon; and his furniture is held in the permanent collections of museums worldwide. His legacy extends well beyond Milan, shaping cities across Italy — including Parma, Genoa, and Rome, where works such as the INA office building and the Municipal Offices of Genoa became synonymous with the country’s emergence as an international modernist force. Albini’s career spanned the rise and fall of Fascism and the economic miracle that followed Mussolini’s downfall.

A pillar of Italian modern design, Albini was a master of modernism and one of the defining figures of the Italian modern movement. As a young architect, he was instrumental in Rationalism, designing the IFCP Fabio Filzi district, one of Milan’s most significant residential neighborhoods. A graduate of the Politecnico di Milano — the school that trained many of Italy’s leading architects — he came to know his two great influences, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, personally. From Mies, he absorbed a defining philosophy: that structure, joinery, and technical detail should be exposed and celebrated rather than concealed. Albini carried this rationalist inheritance into the postwar era in his own idiom, fusing it with Italian craftsmanship and identity while preserving a minimalist, transparent aesthetic. Like his contemporaries Gio Ponti, Carlo Mollino, and Luigi Moretti, he worked across every scale, “from the spoon to the city.” As an exhibition designer, he was a visionary who transformed how art is displayed, discarding heavy, ornate pedestals in favor of floating mounts that invited direct engagement with the work itself.

On a recent visit to Milan, I was hosted by Paola Albini — the architect’s granddaughter and President of the Fondazione Franco Albini — at the foundation’s new home, in the very neighborhood where Albini lived and worked throughout his life. His legacy feels palpably alive there. He never owned a home or an office of his own, she told me; many of his prototypes were kept at his residence or at the studio he shared with his partner Franca Helg and his son, Marco Albini. The foundation now holds thousands of architectural and furniture drawings, along with models, letters, and photographs — an extraordinary window into the world of one of the twentieth century’s most important architects. Anyone acquiring a vintage piece of Albini furniture (many models have been reproduced), should have it authenticated and certified by the Foundation. The space itself is striking: bright, open, and animated by both his furniture and his archives.

Albini designed numerous bookcases — a transformative piece of mid-century furniture that doubled as a room divider — but his most compelling work in this vein is the Veliero, a one-off piece from 1940 in which he explored the very idea of balance. This oversized bookcase remains the ultimate expression of his lightness and experimentation. Albini was never able to bring it into production himself; it was manufactured for the first time decades after his death, by Cassina. The central part of the prototype is exhibited in the Foundation’s space.

The Franco Albini Foundation is open to the public ON festive days. To learn more, visit the website.

In 2011, Laura Borghi, a dynamic Milanese design figure, founded Fondazione Officine Saffi, a nonprofit platform like no other and her dream project. Forging a dialogue between clay, design, objects, and installations, the foundation has emerged as Milan’s “temple of clay.”

Set in an expansive, renovated 19th-century former glassworks in the historic heart of Milan’s Sarpi district, this airy, light-filled space is devoted to a single segment of the arts: contemporary ceramics. Here, the entire scope of ceramic art is represented: promotion of new research, experimentation, and interpretation in clay; classes and other educational activities; a residency program; publications; and a special prize, all embodying the multi-layered identity of contemporary ceramics. In short, Fondazione Officine Saffi is a place where anyone interested in ceramics — makers, educators, critics, collectors — comes together. But it has one more important dimension, one badly needed in the design industry: it is here that designers, architects, artists, and fashion houses have works produced in clay. Some of the objects you’ve seen in the home sections of the world’s leading fashion houses may well have been crafted by the team of makers based here.

Given ceramics’ current place in contemporary culture, the Foundation’s presence is powerful. Clay has come to encompass an enormous body of work, rich and globally diverse, spanning a multitude of technical, material, and narrative approaches. Ceramics is everywhere today, and there is often no strict boundary between the disciplines that shape it. Fondazione Officine Saffi captures its current presence in the most dynamic and contemporary way.

When visiting Casa Museo Molinario Colombari, the newly opened house museum of Rossella Colombari and her husband Ettore Molinario, I found myself thinking of the notion of taste as defined in the Critique of Judgement, the iconic text by the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He argued that taste is an entirely learned skill, and that we can and should develop it not as an innate instinct but as a cultivatable talent of judgment, requiring practice, education, and exposure in order to reach its ultimate perfection. This Casa, which fuses photography, design, sculpture, and architecture in a harmonious and personal way — exemplifying the notion of the curated interior, informed by storytelling, in its most contemporary expression — is a masterclass in taste education.

Casa Museo Molinario Colombari is a home in every functional sense: it contains an expansive living room, bedrooms, bathrooms, an office, and a spa. But it is not a home in any ordinary way. It is a showcase of art, taste, and connoisseurship at their best exemplifying the power of architecture restoration to give new life to historic buildings. Created within a former silverware factory in Milan, the space transforms an industrial site into a domestic-museum gem at the heart of the city I love so much. Its design, by Lazzarini Pickering Architetti, draws inspiration from the maritime world.

Walking into the Casa, you immediately feel that you are entering a space of unique and memorable experience — one that is multidisciplinary and resists ordinary definition. Is it a luxurious yacht? Or one of the 1960s sunken living rooms of the kind found in Eero Saarinen’s Miller House in Indiana? Or is it a museum? The polished mahogany stairs and floors, the organic and almost kinetic sense of space, the rooms divided not by walls but by curtains, the large round sofa — all evoke a voyeuristic atmosphere, as if you are on the threshold of a voyage. This serves as a parable for the experience of the place as a whole: an entire universe of taste expressed through the two collecting passions of its founders — Italian furniture of the 20th century and photography, allowing the visitor to enter a voyage into the realm of high, educated taste.

The narrative evoked in Casa Museo Molinario Colombari is, above all, a record of personal memory: of a lifetime of collecting, and of the curatorial research and dedication required to truly live with art. Ettore Molinario’s collection, etablished in the 90s, n is the result of more than three decades of inquiry into identity through photography. While the photos span from the origins of photography to contemporary languages, giving equal authority to renowned masters, lesser-known artists, and anonymous photographers, its a reflection of his own taste and identity.

Rossella Colombari’s collection is rooted in the world of modern Italian design. Widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on mid-century Italian furniture, she has pioneered and supported the rediscovery of work by some of Italy’s most significant talents — Carlo Mollino, Carlo Scarpa, Osvaldo Borsani — cultivating an unparalleled expertise and eye for the field.

This new institution is set to become an incubator of ideas: a platform where artistic disciplines engage with contemporary culture, generating new and unexpected connections. It is a home away from home — an immersive environment in constant evolution that promotes cultural dialogue through guided visits, curated experiences, innovative projects, and public events. Here, art finds a place of belonging, inspiration, and expression.

Casa Museo Molinario Colombari is open to visitors every Wednesday afternoon by appointment. Visits can be booked online at Casa Museo Molinario Colombari – Visit.

@ Casa Museo Molinario Colombari; photos by Cristopher Ghioldi.

The summer course is back! Join me this summer for a 5-session series of The Story of Modern Design and this time, we will explore the mid-century. The furniture, the fashion, the cars, the lifestyle, the architecture, the allure.

Design educator, historian, and connoisseur Daniella Ohad presents a unique online mini-course exploring the foundation of modern design history. The 5-session program provides an overview of mid-century design, one of the most exciting and beloved periods in design and architectural history. Each talk in the series will be devoted to one of the five key geographical centers in the production of modern design during the postwar years – the United States; France; Italy; Brazil; Scandinavia — and will explore a variety of themes including furniture, interiors, architecture, fashion, cars, and objects. Students will develop an understanding of the story of design and its visual vocabulary. The classes will NOT be recorded.

Registration is open.

• Tuesday, July 28: The Age of Mad Men

• Tuesday, August 4: French Postwar

• Tuesday, August 11: The Italian Miracle

• Tuesday, August 18: Danish Modern

• Tuesday, August 25: Brazilian Pioneers

12:00-1:00 pm EST

My recent guest in this season’s podcast ‘Designing the 21st Century,’ is Widely considered America’s most celebrated interiors photographer. Douglas Friedman’s charismatic and cinematic images of high-profile spaces and the lifestyle attached to them fuse elegance, boldness, and the ultimate chic. He has captured the art of living in the sophisticated home through his interpretations.

His way of framing spaces and their contents, the superb use of light, and understanding of volume, form, and objects have become influential in defining photography of taste and aesthetics. His images of the homes of tastemakers, creatives, and those who live with exquisite taste are glamorous yet realistic and filled with clarity. They have been giving the public a peek into some of the most beautiful homes in the world, and an appreciation of the efforts taken to create and curate them.

He has been a celebrity, an Instagram super star, and a famed figure in the worlds of fashion and art. To Douglas Friedman, storytelling, like weaving visual narratives, comes to intertwine images and spaces. His photography, regularly published in some of the world’s best design magazines, has come to capture the essence of the contemporary interior as a personal, unique entity, informed by identities. He tells the story through his lens in the most passionate way; and that passion is communicated in the images. Whether it be fashion, lifestyle, landscapes, interiors, or architecture, Douglas Friedman always expresses his subject matter in the most sharp, polished, and confident way.

Videography: Brandon Herman

Quotes by Nicole Hollis and Martyn Lawrence Bullard.

One of the year’s most eagerly anticipated design exhibitions opened last month at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Given the extraordinary six-decade career of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), the title ‘I Am Not a Designer’ carries a certain irony. The exhibition explores the refined objects, projects, and defining moments that established Noguchi as one of the most influential figures in modern design. I asked the exhibit’s co-curator, Monica Obniski, about the title. She is the Museum’s curator of decorative arts, and my recent guest who concluded the spring series of ‘Collecting Design: History, Collections, Highlights.’ Apparently, in a famed interview with Noguchi, published in the journal League Quarterly in 1949, one of his most productive years in design, he declared, “I am not a designer.” And it is this quote, charged with much of his intellectual perspective on his place between art and design, that is not only the title of the landmark exhibit but also stands at its core, suggesting a lifetime of questioning the role of the ‘designer’ in his oeuvre.

Unlike past monographic exhibitions on Noguchi—too many to count—this one is the first to present the full scope of his work in design. It is rich beyond words: industrial design, one-of-a-kind furniture, exhibition design, prototypes, collaborations on architecture projects, interiors, functional sculpture, gardens, playscapes, and playgrounds. From the show and its accompanying book, we learn that Noguchi’s scope of design was larger than that of any other American designer of his generation.

As many artists engaged in design, Noguchi wanted to be seen as a sculptor rather than as a designer, although, as we learn, in challenging times of financial insecurity, he turned to industrial design as a major source of income. But, as Obniski notes, to Noguchi, who was born in Los Angeles to a Japanese poet father and an American writer mother, and who split his time between Japan and America for most of his life, it was not simply a quest to be recognized as an artist, as he seamlessly moved between sculpture, furniture, gardens, and playgrounds. He always emphasized form, but in accordance with Japanese holistic philosophy, he developed an interdisciplinary approach, blurring the lines between art and design. It is the Nagomi, an ancient Japanese concept of cultivating balance, calmness, emotional well-being, and harmonizing opposing forces, which ultimately shaped his views. On May 7^th, the High Museum of Art celebrated the 50th anniversary of Playscapes, the only playground Noguchi built in the US, which was commissioned by the Museum in 1976. He drafted many plans for playgrounds throughout his life, capturing his vision of art in the public space, but most of these proposals were rejected.

Atlanta has many reasons to celebrate the life and legacy of one of the most critically acclaimed artists of the 20^th century, and having Monica Obinski as my guest in concluding the spring season of the series was a treat, revealing the five-year curatorial concepts of the exhibition. Our talk focused on Noguchi’s furniture, which is as fascinating as the stories attached to his work. They grew from the relationships that he had forged throughout his life, and those narratives have become an integral part of their histories. Like many successful artists, Noguchi leveraged personal relationships to propel his career and to collaborate with some of the most fascinating cultural figures of his time: Merce Cunningham and John Cage; Louis Kahn; Martha Graham; and George Nelson, to name a few. These relationships brought about some of the most imaginative and iconic design projects of the 20^th century. George Nelson recruited him to create furniture for Herman Miller; with Ozeki Jishichi Shoten, the producer of paper lanterns in Gifu, Japan, with whom he developed the blockbuster product, Akari Lamps; with Kenzo Tange, Japan’s father of modern architecture, with whom he collaborated on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the Sogetsu Kaikan in Tokyo, and more.

An entire chapter in the book is devoted to the magical tables he created for three leading figures in the history of the Museum of Modern Art: Philip L. Goodwin, a member of the board of trustees; A. Congar Goodyear, a philanthropist and the Museum’s president; and William A. M. Burden, who served as a trustee and the Museum’s president during the 1950s; he nicknamed the three his ‘fancy friends.’ For Goodyear, he created the first table in laminated wood for his new and modernist home in Long Island, an organic-shaped table which later became the point of departure for his famed coffee table IN-50 for Herman Miller. For Goodwin, he designed a table with one enormous opening, inspired by the sea arches of coastal Japan, which today is in the permanent collection of MoMA; and the dining table he created for Burden’s summer house in Northeast Harbor, Maine, which was demolished in a fire.

Dressing functional objects with sculptural identity was Noguchi’s brilliance, and the roots of this practice can be found quite early. At one time, the young aspiring artist Noguchi worked as an assistant at the Parisian studio of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, from whom he inherited the vocabulary of reduced abstracted organic forms and from whom he learned to work with carving tools. He could never have imagined that someday he would be considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, just like his mentor, who famously revolutionized sculpture, shifting from realistic modeling to abstractions. ‘What Brancusi does with a bird, or the Japanese do with a garden,’ Noguchi said later, ‘is to take the essence of nature and distill it — just as a poet does.’ And like his mentor, who created furniture in hand-carved wood and stone, Noguchi, when creating his total, holistic, handcrafted environment, devoted much of his effort to design, and his furniture reflected his artistic philosophy of simplified, pure, organic forms.

As any design historian would tell you, the origin of the designer’s training is apparent in the final product. Architects, for example, create different furniture than do fashion designers. With Noguchi, every piece contains his sculptural thoughts and personal vocabulary. Unlike the biomorphic forms of his contemporaries – Ray and Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer – who followed the direction, set by MoMA’s curator Elion Noyes, who initiated the “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition, Noguchi pieces are rooted in the mind of an artist, not an industrial designer. Many of the pieces he created for industrial design were not great commercial successes, and some, like the Chess Table and the Sofa, remained at the prototype stage. But two of his works—the Noguchi Coffee Table and the Akari Lamps—remain among the most popular, iconic, and sellable mid-century masterpieces of design, with enduring appeal. The exhibition ‘Isamu Noguchi: I am not a Designer,’ highlights his impact on contemporary design of his time, and demonstrates, through the amazing selection, why he became widely considered as one of the most admired designers of the 20^th century.

The long-awaited book, co-edited by Obniski with Marin R. Sullivan, with contributionos by numerous experts, is a treasure for any design, art, and architecture library, filled with new information and fantastic period images. It is divided into three categories, organized thematically – Making Multiples; Elements of Architecture; and Shaping Spaces. Together, the exhibition and publication reveal why Noguchi’s work continues to feel remarkably modern—balancing artistic vision, functionality, and timeless beauty.

The exhibition will be on view at the High Museum of Art until August 2, 2026 and will be traveling in different configurations.