This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. It’s been 20 years since the release of “Office Space,” the Mike Judge movie that lampooned the drudgery of the corporate workplace. In many ways, office culture remains the same. But these days, the soul-sucking…
Despite starring in a show about sex, Sarah Jessica Parker doesn’t often discuss carnality. She’s got other things to do, like make dreamy shoes and get divorced on TV and save her neighborhood from squash robbers. Until now. That’s thanks to Initimissimi, the Italian lingerie chain smart enough to snare SJP as its main model.…
“I know it when I see it,” Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote in a 1964 Supreme Court case when asked to set legal parameters for “hard-core” pornography. But what do you call it — hard-core, soft-core, whatever you like — when there’s nothing to see? “‘Erotica’ doesn’t sound as fun,” said Caroline Spiegel, a founder…
This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. More than ever, pods and podlike chairs are necessary refuges in busy work environments. Today’s open-plan office, where executives might sit shoulder-to-shoulder with underlings, is no longer defined by a desk. Work happens over coffee,…
Josephus Melchior Thimister, the Dutch designer who died of suicide last week at age 57, was, the couturier Ralph Rucci said, “the greatest designer of his generation.” Anne Chapelle, the Belgian businesswoman who once backed him, called him “a master.” He had run the house of Balenciaga for five years, started his own couture and…
This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. The biggest news in the world of co-working has been the turmoil at WeWork. But a quieter development has been happening behind the scenes for some time, and it has to do with design. While…
This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. Michael Green has seen the future of the building industry, and that future is wood. Lots of wood. The Vancouver-based architect is among the most ardent proponents of what is known as mass timber, prefabricated…
This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. Lee Bey stood under the rotunda at the James R. Thompson Center, 13 stories of mirror-glass balconies rising around him in tiers, and shiny elevators (now off-limits without official business) zipping up and down. The…
This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. GREENWICH, Conn. — Inspiration sometimes comes to the poet John Barr while he gazes at boulders beneath his new cantilevered writing studio here. Or as he strolls along its entry passageway lined in oak shelves,…
Not so long ago, in a much sleepier Nashville, a person couldn’t swing a microphone without hitting a “meat and three” (chicken, beef or pork and three Southern sides), those almost-home-cooked-answers to what’s for lunch or dinner. Meat and threes are still dishing it out in Music City, but their numbers are dwindling (Arnold’s Country…