Design

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Renzo Piano's new wing pays tribute to the Gardner Museum's magic

Intimate grandeur
The challenge from the start of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum expansion project was: how do you follow up a masterpiece? The 99-year-old Fenway institution is world-renowned for its old-master collection installed in dramatic period rooms inside a dream of a Renaissance Venetian palazzo.
By GREG COOK | January 18, 2012

Brian Zink, Marisa Martino, and Robin Mandel

By design
Zink's new show, "Assembled" at Howard Yezerski Gallery (460 Harrison Ave, Boston, through February 7), features handsome, hard-edged abstractions assembled from mod, jitterbugging patterns of flat Plexiglass tiles.
By GREG COOK | January 10, 2012

Picking the season’s best books — for everyone from plutocrats to paupers

Reading class
In recent months, Americans have become acutely aware of class divisions — thus it’s possible to choose books for your friends and family based on their income bracket. Below are picks for plutocrats and paupers alike.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | December 06, 2011

Grace Bonney’s epoch-defining design blog becomes a book

Home pages
Design*Sponge at Home , the first book by the founder of the blog Design*Sponge, Grace Bonney, is a breathtaking, byzantine 390-page encyclopedia of eclectic home décor.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | August 31, 2011

Graduate programs in visual design teach more than just software skills

Designing a future
For me it was important to go back to school because while I had a BA in communication arts, I did not have the design history and foundation necessary to create designs that communicate effectively.
By BRITTANY KEARNAN | August 05, 2011

An interview with Kyle Bryant, woodcutter

Weighty carvings
When he's not rapping at the Big Easy, debating mayoral candidates about the value of street art, or working as a counselor with the Boys and Girls Clubs, Kyle Bryant is a printmaker with Pickwick Independent Press.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | May 04, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

Building a better world, by design

Improvements
What if architects across America agreed to make every building they design 50 percent more energy-efficient — and keep improving until, by 2030, they're at carbon-neutral?
By MARION DAVIS | October 06, 2010

They might build giants

High-Voltage Beauty
When Jin Choi sees electric pylons, she sees something massive and alive.
By S.I. ROSENBAUM | August 23, 2010

Slideshow: Bike cover art contest 2010

Bob Maloney's Experimental Illustration Class competes for the cover spot on the Phoenix 's 2010 Bike Bible
Bob Maloney's Experimental Illustration Class competes for the cover spot on the Phoenix 's 2010 Bike Bible
By BOB MALONEY'S EXPERIMENTAL ILLUSTRATION CLASS | May 13, 2010

In search of light

USM’s dreamlike Inuit storytelling
Many of us here in Maine are guilty of having at one time or another harangued the forces of spring to hurry it up already, are guilty of cold-month mopery or worse. Imagine, then, living in the Arctic, where the winter is far darker for far longer, and the sun that much more precious.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 28, 2010

Lighting history

The Gardner Museum takes a chance on the new
On January 1, 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner invited 300 guests to a private concert by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the opening of her new museum on the Fenway. After performances of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, the mirrored doors of the first-floor concert room rolled open to reveal an extraordinary vision.
By GREG COOK | February 03, 2010

RISD tunes up its moonbuggy

Space Travel
At the Rhode Island School of Design’s NASA-sponsored industrial design studio, the evidence of late-night activity is aplenty: granola bar wrappers, an empty Orangina bottle, and a crumpled potato-chip bag.
By ABIGAIL CROCKER | December 23, 2009

Creative loafing

Where to get your geek on
Essential geek grounds
By MARION DAVIS | September 03, 2009

Building on green energy

Going green
This month, my landlord will install new energy-efficient windows in my apartment. This is great news: Better insulation will reduce both my energy use and my heating bills. I'm happy to be experiencing first-hand what many agree is the single most-important step in the fight against global warming: eco-friendly building upgrades and weatherization.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | September 02, 2009

Simple gifts

Master architects: The Greenes at the MFA, Frank Lloyd Wright in Manchester
Charles and Henry Greene came to Boston in 1888 to study architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
By GREG COOK | August 18, 2009

IndieArts' sensory overload

Taking it to the streets
If Providence is to become the "Creative Capital" of Mayor Cicilline's latest marketing campaign, it will take more than a few orange P's affixed to politicians' lapels and plastered on signs about town.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | July 15, 2009

Review: Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight

Smitten with its subject, with good reason.
In Wendy Keys's extreme hagiography, nobody on earth seems to have a bad word about graphic designer Milton Glaser, either his art or his person.
By GERALD PEARY | June 24, 2009

Photos: Dutch Seascapes at Peabody Essex

"The Golden Age of Dutch Seascapes" at the Peabody
Dutch Seascapes at Peabody Essex
By PHOENIX STAFF | June 24, 2009

Various Artists | A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island

Lo Recordings (2009)
Artist, graphic designer, and toy creator Pete Fowler has been instrumental in the rebranding operation the Super Furry Animals have effected on their homeland of Wales.
By GUSTAVO TURNER | May 19, 2009

Slideshow: Marcel Breuer at RISD

"Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture" at RISD Museum through July 19
The RISD Museum presents "Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture," a major retrospective of the late Bauhaus designer's furniture and buildings, through July 19.
By PROVIDENCE PHOENIX STAFF | April 27, 2009

RISD takes to the streets to show 'What We Do'

Bursting the bubble
"What We Do," an unprecedented, student-run event on April 11 at the Rhode Island School of Design, aims to capture, in a frenzied six hours at six locations, the spirit of Providence's most creative and offbeat college.
By MARION DAVIS | April 08, 2009

Printing Portland

Local artists reclaim mass production
Local artists reclaim mass production
By IAN PAIGE | February 18, 2009

Interview: T. C. Boyle

On The Women and Frank Lloyd Wright
Among his many fictionalizations of the American past, novelist T.C. Boyle has remade such real-life characters as the inventor of cornflakes, John Harvey Kellogg ( The Road to Wellville , 1993), and sexual behaviorist Alfred Kinsey ( The Inner Circle , 2004).
By CASSANDRA LANDRY | February 03, 2009

Geeky gifts 101

An introduction to buying things you don’t completely understand
“Smelly Yankee Candle for Grandma? Check. Tie for Dad? Got it. Toy dump truck for Tommy? Yup. Man, this holiday shopping stuff is easy. Now, who’s next? . . . Um. . . Hmmm.”
By GEORGIANA COHEN | December 11, 2008