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Wednesday Woman: Minnette de Silva
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Jun 10

Wednesday Woman: Minnette de Silva
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Minnette de Silva was a pioneering Sri Lankan architect whose work helped define a regional approach to modernism in South Asia. Born in Kandy in 1918, she came from a politically progressive family that was active in the anticolonial and universal franchise movements. After studying in Mumbai and later at the Architectural Association in London, she returned to Sri Lanka and established her own practice, the Studio of Modern Architecture, in 1947. De Silva was one of the first women in the world to lead an independent architectural studio and also the first Asian woman to become an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
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De Silva’s architecture combined modernist principles with local traditions, climate-responsive design, and Sri Lankan craft techniques. Rather than adopting a universal International Style, she emphasized shaded verandas, natural ventilation, courtyards, and integration with the landscape. Her work wove together ecology, heritage, craftsmanship, and social concerns in order to create what she described as “modern regional architecture.”
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De Silva was a foundational figure in South Asian modernism whose long overlooked contributions have gained increasing recognition in recent years.

Wednesday Woman: Lutah Maria Riggs
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Jun 3

Wednesday Woman: Lutah Maria Riggs
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Lutah Maria Riggs was a pioneering American architect whose work helped shape the architectural identity of Southern California. Based in Santa Barbara for most of her career, Riggs melded modernist and Spanish Colonial Revival styles to create an early form of California Modern architecture. Her buildings are celebrated for their sensitivity to landscape, craftsmanship, and regional character. One of the first women to establish and lead her own architectural practice in California, she was among the earliest female architects to achieve national professional recognition.
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After earning a degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1919, Riggs joined the office of architect George Washington Smith. In 1930, she opened her own practice and went on to design residences, gardens, public buildings, and cultural institutions throughout California. Her notable works include the Alice Erving House, the Blaksley Library and Herbarium at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, and the Vedanta Temple in Montecito, a landmark admired for its serene synthesis of Asian and California architectural influences.
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Riggs was known for her meticulous attention to materials, light, and site, believing that architecture should provide both practical comfort and spiritual uplift. In 1960, she became one of the first women elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and in 1966 she was named the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year.
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“I don’t like to say a house is any style. It’s just a house—the best solution I could think of to a given problem.”

Wednesday Woman: Cecily Brown
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“The ...

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May 20

Wednesday Woman: Cecily Brown
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“The place I’m interested in is where the mind goes when it’s trying to make up for what isn’t there.”
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Cecily Brown is a British-born painter celebrated for canvases that appear to exist in a continual state of flux, animated by sensuality, expressive brushwork, and vivid color. Oscillating restlessly between abstraction and figuration, her paintings draw upon a wide lineage of Western art history—from Paolo Veronese, Peter Paul Rubens, and Edgar Degas to Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, and Joan Mitchell—while also absorbing imagery from popular culture. Through this synthesis, Brown has developed a distinctly fluid visual language that resists fixed narrative and instead immerses viewers in unstable, psychologically charged spaces. Her vigorous treatment of the nude figure in particular challenges traditional representations of the body. She transforms familiar subjects into fragmented meditations on desire, excess, life, and decay.
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Raised in Surrey, England, Brown studied under painter Maggi Hambling before attending the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Although her graduation in the early 1990s coincided with the rise of the Young British Artists, Brown diverged sharply from the group’s conceptualism and embrace of celebrity culture. She moved to New York in 1994 and emerged alongside painters such as John Currin as a key figure in the resurgence of figurative painting.
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Central to Brown’s work is her ability to transform paint into something bodily and unstable. Her early paintings of hedonistic rabbits and fragmented still-life motifs evolved into the chaotic, orgiastic compositions that brought her international recognition. “I think that painting is a kind of alchemy,” she has said. “The paint is transformed into image, and paint and image transform themselves into a third and new thing.”

This weekend, in Texas Hill Country, Arthouse ...

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Apr 28

This weekend, in Texas Hill Country, Arthouse opened to the public.
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Designed by @Lakeflato for longtime collaborators and friends of the firm Mickey and Jeanne Klein, Arthouse is a dynamic cultural hub for the small, but growing, town of Marble Falls. Centrally located and open to the public, with rotating exhibitions curated by the Kleins from their own collection, the space embodies the couple’s belief in art as a public good and a convener of community.
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📸 @andreacalo

Wednesday Woman: Dana Barnes
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“I’m ...

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Apr 23

Wednesday Woman: Dana Barnes
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“I’m particularly intrigued by the beauty that can emerge when you release your hold and let something unexpected take shape, just as it would spontaneously in nature.”
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Dana Barnes is an artist known for her textural, sculptural works and site-specific architectural installations, all produced entirely by hand in her Lower East Side studio. Central to her practice is an ongoing investigation of materiality and process, where she devises custom tools and techniques to shape complex three-dimensional forms. Through innovative wet-bonding methods, Barnes fuses wool and other fibers with contrasting materials, both natural and manmade, to create abstract compositions that challenge conventional expectations of texture and structure.
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The combination of fibers such as merino, yak, alpaca, and silk with elements like concrete, wood, copper, resin, and antique Persian carpets creates a compelling tactile environment in which motion and stillness, as well as strength and fragility, coexist in dynamic tension. Barnes’s sculptural forms twist, sag, and climb across space, inspired by the slow, persistent forces of nature.
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“I’m drawn to the way that vines spiral into emptiness, how they fill voids left behind, their tendrils reaching without logic or order. In that compulsive growth, I see both nature’s persistence and our own human instincts to keep pressing forward through pain, loss, and change—a reminder that no matter what happens, life always finds a way to prevail.”
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@danabarnesstudio @randcompanynyc

More press on the new Green-House at Green-Wood! ...

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Apr 21

More press on the new Green-House at Green-Wood!
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Read about @architecture.research.office’s design for the new education and welcome center at @historicgreenwood in @theartnewspaper.official, @archrecordmag, @curbed, @wallpapermag, @archpaper, and @commercial_observer.
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Link in bio 🌱
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📸 @rafaelgamo

Today, the ribbon was cut on the new Green-House ...

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Apr 16

Today, the ribbon was cut on the new Green-House at Green-Wood Cemetery.
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Designed by @architecture.research.office, the new education and welcome center at @historicgreenwood creates, for the first time, a new ‘front door’ for this incredible NYC landmark and brings together visitor services, offices, and public programming. The new L-shaped building nestles around a restored historic Victorian greenhouse with a contextual design that celebrates the site’s history and the Cemetery’s iconic landscape.
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The project balances preservation and new construction through thoughtful material choices and site design, including a green roof and landscaped entry that bring Green-Wood’s hills and winding paths out into the neighborhood. Inside the center, galleries, classrooms, and archival spaces support a wide range of public programs and reinforce the cemetery’s role as both an active burial ground and a cultural institution.
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Read more in the @nytimes via the link in bio.
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📸@rafaelgamo

Wednesday Woman: Carla Juaçaba
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Since...

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Apr 16

Wednesday Woman: Carla Juaçaba
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Since 2000, Carla Juaçaba has developed her eponymous architecture and research-based practice in Rio de Janeiro. Her work encompasses both cultural programs and private commissions, and is recognised for its structural clarity, material restraint, and close relationship to landscape. Her projects often rely on simple structural systems, such as steel and glass, that allow architecture to appear almost weightless within its surroundings. Before founding her own firm in 2000, the Juaçaba began her career working for Gisela Magalhães (one of Oscar Niemeyer’s peers) whileen still an undergraduate.
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Understanding how a space can be “political, democratic and essential” is a key driver in Juaçaba’s practice. “A phrase by the Brazilian indigenous leader and writer Ailton Krenak, ‘step gently on the ground,’ is on the wall of my design studio at Mendrisio Accademia. Architectural design should be understood as action over a territory. Architecture is not a drawing or a visual composition: each line, idea, or sketch of an architectonic design represents an action, a material transformation, and a geographical transformation. We should work together with other disciplines to build a landscape where nature, design and infrastructure coexist.”
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“I always say I have to destroy something on the site to build it. But I don’t destroy anything physically, not even one tree. What I’m destroying is invisible. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I always have to find this nothing, this non-physical presence in a site. That’s the incentive for me to find that very strong ‘something.’ And there’s always a presence, and the thing is to think about that presence.”

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