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Designing the 21st Century: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Daniella Ohad
'Designing the 21st Century' comes to illuminate the value of understanding design and architecture through the most fascinating stories told by the leading figures in the world of design. When we cherish the built fabric and the things around us, our world becomes more enriched, more interesting, more beautiful.
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- 1 weeks ago18 min
Guillaume Coutheillas: frenchCALIFORNIA
For French, New York–based interior designer Guillaume Coutheillas, reinventing the staged interior while working within some of New York’s most ambitious new residential skyscrapers became the point of departure for a remarkable career in interior design. Working at the intersection of real estate, architecture, and design has profoundly shaped both his professional identity and his creative vision.Collaborations with design galleries in New York and Paris deepened his knowledge of historical and contemporary objects and naturally led him toward creating interiors rich in meaning, narrative, and emotional resonance, where the object takes a central role. Coutheillas has established himself as a designer who approaches interiors as a form of storytelling, creating environments in which architecture, objects, materials, art, and memory come together to form acompelling and coherent whole.Growing up on Paris’s Left Bank in a family of art lovers shaped his sensibility and cultivated his taste from an early age. That lifelong engagement with art and design has enabled him to create spaces which are distinguished by an abilityto layer objects, materials, art, and design with both intellectual depth and emotional richness.As founder and creative director of frenchCALIFORNIA, Coutheillas has developed a distinctive language that brings together French refinement and American sensibilities. His close relationships with galleries, artists, designers, andmakers allow him to assemble interiors of exceptional character—spaces in which important objects are never merely decorative, but contribute to a larger narrative and a deeply personal sense of place.
- 1 weeks ago20 min
Five Living Buildings (by Renzo Piano)
We tend to marvel at architecture for its appearance, innovation, ideas, narratives,and the allure surrounding celebrated buildings and their architects.In his new documentary, Five Living Buildings by Renzo Piano,Emmy-nominated filmmaker Jonathan Goodman Levitt approaches the work of the Italian architect from a very different perspective. Rather than focusing on anarchitectural language, materials, form, or composition, he explores how buildings by one of the most admired and influential architects of our time have come to shape the human experience, how they affect people emotionally andphysically.Traveling across continents, Goodman Levitt visits five of Piano’s buildings—in Greece, Uganda, New York, China, and Paris. Through his beautiful cinematography, he documents the interns, gardeners, doctors and patients, security guards, and visitors who inhabit these spaces, allowing them to describe how the buildings have affected their lives.The film illuminates architecture’s power to inspire, transform, and play a meaningful role in our everyday life. It encourages viewers to look at buildings differently, reminding us that architecture possesses an intimate dimension, even when it is monumental in scale—and that, ultimately, architecture is made for people. Above all, Goodman Levitt demonstrates that in Renzo Piano’s work, people come first.
- May 1, 202626 min
Paul Goldberger on Robert A.M. Stern
Robert A.M. Stern, the architect who became synonymous with the affluent architecture of New York City and that of the seaside villages of the Hamptons, passed away on Thanksgiving. To remember him and to illuminatehis contribution to the story of architecture, I have invited renowned architecture critic and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Paul Goldberger. His tribute to Stern published in the New York Times shortly after his death is titled: "The Architect Who Designed New York City Like a 1930s Movie."To remember Robert A.M. Stern is to illuminatehis contribution to the story of architecture, I have invited renownedarchitecture critic and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Paul Goldberger. Histribute to Stern published in the New York Times shortly after his death istitled The Architect Who Designed New York City Like a 1930s Movie.To remember Robert A.M. Stern is to illuminatehis contribution to the story of architecture, I have invited renownedarchitecture critic and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Paul Goldberger. Histribute to Stern published in the New York Times shortly after his death istitled The Architect Who Designed New York City Like a 1930s Movie.To remember Robert A.M. Stern is to illuminatehis contribution to the story of architecture, I have invited renownedarchitecture critic and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Paul Goldberger. Histribute to Stern published in the New York Times shortly after his death istitled The Architect Who Designed New York City Like a 1930s Movie.
- Dec 16, 202523 min
Mira Nakashima: Home Restoration
The Nakashima Foundation for Peace maintains the architecture and furniture collection which American-Japanese woodworker and architect George Nakashima created and built in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It is one of the most personal and memorable places I have ever visited: apowerful representation of Nakashima’s personal and design vision and of his life story.Now that the foundation has a special mission—to preserve the family home, a National Historic Landmark recognizedfor its innovative design and craftsmanship—I have invited Nakashima’s daughter Mira, now the creative director of the George Nakashima Woodworker, to learn about the legacy of her father, about the greatness of his design, and about theplan to restore the house. Nakashima built it in the 1940s, and it reflects his philosophy about integrating modernism with traditional Japanese principles, and his vision regarding woodworking and craftsmanship. Today, the Family Houseurgently needs help. Thanks to grants from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Foundation has a comprehensive preservation plan that outlines the work needed to stabilize this important historical House.
- Dec 13, 202527 min
Tom Kundig: Complete Houses
My guest today has created some of the most beautiful houses in America. Perhaps I am biased, because if I ever build my own house, I know that Tom Kundig will design it. If he agrees Over the course of his four-decade career, he has built museums, wineries, universities, foundations, retail andcommercial buildings. But the touchstone of his work, and for what he became known, is the single-family house. His houses reflect his passion for the mountains, for the natural world, and for fine art. The private house to him, reflectthe sense of humanity in architecture.If to Le Corbusier the house was a machine to live in, toTom Kundig the house is a sculpture to live in and a place to experiment. His houses are also strongly connected to the landscape and to the surrounding nature in the most organic way, whether it is in an urban fabric or a house in the countryside. Urban or rural, his houses are a reflection of their place.Now that his new and comprehensive monograph—the definitive collection of his 462 residential works —has been published, it is time to explore what makes Tom Kundig’s houses so magical, memorable, and beautiful.
- Nov 4, 20250 min
Osanna Visconti: Jewelry for the Home
In recent years, there has been a great emphasis on the supreme beauty and quality of the handmade in contemporary design. I am confident that we are currently at the heights of a craft movement and it carries a particular 21st century identity, which combines traditional fabrications of craftsmanship with methods rooted in new technologies and materials. It is no longer a secret that bronze, which was largely absent from contemporary design in the years leading to the end of the past century, has taken a key role in contemporary design like no other time in history, with much of it being fabricated in Italy.Osanna Visconti, my guest today, has become the ambassador of Italian bronze in contemporary design. Working in Milan, she has made cast bronze her sole tool. Now that her work is exhibited at Maison Gerard in New York, the time has come to explore her incredible vocabulary by journeying from jewelry to furniture design; or, as she calls it, “jewelry for the home.”Her furniture has personality, and her objects have the power to transform contemporary spaces, making them a favorite among interior designers today. Visconti's pieces are rooted in the natural world as she regularly collects leaves, branches, and flowers, turning them into the primary subjects of her bronze objects.
- May 5, 202519 min
What Happened to Furniture Design?: with Sami Reiss
Today I would like to discuss the level of furniture that can be found in shops and department stores. It is a sensitive issue that is rarely brought up in public but remains a hot subject in the architecture and design communities. I have heard people describe it as ordinary, mediocre, poorly made, and less inspiring and innovative than it has been at any other time in history. It should not be forgotten that furniture design has always had a tremendous impact on the taste of the time.In the 20th century, manufacturers were motivated in producing avant-garde furniture, and this why it became available to consumers. The Primavera department store in Paris, for example, was the source for high end Art Deco furnishings in the 1920s. American department stores Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, and Abraham Strauss offered the American public the most up to date and daring furniture available. During the mid-century years, it was Herman Miller and Knoll that were famously investing and responsible for the some of the iconic furniture of the century. The Japanese department store Takashimaya was the source for art furniture in the 1950s, and it is particularly memorable for the benchmark exhibition of French design curated by Charlotte Perriand. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was Bloomingdales that became the lead tastemaker by exhibiting chic, fantastical space age furniture, brilliantly curated.What really happened to furniture design and why the best of it is found only in galleries and museums, but not in shops?For this discussion I invited Sami Reiss. He writes the bestselling newsletter Snake, covering auctions, design, vintage furniture and fashion. Sami’s articles have been published in GQ, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN and the New York Times.
- Apr 24, 202524 min
Myron Goldfinger: Then and Now
Myron Goldfinger was an American architect who, during the height of his career in the 1970s and 1980s, devised a distinctive style in trophy homes for the rich powerful seeking to live in contemporary houses. He reinterpreted American vernacular architecture into an entirely new language that responded to the spirit of the time: the Disco Age. Inspired by Louis Kahn, his teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, Goldfinger was an architect of volumes. His houses were composed of bold compositions of cubes, cylinders, and triangular blocks. Like Kahn, he believed that only basic geometry has the power to achieve timelessness. His language was highly influential, with many other architects building in the suburbs around New York and in the Hamptons copying his style. Having grown up in a humble working-class environment in Atlantic City, Goldfinger said that he sought to create the type of glamourous houses that he never had.To remember Myron Goldfinger, who passed away in 2023, and to see how his legacy is preserved in the 21st century through fresh interpretation, I invited interior designer June Goldfinger, his widow and eternal partner, along with Kelvin Dickinson, President of the Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture.
About Designing the 21st Century
'Designing the 21st Century' comes to illuminate the value of understanding design and architecture through the most fascinating stories told by the leading figures in the world of design. When we cherish the built fabric and the things around us, our world becomes more enriched, more interesting, more beautiful.
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