A Note on the July/August Features

Your July/August copy of Metropolis may not be a special issue per se, but it is, in a modest sense, a perfect one: it distills our broad view of design and its critical reach into a mere four stories. Compare the Four Seasons, a transcendent space that has played a defining cultural role since opening its doors 50 years ago, to Roman & Williams’s überfashionable rooms, whose nods to the past reveal a lot about our current longing for stability. And while the new Yankees and Mets stadiums are discouraging emblems of an undemocratic attitude that exploits the political process, architecture also offers hope: the Rural Studio has evolved from a boutique effort into a rigorous program to tackle our growing need for affordable housing. While we may not have intended them to make a statement, having these subjects appear next to one another in one volume serves as a reminder of why we are committed to putting stories into print.