Metropolis Magazine - Metropolis Magazine March 2011

Grimshaw Industrial Design creates a seamless interface between the building and its users.

The fashion designer Issey Miyake continues his career-long fascination with the essence of clothes.

Leddy Maytum Stacy’s new Ed Roberts Campus epitomizes the firm’s commitment to socially relevant design.

Norman Foster and a team of auto restorers finally realize a roadworthy version of Buckminster Fuller’s legendary (and legendarily flawed) Dymaxion Car.

Seven of our leading young product designers reveal how they’re conquering the tricky global marketplace.

The interior designer talks about trailblazing mentors, Greek cave houses, and the glories of tequila.

This year’s best new products for the two most important rooms in the house

A Belgian collective examines how architectural materials degrade as they age.

The Masters chair combines the silhouettes of classic seats by Saarinen, Eames, and Jacobsen.

A scrappy little organization in downtown Los Angeles provides an alternative path into top architecture schools.

A new exhibition on the American factory asks some provocative questions about the future.

A Norwegian firm’s rigorously engineered mobility aids are designed to excite and empower disabled children.

Faux design is in demand. With advances in reproductive-image technologies, workhorse materials like porcelain tile and furniture upholstery can now adopt the look of wood, glass, oxidized metal, and natural fibers. Delicate-looking materials prove durable and easy to clean, and…

Rem Koolhaas and Clément Blanchet outfit a tiny Parisian bistro with marble, mirrors, and a hint of Hellenistic architecture.

The medicine cabinet is a highly useful invention, but it has seen few innovations since man first thought to stash his Band-Aids and prescription- drug bottles behind the bathroom mirror. That finally changed, however, at January’s Maison et Objet, in…

WEB www.newschool.edu/parsons www.tagheuer.com Here’s a good lesson for aspiring designers: get used to making things that you will probably never be able to afford. But that was hardly the only real-world lesson to come out of a recent collaboration between…

Paul Hawken on what has and hasn’t changed since he first challenged business to embrace environmentalism

A historic design endures, thanks to its popularity in fast-food restaurants and cheesy nightclubs.

A new exhibition touts the ingenious resourcefulness of Indian design. But is jugaad good urbanism?

Two intrepid designers add their experience to our understanding of interiors.