The Art Institute's Modern Wing beckons Chicago design tourists

Cassie Walker -- Interior Design

Joseph Rosa sidles up to the security guard standing next to Patricia Urquiola's felt-flowered Antibodi chaise longue. "No one has touched anything, have they?" he asks in a voice that sounds parental, not just curatorial. Who can blame him? The curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago, Rosa worked with Renzo Piano Building Workshop to fashion this corner of the Modern Wing into galleries for his department. At 8,000 square feet, the space is the largest of its kind in the world. Every inch has been carefully considered. So if a tourist touches the Urquiola chaise, it's more than a gaffe—it's a personal insult.

I've met Rosa for a tour. Even on a rainy day, light pours into the entrance of the Modern Wing—along with umbrella-toting visitors. As Piano partner Joost Moolhuijzen would explain to me afterward, "It really is about how you embrace the city and make the museum welcoming to the people who have never set foot in it." He says that the greatest challenge was to balance the desire for a light-flooded space with the sun-averse preservation of art. The solution was what he calls a "flying carpet," a series of angled aluminum blades running across the roof's skylights to protect the galleries from direct sun. Today, of course, that's not a problem. I dry out as Rosa and I walk toward the galleries. "At MoMA, they tell me, when you change design objects, it's actually in a public corridor. Here, you have an identified zone that's lockable." A good thing, since he plans on changing exhibitions twice a year.

Out of the 250,000 pieces Rosa had to choose from, dating back about a century, we look at some of his earliest selections: a preliminary model of the nearby Inland Steel Building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, plans for Australia's Newman College, circa 1915, by Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin. But most visitors don't linger too long in the past. After a quick glance, they follow the siren call of the sound track to Ordos 100, Lot 006, Inner Mongolia, China, a digital video that illustrates how an imaginary family would live in a house by the architecture firm MOS. The crowd then drifts loosely toward Being Not Truthful Always Works Against Me, graphic designers Stefan Sagmeister and Ralph Ammer's kinetic image of a spiderweb that distorts and twists according to the promptings of a motion sensor. Rosa gives some serious consideration to two children playing in front of the piece. "We'll probably leave this one up," he says.

One of Rosa's responsibilities is to show how the relationship between architecture and design has evolved. I ask what criteria should be used to evaluate Xefirotarch's model for Sur, a summer pavilion built for the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. Or what about Hella Jongerius tableware? After some careful thought, he answers, "I think the general public sometimes feels, I don't know enough about this to comment. But do you like it? Does it strike a chord in you? That's how knowledge grows." Rosa plans to push the conversation forward with temporary commissions from designers such as Florencia Pita of Mod and SCI-Arc, whom he calls "an inventive thinker, to say the least." Looking for acquisitions, he says, requires seeking out new issues and aesthetics.

We walk toward the final gallery, home to an impressive selection of contemporary chairs including Ron Arad's Rover, made from a car seat, and the red wire tangles of Fernando and Humberto Campana's Corallo. On one side of the room, an angular LED sculpture by Yves Behar gently pulsates. Donated by Behar himself, it's uncannily reminiscent of another recent addition to the city: UNStudio's temporary pavilion across the street in Millennium Park, which I had walked through on the way to the museum.

Rosa was a key player in the commission of that pavilion as well as one by Zaha Hadid Architects, so I ask about them over lunch at Terzo Piano, the restaurant on the third floor of the new wing. The two firms are "building from the past into the future," Rosa says. On the phone from Amsterdam, UNStudio principal Ben van Berkel describes his design as partly an ode to Daniel Burnham, whose master plan for Chicago is celebrating its 100th birthday. "Within the vision of the Burnham plan, there was this idea of diagonal vistas," Van Berkel explains. "Now you look up and see towers rising on the lake shore, rising in a diagonal manner." The cantilevered roof of the pavilion, he adds, could be interpreted as a riff on Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House in nearby Hyde Park, yet the pavilion's lighting—which he designed to glow with more intensity as more people walk past—adds a futuristic twist. "If there's no communication between the public and the architecture you make," Van Berkel says, "I think you aren't really making architecture."

With that axiom in mind, I look around the restaurant, an 8,500-square-foot space by Dirk Denison Architects. Everything is flexible, from the floating credenza and banquette at the entry to the rolling painted aluminum-and-steel dividers that allow the dining room to be quickly changed into any number of configurations for private entertaining. The restaurant is specifically meant "to feel like it's in a museum," Dirk Denison says. Hence the Piano-inspired white palette and the vitrines displaying contemporary representational ceramics. Curvy chairs by George Nelson "bring sensuousness to a space that is otherwise very rational," Denison explains.

What a fitting description for the entire experience, I think—until I revisit the galleries a week later. Behar's LED piece still glows and, behind it, window shades rise to let in softly filtered afternoon sun. "What an un—Art Institute—looking room," one visitor remarks. "That's the idea," his companion replies. If Rosa were here, his parental sternness would surely transform into paternal pride.

The Art Institute's Modern Wing beckons Chicago design tourists

Cassie Walker -- Interior Design

Joseph Rosa sidles up to the security guard standing next to Patricia Urquiola's felt-flowered Antibodi chaise longue. "No one has touched anything, have they?" he asks in a voice that sounds parental, not just curatorial. Who can blame him? The curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago, Rosa worked with Renzo Piano Building Workshop to fashion this corner of the Modern Wing into galleries for his department. At 8,000 square feet, the space is the largest of its kind in the world. Every inch has been carefully considered. So if a tourist touches the Urquiola chaise, it's more than a gaffe—it's a personal insult.

I've met Rosa for a tour. Even on a rainy day, light pours into the entrance of the Modern Wing—along with umbrella-toting visitors. As Piano partner Joost Moolhuijzen would explain to me afterward, "It really is about how you embrace the city and make the museum welcoming to the people who have never set foot in it." He says that the greatest challenge was to balance the desire for a light-flooded space with the sun-averse preservation of art. The solution was what he calls a "flying carpet," a series of angled aluminum blades running across the roof's skylights to protect the galleries from direct sun. Today, of course, that's not a problem. I dry out as Rosa and I walk toward the galleries. "At MoMA, they tell me, when you change design objects, it's actually in a public corridor. Here, you have an identified zone that's lockable." A good thing, since he plans on changing exhibitions twice a year.

Out of the 250,000 pieces Rosa had to choose from, dating back about a century, we look at some of his earliest selections: a preliminary model of the nearby Inland Steel Building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, plans for Australia's Newman College, circa 1915, by Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin. But most visitors don't linger too long in the past. After a quick glance, they follow the siren call of the sound track to Ordos 100, Lot 006, Inner Mongolia, China, a digital video that illustrates how an imaginary family would live in a house by the architecture firm MOS. The crowd then drifts loosely toward Being Not Truthful Always Works Against Me, graphic designers Stefan Sagmeister and Ralph Ammer's kinetic image of a spiderweb that distorts and twists according to the promptings of a motion sensor. Rosa gives some serious consideration to two children playing in front of the piece. "We'll probably leave this one up," he says.

One of Rosa's responsibilities is to show how the relationship between architecture and design has evolved. I ask what criteria should be used to evaluate Xefirotarch's model for Sur, a summer pavilion built for the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. Or what about Hella Jongerius tableware? After some careful thought, he answers, "I think the general public sometimes feels, I don't know enough about this to comment. But do you like it? Does it strike a chord in you? That's how knowledge grows." Rosa plans to push the conversation forward with temporary commissions from designers such as Florencia Pita of Mod and SCI-Arc, whom he calls "an inventive thinker, to say the least." Looking for acquisitions, he says, requires seeking out new issues and aesthetics.

We walk toward the final gallery, home to an impressive selection of contemporary chairs including Ron Arad's Rover, made from a car seat, and the red wire tangles of Fernando and Humberto Campana's Corallo. On one side of the room, an angular LED sculpture by Yves Behar gently pulsates. Donated by Behar himself, it's uncannily reminiscent of another recent addition to the city: UNStudio's temporary pavilion across the street in Millennium Park, which I had walked through on the way to the museum.

Rosa was a key player in the commission of that pavilion as well as one by Zaha Hadid Architects, so I ask about them over lunch at Terzo Piano, the restaurant on the third floor of the new wing. The two firms are "building from the past into the future," Rosa says. On the phone from Amsterdam, UNStudio principal Ben van Berkel describes his design as partly an ode to Daniel Burnham, whose master plan for Chicago is celebrating its 100th birthday. "Within the vision of the Burnham plan, there was this idea of diagonal vistas," Van Berkel explains. "Now you look up and see towers rising on the lake shore, rising in a diagonal manner." The cantilevered roof of the pavilion, he adds, could be interpreted as a riff on Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House in nearby Hyde Park, yet the pavilion's lighting—which he designed to glow with more intensity as more people walk past—adds a futuristic twist. "If there's no communication between the public and the architecture you make," Van Berkel says, "I think you aren't really making architecture."

With that axiom in mind, I look around the restaurant, an 8,500-square-foot space by Dirk Denison Architects. Everything is flexible, from the floating credenza and banquette at the entry to the rolling painted aluminum-and-steel dividers that allow the dining room to be quickly changed into any number of configurations for private entertaining. The restaurant is specifically meant "to feel like it's in a museum," Dirk Denison says. Hence the Piano-inspired white palette and the vitrines displaying contemporary representational ceramics. Curvy chairs by George Nelson "bring sensuousness to a space that is otherwise very rational," Denison explains.

What a fitting description for the entire experience, I think—until I revisit the galleries a week later. Behar's LED piece still glows and, behind it, window shades rise to let in softly filtered afternoon sun. "What an un—Art Institute—looking room," one visitor remarks. "That's the idea," his companion replies. If Rosa were here, his parental sternness would surely transform into paternal pride.

In the Shadow of Versailles

France's most celebrated château has a new neighbor, the renovated Ecole des Beaux-Arts by Platane Architecte

Seth Sherwood -- Interior Design

Talk about a French paradox. For decades, half of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Versailles—a prestigious school of fine arts, founded in the late 18th century near the famous château—languished in a charmless 1950's concrete annex at complete odds with the lovely things created inside it. Worse, small windows sealed off the building from the outer world, undercutting the school's philosophy of total openness to students of every background, to the local community, and to arts of every variety. "It was very, very ugly," architect Platane Beres says with a chuckle. "It had utterly no character."

A complete redo of the two-story, 5,000-square-foot structure proved to entail a series of delicate balancing acts for Platane Architecte. The city of Versailles, which runs the school, envisioned transforming the boring front of the building—south-facing and sun-baked—into something monumental that would engage the public and admit more light. The new facade would also have to make sense in the context of Versailles's grand baroque architecture. At the same time, however, Beres needed to keep students' and teachers' needs in mind. That meant screening harsh direct sunlight and shielding ground-floor studios from distracting pedestrians. One potentially attractive solution, a glass curtain wall, was therefore out.

Then Beres had his eureka moment: "We have to use stone!" In this case, what he calls the "noblest of all building materials" is a sand-colored limestone that allowed him to pay homage to the many stone edifices of Versailles. His design, however, resolutely avoids mimicking them or quoting styles from the 18th and 19th centuries. No dandified flourishes. No throwback frills. Instead, his rhythmic facade is composed of six tall stone panels that alternate with six tall windows. It's both monumental enough to valorize a venerable institution and restrained enough not to overpower the quaint, villagelike surroundings.

Beres didn't stop there. Knowing that the scheme would admit too much light, he installed a floating stone panel just a couple of feet in front of each of the six windows. Because the panels' dimensions match those of the windows almost exactly, the powerful southern sun is prevented from assaulting the interiors head-on, but its rays seep around the edges of the stone, creating indirect light. The configuration also keeps the school cool in summer while reducing noise from the cobblestone street.

While the stone slabs between the windows are the regular, flat variety, Beres used a CNC milling machine to carve seemingly random protrusions from the slabs that compose the floating panels. These smooth bumps, he says, make the surface "strange, weird, like a planet or a human body. They have a very sensual aspect. People want to touch them." The sculptural forms, he continues, allude to the sculpting and other arts going on inside. Pedestrians are seduced into further contact with the structure by the brief diagonal glimpses of the school's interior caught between the panels and the windows. "You can't quite see the things going on inside, and you wonder what they are. Your curiosity is aroused. But you don't bother the students," he explains.

The school's north-facing rear facade, which looks out on a private courtyard, is the polar opposite of the front one: no direct sunlight, no street life. Beres played up the contrast, knocking down the concrete wall and replacing it with virtually unbroken glass. There's no stone in sight. Yet not content with a common curtain wall, he added angles to his: The surface looks as if it were constructed from a gigantic sheet of clear origami paper. Whereas the front of the school is opaque, tactile, and muscular, the back is transparent, hands-off, and delicate.

Classrooms and studios, meanwhile, evoke blank canvases. Beres ripped up the old industrial floor tiles to reveal smooth concrete, which he painted a pure white. Walls and ceilings got the same paint job. The only major concession to color and furniture is a pair of vast red rectangular shelving units that slide along tracks in the floor of the hangarlike multipurpose studio on the ground level. The movable units double as walls, allowing teachers and students to manipulate the atelier's size and layout.

Especially striking is the diffuse, balanced, cool white light that fills the interior. For Beres, this effect—achieved by the contrasting north and south facades—creates the ideal environment for making and displaying art. "It's as if you're floating in light, enveloped by light. Any object that you put in the room, even yourself, your body, becomes a figure highlighted against a white canvas," he says. The artist becomes the artwork, a beautiful French paradox par excellence.

In the Shadow of Versailles

France's most celebrated château has a new neighbor, the renovated Ecole des Beaux-Arts by Platane Architecte

Seth Sherwood -- Interior Design

Talk about a French paradox. For decades, half of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Versailles—a prestigious school of fine arts, founded in the late 18th century near the famous château—languished in a charmless 1950's concrete annex at complete odds with the lovely things created inside it. Worse, small windows sealed off the building from the outer world, undercutting the school's philosophy of total openness to students of every background, to the local community, and to arts of every variety. "It was very, very ugly," architect Platane Beres says with a chuckle. "It had utterly no character."

A complete redo of the two-story, 5,000-square-foot structure proved to entail a series of delicate balancing acts for Platane Architecte. The city of Versailles, which runs the school, envisioned transforming the boring front of the building—south-facing and sun-baked—into something monumental that would engage the public and admit more light. The new facade would also have to make sense in the context of Versailles's grand baroque architecture. At the same time, however, Beres needed to keep students' and teachers' needs in mind. That meant screening harsh direct sunlight and shielding ground-floor studios from distracting pedestrians. One potentially attractive solution, a glass curtain wall, was therefore out.

Then Beres had his eureka moment: "We have to use stone!" In this case, what he calls the "noblest of all building materials" is a sand-colored limestone that allowed him to pay homage to the many stone edifices of Versailles. His design, however, resolutely avoids mimicking them or quoting styles from the 18th and 19th centuries. No dandified flourishes. No throwback frills. Instead, his rhythmic facade is composed of six tall stone panels that alternate with six tall windows. It's both monumental enough to valorize a venerable institution and restrained enough not to overpower the quaint, villagelike surroundings.

Beres didn't stop there. Knowing that the scheme would admit too much light, he installed a floating stone panel just a couple of feet in front of each of the six windows. Because the panels' dimensions match those of the windows almost exactly, the powerful southern sun is prevented from assaulting the interiors head-on, but its rays seep around the edges of the stone, creating indirect light. The configuration also keeps the school cool in summer while reducing noise from the cobblestone street.

While the stone slabs between the windows are the regular, flat variety, Beres used a CNC milling machine to carve seemingly random protrusions from the slabs that compose the floating panels. These smooth bumps, he says, make the surface "strange, weird, like a planet or a human body. They have a very sensual aspect. People want to touch them." The sculptural forms, he continues, allude to the sculpting and other arts going on inside. Pedestrians are seduced into further contact with the structure by the brief diagonal glimpses of the school's interior caught between the panels and the windows. "You can't quite see the things going on inside, and you wonder what they are. Your curiosity is aroused. But you don't bother the students," he explains.

The school's north-facing rear facade, which looks out on a private courtyard, is the polar opposite of the front one: no direct sunlight, no street life. Beres played up the contrast, knocking down the concrete wall and replacing it with virtually unbroken glass. There's no stone in sight. Yet not content with a common curtain wall, he added angles to his: The surface looks as if it were constructed from a gigantic sheet of clear origami paper. Whereas the front of the school is opaque, tactile, and muscular, the back is transparent, hands-off, and delicate.

Classrooms and studios, meanwhile, evoke blank canvases. Beres ripped up the old industrial floor tiles to reveal smooth concrete, which he painted a pure white. Walls and ceilings got the same paint job. The only major concession to color and furniture is a pair of vast red rectangular shelving units that slide along tracks in the floor of the hangarlike multipurpose studio on the ground level. The movable units double as walls, allowing teachers and students to manipulate the atelier's size and layout.

Especially striking is the diffuse, balanced, cool white light that fills the interior. For Beres, this effect—achieved by the contrasting north and south facades—creates the ideal environment for making and displaying art. "It's as if you're floating in light, enveloped by light. Any object that you put in the room, even yourself, your body, becomes a figure highlighted against a white canvas," he says. The artist becomes the artwork, a beautiful French paradox par excellence.

Big Man on Campus

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design

When Thomas Heatherwick won a competition to design the Aberystwyth Arts Centre at Aberystwyth University in Wales, he was reluctant to dilute the rural character of the site with a single monolithic building. Instead, he built eight small ones nestled among the pine, oak, and birch trees. Seven of the eight 850-square-foot structures contain two identical studios; the eighth one is a single.

The school provides the studios free of charge to artists-in-residence or rents to small creative start-ups and local artists. "One of my reasons for renting was because of the light in the studios. It's so beautiful," says painter Mary Lloyd Jones, who works on her abstract canvases there.

Heatherwick's master touch was to use a futuristic stainless steel just .005 inch thick, about the same as a Coke can. Sourced that thin, the material was less expensive, but unfortunately it was neither rigid nor insulated. To firm it up, Heatherwick Studio passed the sheets between two wooden rollers in a contraption akin to a Victorian mangle, the type of clothespress common back when Aberystwyth was founded in 1872.

The machine gave the ultrathin stainless a crinkled appearance reminiscent of the foil walls of Andy Warhol's New York studio, the Factory. The designers then sprayed a CFC-free rigid polyurethane foam on the back of the metal for insulation. Resulting panels are not only affordable, solid, and well insulated but also accommodating of the timber-framed structures' eaves, windowsills, and other details. In addition, the nonuniform surface reflects jumbled glimpses of the surrounding forest and the sky.

"As the young trees and grass begin to mature, the units will feel further embedded in the environment," Heatherwick says. "We're like architectural tailors, building simple forms with an extraordinary skin."

This isn't his first go-round with metal manipulation. He used 55 tons of hot-rolled steel for a Longchamp boutique in New York and wrapped a boiler house at Guy's Hospital, London, in woven stainless. It's not likely to be his last either. His upcoming show at London's Haunch of Venison gallery includes five aluminum benches produced by the world's largest extrusion machine.

Big Man on Campus

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design

When Thomas Heatherwick won a competition to design the Aberystwyth Arts Centre at Aberystwyth University in Wales, he was reluctant to dilute the rural character of the site with a single monolithic building. Instead, he built eight small ones nestled among the pine, oak, and birch trees. Seven of the eight 850-square-foot structures contain two identical studios; the eighth one is a single.

The school provides the studios free of charge to artists-in-residence or rents to small creative start-ups and local artists. "One of my reasons for renting was because of the light in the studios. It's so beautiful," says painter Mary Lloyd Jones, who works on her abstract canvases there.

Heatherwick's master touch was to use a futuristic stainless steel just .005 inch thick, about the same as a Coke can. Sourced that thin, the material was less expensive, but unfortunately it was neither rigid nor insulated. To firm it up, Heatherwick Studio passed the sheets between two wooden rollers in a contraption akin to a Victorian mangle, the type of clothespress common back when Aberystwyth was founded in 1872.

The machine gave the ultrathin stainless a crinkled appearance reminiscent of the foil walls of Andy Warhol's New York studio, the Factory. The designers then sprayed a CFC-free rigid polyurethane foam on the back of the metal for insulation. Resulting panels are not only affordable, solid, and well insulated but also accommodating of the timber-framed structures' eaves, windowsills, and other details. In addition, the nonuniform surface reflects jumbled glimpses of the surrounding forest and the sky.

"As the young trees and grass begin to mature, the units will feel further embedded in the environment," Heatherwick says. "We're like architectural tailors, building simple forms with an extraordinary skin."

This isn't his first go-round with metal manipulation. He used 55 tons of hot-rolled steel for a Longchamp boutique in New York and wrapped a boiler house at Guy's Hospital, London, in woven stainless. It's not likely to be his last either. His upcoming show at London's Haunch of Venison gallery includes five aluminum benches produced by the world's largest extrusion machine.

AIS Lends Extreme Makeover: Home Edition a Helping Hand

The office furniture manufacturer's donation including 24 workstations, three private offices, four teacher stations, a conference table, 43 desk chairs, and 80 storage units, is valued at over $275,000.

In its second partnership with the ABC television network's Emmy Award-winning reality television series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Affordable Interior Systems has donated office furniture to the newly rebuilt The Fishing School in Washington, D.C.

The youth development organization for children ages six to 13 was rebuilt by IA Interior Architects as part of the hit show's upcoming seventh season. For their part, AIS donated 24 workstations, three private office set-ups, four teacher stations, a conference table, 43 desk chairs, and 80 storage units, valued at over $275,000, and installation services for three floors of the school by Maryland Office Interiors.

AIS had previously furnished over 20 office spaces in the rebuilding of the Keiki O Ka Aina Family Learning Center in Honolulu, Hawaii for the fifth season premiere of EMHE. AIS exceeded its previous donation for The Fishing School project, which represents the show's largest build to date. The show is set to air sometime in November.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design

AIS Lends Extreme Makeover: Home Edition a Helping Hand

The office furniture manufacturer's donation including 24 workstations, three private offices, four teacher stations, a conference table, 43 desk chairs, and 80 storage units, is valued at over $275,000.

In its second partnership with the ABC television network's Emmy Award-winning reality television series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Affordable Interior Systems has donated office furniture to the newly rebuilt The Fishing School in Washington, D.C.

The youth development organization for children ages six to 13 was rebuilt by IA Interior Architects as part of the hit show's upcoming seventh season. For their part, AIS donated 24 workstations, three private office set-ups, four teacher stations, a conference table, 43 desk chairs, and 80 storage units, valued at over $275,000, and installation services for three floors of the school by Maryland Office Interiors.

AIS had previously furnished over 20 office spaces in the rebuilding of the Keiki O Ka Aina Family Learning Center in Honolulu, Hawaii for the fifth season premiere of EMHE. AIS exceeded its previous donation for The Fishing School project, which represents the show's largest build to date. The show is set to air sometime in November.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design

Child's Play

With an arts center for little Parisians, Matali Crasset makes effervescence effortless

Raul Barreneche -- Interior Design

From 1873 until the 1990's, a cluster of redbrick buildings in gritty Montmartre was the epicenter of death in Paris. Today, the municipal mortuary, renovated by Atelier Novembre, is among Europe's biggest artists-in-residence complexes, christened 104 Cent Quatre after its location at 104 Rue d'Aubervilliers. Studios and workshops for hundreds of painters, sculptors, musicians, and dancers as well as industrial designers now occupy former coffin-making shops, stables for horse-drawn funeral carriages, and garages for later hearses. Art openings and hip-hop parties bring plenty of life to lofty skylit halls once devoted to the departed.

The action is no longer adults-only with the addition of the Maison des Petits, or House of the Little Ones. Established for children of both the center's creative denizens and the residents of one of the city's poorest and most ethnically diverse arrondissements, this isn't a day-care center. Parents or babysitters must accompany the under-6 clientele. Originators conceived of a welcome center where children learn by playing together in the Montessori style, with an eye toward discovery. Young and old alike are exposed to the creative process as mothers and fathers socialize on the sidelines, and new moms are encouraged to come in for nothing more than to change diapers and talk to fellow grown-ups. Resident artists and designers have an open invitation to create toys and games, though there is no formal programming.

Filled with the sounds of children playing and adults chatting, the 1,500-square-foot space is the work of Matali Crasset Productions. Known for whimsical, colorful interiors and furniture as well as her signature Joan of Arc bowl cut, the prolific Matali Crasset envisioned the Maison des Petits as a surrealist garden with organic forms flourishing inside a hard-edged perimeter: a glass storefront system in front, original steel-framed industrial windows in back, and white built-ins along the sides. Upper cabinet doors swing sideways to reveal cubbies. Underneath, identical-looking doors angle downward to become padded seats, perches for adults keeping an eye on children. On top of the built-ins, acoustical panels with rows of lozenge-shape cutouts create a "shell of possibilities," Crasset says. She organized the space within according to children's ages, rendering different zones in distinct bold colors.

Pea green is for the youngest visitors. In the middle of the floor, they enjoy what she calls the "navel," its soft, sunken center ringed by a low-to-the-ground plastic-laminate surface. Infants crawl around inside, supervised by adults sitting on squishy green ottomans. When the playpen is not in use, four wedges clad in matching green laminate fill in the center to create a large round table.

Blue comes in three shades. Above the "navel" hangs a circular canopy constructed by stretching midnight-blue fabric over the spokes of a frame, umbrellalike. The same fabric wraps the tops of four sky-blue "activity mushrooms," as Crasset calls them. Surrounding the infant zone, they indeed look like enchanted toadstools from a cartoon fairy tale, and children aged roughly 2 to 6 use the shelves around these freestanding finned structures to play games, make crafts, or finger-paint. A turquoise archway near the entrance of the Maison suggests the outline of an actual house. Inside the ghosted structure is a make-believe kitchen where the children can pretend to cook. "They respond immediately to objects that have imaginary potential," Crasset says.

A working kitchen is wrapped in bright orange walls. Crasset chose similar lively shades for padding on a bench and the fold-down seats and for plastic stools that resemble jolly orange gas cans, complete with handles. The stools store not fuel, however, but books and art supplies.

These stools line the lower end of a worktable with a yellow top that zigzags down from 28 to 15 inches in height—children and adults always get equal billing at the Maison des Petits. Right outside the standard restroom, there's even a pair of pint-size potties.

Child's Play

With an arts center for little Parisians, Matali Crasset makes effervescence effortless

Raul Barreneche -- Interior Design

From 1873 until the 1990's, a cluster of redbrick buildings in gritty Montmartre was the epicenter of death in Paris. Today, the municipal mortuary, renovated by Atelier Novembre, is among Europe's biggest artists-in-residence complexes, christened 104 Cent Quatre after its location at 104 Rue d'Aubervilliers. Studios and workshops for hundreds of painters, sculptors, musicians, and dancers as well as industrial designers now occupy former coffin-making shops, stables for horse-drawn funeral carriages, and garages for later hearses. Art openings and hip-hop parties bring plenty of life to lofty skylit halls once devoted to the departed.

The action is no longer adults-only with the addition of the Maison des Petits, or House of the Little Ones. Established for children of both the center's creative denizens and the residents of one of the city's poorest and most ethnically diverse arrondissements, this isn't a day-care center. Parents or babysitters must accompany the under-6 clientele. Originators conceived of a welcome center where children learn by playing together in the Montessori style, with an eye toward discovery. Young and old alike are exposed to the creative process as mothers and fathers socialize on the sidelines, and new moms are encouraged to come in for nothing more than to change diapers and talk to fellow grown-ups. Resident artists and designers have an open invitation to create toys and games, though there is no formal programming.

Filled with the sounds of children playing and adults chatting, the 1,500-square-foot space is the work of Matali Crasset Productions. Known for whimsical, colorful interiors and furniture as well as her signature Joan of Arc bowl cut, the prolific Matali Crasset envisioned the Maison des Petits as a surrealist garden with organic forms flourishing inside a hard-edged perimeter: a glass storefront system in front, original steel-framed industrial windows in back, and white built-ins along the sides. Upper cabinet doors swing sideways to reveal cubbies. Underneath, identical-looking doors angle downward to become padded seats, perches for adults keeping an eye on children. On top of the built-ins, acoustical panels with rows of lozenge-shape cutouts create a "shell of possibilities," Crasset says. She organized the space within according to children's ages, rendering different zones in distinct bold colors.

Pea green is for the youngest visitors. In the middle of the floor, they enjoy what she calls the "navel," its soft, sunken center ringed by a low-to-the-ground plastic-laminate surface. Infants crawl around inside, supervised by adults sitting on squishy green ottomans. When the playpen is not in use, four wedges clad in matching green laminate fill in the center to create a large round table.

Blue comes in three shades. Above the "navel" hangs a circular canopy constructed by stretching midnight-blue fabric over the spokes of a frame, umbrellalike. The same fabric wraps the tops of four sky-blue "activity mushrooms," as Crasset calls them. Surrounding the infant zone, they indeed look like enchanted toadstools from a cartoon fairy tale, and children aged roughly 2 to 6 use the shelves around these freestanding finned structures to play games, make crafts, or finger-paint. A turquoise archway near the entrance of the Maison suggests the outline of an actual house. Inside the ghosted structure is a make-believe kitchen where the children can pretend to cook. "They respond immediately to objects that have imaginary potential," Crasset says.

A working kitchen is wrapped in bright orange walls. Crasset chose similar lively shades for padding on a bench and the fold-down seats and for plastic stools that resemble jolly orange gas cans, complete with handles. The stools store not fuel, however, but books and art supplies.

These stools line the lower end of a worktable with a yellow top that zigzags down from 28 to 15 inches in height—children and adults always get equal billing at the Maison des Petits. Right outside the standard restroom, there's even a pair of pint-size potties.

Applied Science

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design

Restoration Hardware 's polished-nickel pendant fixtures; photo by Art Gray.

The Lab Gastropub on the University of Southern California campus represents big news for two Los Angeles institutions. One is USC itself, which is moving away from cafeteria-style dining halls, toward venues that look like they belong in the private sector. The other is AC Martin, a 103-year-old architecture firm with a nascent interiors division that's now completed three food-service commissions from the university.

Slate-topped teak communal tables and teak benches, all custom by Lily Jack. Chemistry formulas on a blackboard set into beveled subway tile from the Tileshop. Photos by Art Gray.

Attracting students, professors, and downtown residents alike, the "laboratory" theme was conceived by Christopher King, director of interior architecture, with Joanne Camacho, senior graphic designer, and it informs every bit of the 2,200-square-foot interior. Remember blackboards from Biology 101? Here, slate tops the five communal tables. How about the chemistry formulas memorized during midnight cram sessions? The one for caffeine has a special place, inside the rims of coffee cups. King hit local shops for test tubes, beakers, and science books, used as accessories. And a black-and-white image of an old-fashioned microscope, enlarged to 10 feet high, is printed on wall covering. Take a closer look.

Applied Science

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design

Restoration Hardware 's polished-nickel pendant fixtures; photo by Art Gray.

The Lab Gastropub on the University of Southern California campus represents big news for two Los Angeles institutions. One is USC itself, which is moving away from cafeteria-style dining halls, toward venues that look like they belong in the private sector. The other is AC Martin, a 103-year-old architecture firm with a nascent interiors division that's now completed three food-service commissions from the university.

Slate-topped teak communal tables and teak benches, all custom by Lily Jack. Chemistry formulas on a blackboard set into beveled subway tile from the Tileshop. Photos by Art Gray.

Attracting students, professors, and downtown residents alike, the "laboratory" theme was conceived by Christopher King, director of interior architecture, with Joanne Camacho, senior graphic designer, and it informs every bit of the 2,200-square-foot interior. Remember blackboards from Biology 101? Here, slate tops the five communal tables. How about the chemistry formulas memorized during midnight cram sessions? The one for caffeine has a special place, inside the rims of coffee cups. King hit local shops for test tubes, beakers, and science books, used as accessories. And a black-and-white image of an old-fashioned microscope, enlarged to 10 feet high, is printed on wall covering. Take a closer look.

Doing Good and Doing Well

"Pro bono" means getting more than you give

Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design

A computer rendering of a kitchen in a two-family duplex that William McDonough + Partners has designed for the Make It Right Foundation New Orleans; courtesy of William McDonough + Partners.

Brad Pitt would seem to be a patron with money to burn. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Pitt phoned a number of architects he admired and asked for help with prototype houses for displaced Ninth Ward residents. There was a catch, though—no one would earn a cent. Cradle to Cradle eco evangelist William McDonough, who advised Pitt on ground rules for his Make It Right Foundation New Orleans, cited the often-overlooked component of the profession's mandate for sustainability: the "social sustainability" of giving back.

William McDonough + Partners is now completing plans for a Make It Right duplex. Being "associated with doing good things" is important to the firm, communications director Kira Gould says. She adds that McDonough viewed the duplex as a chance to explore modularity and to work on a residential scale in a long-ignored community. "Does it hurt," she jokes, "when Brad Pitt is on Larry King Live, talking about Make It Right?"

A computer rendering of a kitchen in a two-family duplex that William McDonough + Partners has designed for the Make It Right Foundation New Orleans. Heat-treated lumber pilings that supply flood protection; courtesy of William McDonough + Partners.

The opportunity to give back obviously has extra appeal in a difficult economy, with many projects indefinitely on hold. "Designers are looking to put their passion into something worthwhile," HLW managing principal Chari Jalali says. It was Jalali who ultimately authorized a $15,000 donation of architectural services to turn a Los Angeles warehouse into a depot for Trash for Teaching, which brings recycled materials into children's art classes.

Some of those items, such as paper rolls and ballpoint-pen caps, actually became creative construction materials for the project, which represents both the paid and the unpaid efforts of HLW. Consultants and contractors that the firm patronizes also chipped in for a total of $150,000 in donated construction costs, Jalali estimates. "We caught everybody at an opportune time, because they were slow," she notes.

SPG Architects's health clinic for the Kageno foundation in the Rwandan village of Banda; courtesy of SRG Architects.

The economy was no better in New York when the AIA chapter invited such nonprofits as the U.S. Green Building Council and Architecture for Tibet to solicit volunteers at a free lunch. An unprecedented 250 hungry design professionals showed up for the sandwiches and camaraderie. A job-seeking graduate, Sophia Vincent, credits the event with introducing her to Engineers Without Borders, which asked her to volunteer on a library for a Kenyan village. The project cost just $7,400. To save money, lava-stone blocks were quarried nearby, and locals baked the bricks.

SPG Architects is doing pro bono work in Rwanda. A veteran of 30 shop interiors for Polo Ralph Lauren, partner Eric Gartner encountered a little resistance to the Ralph-esque earth tones he'd planned to paint a health clinic for Kageno, a foundation supported by Donna Karan and Meryl Streep. "When the images came back showing a kind of canary yellow, we were moderately shocked," he admits.

Gluckman Mayner Architects's New York public-school library, funded by the Robin Hood Foundation and featured in a book to be published in 2010 to benefit the San Francisco nonprofit Public Architecture; photo by Peter Mauss/Esto.

The clinic is part of an SPG master plan for a small village of buildings, from classrooms to ecotourism bungalows with composting toilets. As the job ballooned to 36,000 square feet, Gartner found it hard to say no. "How could we really tell them that enough was enough?" he asks. Fortunately, the effort remained recession-friendly for SPG, as four staffers committed to working late, unpaid.

Because Fougeron Architecture is a small firm, Anne Fougeron sometimes gives a quarter of the hours on a project as a gift in lieu of pure pro bono. She sees her work on Planned Parenthood clinics in California as a political statement as well as a good deed. In the spirit of openness, the renovations incorporate panels that are, where possible, transparent. She often finds herself advocating for materials that may be more costly to buy but will look fresh longer, since funds for maintenance can be scarce, especially now.

The MacArthur Health Center in Oakland, California, one of more than a dozen Planned Parenthood clinics that Fougeron Architecture has redesigned; courtesy of Grey Crawford. A Branchelier, which Michelle Workman Design adapted for the Los Angeles bedroom of a lupus patient; courtesy of Denice Duff.

Her friend John Cary, executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Public Architecture, asks firms to donate a minimum of 20 hours per year to deserving clients, and the organization's 600 affiliates are likely to give $25 million in services in 2009, up from $20 million last year. But that's not the end of the story. "We have no qualms about presenting this as a business opportunity, because it can certainly lead to paying work," Cary says. He adds that Public Architecture projects are typically a manageable 3,000 to 5,000 square feet.

Pro bono projects can of course be even smaller. Michelle Workman Design decorated a Los Angeles bedroom for a young woman with lupus. Michelle Workman clearly relishes her role in the healing process, but she also made sure to have fun within the $5,000 budget. That translated into white silk taffeta curtains with black banding and a bed with a tall headboard upholstered in white linen with black welting. For chandeliers, she came up with a less expensive version of her own Branchelier, which she sells in her store, Red House Interiors.

Passive cooling diagrammed for an Engineers Without Borders library in Usalama, a Kenyan village between Nairobi and the Indian Ocean. The exterior's lava-stone blocks, quarried nearby, and bricks, baked by the locals; courtesy of Engineers Without Borders, New York chapter.

Elaine Griffin Interior Design's namesake principal, whose Design Rules: The Insider's Guide to Becoming Your Own Decorator is coming out in November, has spearheaded 11 glammed-up pro bono renovations in partnership with Oprah Winfrey. "Oprah always says that beautiful things lift you up and nurture you," Elaine Griffin notes. Fortunately, she found her own generosity mirrored by large donations of labor, materials, and furnishings, albeit not her usual custom upholstery, Pratesi sheets, and French antiques.

Tears came to her eyes when female ex-cons at a halfway house in Bridgeport, Connecticut, or cancer patients at the Gilda's Club New York City support facility marveled at faux flokatis or sank into squishy sofas. Paying clients don't always express that kind of gratitude.

Studying different subjects, New York University students and faculty share a Greenwich Village facility

Gender and sexuality studies. Latino studies. American studies. Each sounds like an embattled militia in some academic guerilla war. However, those fields and several more peacefully coexist in New York University's Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis managed to accommodate all that diversity in a single 16,000-square-foot loft in Greenwich Village. The key was the original ceiling, of which the previous tenant had left only "a few moments" exposed, Marc Tsurumaki says. Handsome in a utilitarian way, the barrel-vaulted concrete could conceptually tie together the disparate fields of study. "Maybe the metaphor is cheap," he continues, "but the idea is 'under one big roof.'"

Tsurumaki had completed NYU's Office of Strategic Assessment, Planning, and Design two years earlier, so he was familiar with the university's commitment to sensible, economical design. After he gutted the 12-foot-high volume intended for the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, the faculty committee began the design process by asking for as many private offices as would fit were the perimeter completely lined with them. Instead of blocking all the windows like that, Tsurumaki countered with a 25 percent reduction of offices. His successful campaign resulted in a layout that reserved critical square footage for naturally lit communal zones and corridors "as wide as we could get away with," he says.

Bamboo plywood hugs the surfaces of the department's reception desk, while bamboo clads reception's floor and built-in seating. Overhead, Tsurumaki suspended prefab bamboo-plywood ceiling panels that were custom-perforated using a CAD file, then installed with the help of a map, since no two perforation patterns are exactly alike. A similar canopy appears in the grad lounge, where students from various fields can grab a book from open shelves, hang out on benches, post ephemera on a strip of bulletin board, and, in the process, generally cross-pollinate.

The largest gathering place is a multipurpose zone divided from the rest of the space by sliding panels of translucent resin. Flooring here is random-width cork strips in a range of natural colors. Unfortunately, coordinating cork stools were ultimately returned to the manufacturer. "They exfoliated on people," Tsurumaki explains. (Custom replacements are currently awaiting university approval.) The cork stripes wrap up to surface stepped seating for gathering or lounging and also extend beyond the multipurpose zone to clad the torqued corridor wall that runs nearly the entire length of the space from front to back. Along the way, slim boxes of clear acrylic protrude from the wall to display their contents, a single book apiece—the latest scholarship by department faculty. Finally, at the far end, doorways cut out of the wall reveal tidy technology carrels, places for students to dock their laptops.

Enlivening what associate Clark Manning calls "potentially banal office corridors," similar through-the-wall acrylic boxes hold a book or two. These "visible bookcases," as LTL terms them, keep students abreast of what their professors are reading behind closed doors. Meanwhile, additional boxes contain sheets of letter-size white paper simply printed with the occupant's name, an efficient solution in a highly mobile department. Tsurumaki refers to the boxes as a way to "introduce a sense of connection without direct visual access, through a symbolic projection of the professors' identity." Seen from the hall, the boxes add a colorful accent. "In a project like this, you have to find a way to animate a lot of surfaces," he says. Still, he explains, he was careful to avoid a profusion of acrylic colors that "might have read as a superficial illustration of difference." After much debate—"NYU purple was thrown around for a while, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to choose it"—he picked a soothing, lightly frosted sea blue.

Straightforward, flat graphics transform to function in three dimensions. In conference and meeting rooms, vinyl appliqué on windows morphs into protruding acrylic lettering on the walls. "These professors are not your tweed-jacket-wearing crowd, and the graphics add a playful quality," Tsurumaki says. As for restroom signage, the word toilet was chosen for its perceived neutrality, in comparison with more common euphemisms, and emblazoned on the wall in 2-foot-tall vinyl letters. But municipal planning officials nixed the idea, now common in local restaurants, of abandoning single-sex restrooms in favor of private toilet compartments sharing unisex sinks. Perhaps this will merit a chapter in the book that an NYU professor and a doctoral candidate are editing on the history of the public restroom.