IS GOOD DESIGN GOOD BUSINESS?

In today's competitive business environment, corporate cultures tend to focus on improving product quality while minimizing costs and managing risks. Too often, the workplace is regarded not as a design opportunity but as a "real estate asset" and a "cost-center."

And yet human productivity, and therefore business profitability, can be greatly enhanced by a well designed, user-responsive office environment. Natural light, comfortable temperatures, and a quiet ambience are not just desirable working conditions: they make good business sense.

THE CHANGING SHAPES OF THE AXE

Editor's Note:  The vernacular houses at the foundation of an American concept of "home" have their origins in simple constructions, where tools and materials coexisted in seemingly rustic harmony. To grasp the spirit of those archetypical structures, it helps to understand the tools that shaped them.

For early Americans who built log houses, the axe was indispensable. The axe is one of the most fundamental woodworking tools, and in skilled hands, one of the most versatile.

INSPIRED BY GAUDI, BUILT BY HAND

Sitting in Beth and Will Hathaway's family room in Portland, Oregon, I'm amazed that there's more than a hundred tons of concrete and dirt hanging over my head. The south-facing room, the focal point of the house, is bathed in light. So much daylight filters through four floor-to-curved-ceiling windows and two skylight domes, that I can comfortably pour over a puzzling array of structural contours on a blueprint even though no electric lamps are lit and it's drizzling outside.