I am excited to share two pieces of big news for 2026:
First, my modernist flatware collection will form the basis of the exhibition KNIFE FORK SPOON: EVERYDAY TOOLS, EXTRAORDINARY DESIGN, opening in May at the Denver Art Museum. Curated by @darrinalfred , the exhibition will feature over 150 designs spanning from 1900 to the present, with thematic sections on airline cutlery, children cutlery, travel cutlery, and more. A launch and talk is scheduled at the museum on September 26, so please mark your calendar.
Second, the accompanying book KNIFE FORK SPOON: MODERNIST CUTLERY 1900–2025 will be published in August. At 600 pages, the book presents a comprehensive view of iconic flatware by designers such as Josef Hoffmann, Russel Wright, Gio Ponti and Isamu Noguchi, as well as highlighting lesser-known and experimental designs from Europe, the United States, Japan and beyond.
Having started my collection around 2000, these two projects have been decades in the making, and I can’t wait to finally be able to share it with you. Much more news and details to come.
Links to the exhibition and book in my bio and follow @knifeforkspoon.co for the latest 🍴news.
Museo Canova (Gypsoteca Canova), Possagno, Italy. By Francesco Lazzari, with addition by Carlo Scarpa
-
Antonio Canova (1757–1822) is considered the most significant sculptor of the Neoclassical period, and was celebrated in France, England, and especially in Rome, where he was established and patronized by popes and kings until his death. The Canova Museum in his hometown of Possagno was built next to his birthplace in 1833 to house the collection of his gypsum models — plaster casts from which his final marble sculptures are based.
I have posted this incredible complex before (this is my fourth trip there, I might like it quite a bit) but I have mostly focused on the 1957 addition by Carlo Scarpa. The original barrel vault structure by Francesco Lazzari is one of the most underrated neoclassical spaces in Italy. Since my last visit, the surrounding support buildings are now open to the public, and you can see the exterior of the Scarpa’s insertion more clearly. (The lower wing of Scarpa’s addition is closed for restoration, however).
On my first visit, during summer, the pair of doors behind the reclining Pauline Borghese was open to the glorious garden beyond, and it was truly bliss to be able to walk out of this space into the fragrant plants outside.
It is still very much worth a visit if you are in the Veneto, and if you can avoid the occasional high school group on a field trip, you most likely will have the place to yourself, as I did on this visit.
Palazzo Mondadori, by Oscar Niemeyer, landscape architecture by Pietro Porcinai. Segrate (Milan), 1975
.
During Oscar Niemeyer’s self-exile from Brazil (1964-1995), he designed a number of buildings in Europe, with the two most important being the French Communist Headquarters in Paris (in association with Paul Chemetov), and the Palazzo Mondadori outside of Milan. Commissioned by Giorgio Mondadori, the building is a horizontal colonnade in cast concrete, with the original four floors of offices as a glass bar column “hung” underneath. The interiors are decked out entirely in USM system furniture with dark green and light brown metallic panels.
Two additional enclosed single-floor volumes are attached to the main building, one housing the employee functions such as the cafeteria, and a second sinuous structure for the company’s magazines.
In 2007 additional offices were needed and a fifth floor was added to the top of the floating glass column.
A few years ago Rizzoli was acquired by Mondadori, merging the friendly competition between Italy’s two largest publishing conglomerates. So technically this is now my office when I am in Milan. All of a sudden working from home has become much less compelling.
@librimondadori@rizzolibooks@usmmodularfurniture
The Gae Aulenti Apartment, Milan, 1972
@archivio_gae_aulenti
.
Among the most important 20th century Italian designers and — along with Cini Boeri — a pioneering female Milan architect. Perhaps best known for her landmark renovation of the abandoned Paris train station into the Musée d’Orsay, Aulenti worked at all scales, from flatware to lighting to civic buildings. Her festive structure at Piazza Cadorna welcome those going to visit the Triennale by train.
Her own early 1970s apartment is no doubt her most personal project. Carved from a 19th century residential block in Brera and attached to her bilevel work studio (dismantled after her death in 2012) the apartment now houses the Archivio Gae Aulenti, which is headed by her granddaughter Nina Artioli (last photo)
A treasure trove of her own designs (all the lamps!) as well as souvenirs and artworks from friends, which included Alighiero Boetti. A large tapestry rug by Lichtenstein dominates the space, a gift from Lella and Massimo Vignelli, who also had an identical one in their New York apartment.
In the US we don’t preserve these spaces (I was the last one to photograph the Vignelli apartment before it sold after they passed). These rooms hold more than objects, they are a testimony to a life lived with rigor and vigor, a depository of personal and institutional memory.
A comprehensive publication of Aulenti’s work in Italian is available, and the English edition will be published this fall by @electaeditore
Private tours can be booked through the archive’s website:
Or send an email to:
[email protected]
Il Palazzetto (@villa_il_palazzetto ), a 17th century farmhouse renovated by Carlo Scarpa, Tobia Scarpa, and Colin Glennie. Monselice, 1965-2006
.
It’s the first official day of Milan Design Week and I am sick in bed, but I doubt I would have seen anything better than Il Palazzetto. There’s a good story on it in @tmagazine from September 2022, so you can read all about its complex history and see the gorgeous images of the interiors there. I am showing here the exterior by Carlo that they could not fit into their story. If you ever wondered what a Carlo Scarpa barbecue would look like, now you know.
Thank you signore Businaro for the visit.
@villa_il_palazzetto
Banco Popolare Verona, by Carlo Scarpa, 1973-81
.
Designed as an extension to the historic headquarters of the Banco Popolare Verona (now part of BPM), Scarpa used colored Venetian plastic throughout, which contrasts with the raw concrete double structural columns. He died in 1978 during its construction, and his student Arrigo Rudi finished it. Luigi Caccia Dominiani was also brought in to design parts of the public spaces (image 2). All I can say is that my local Chase bank branch doesn’t look anything like this.
2 Willow Road a.k.a The Goldfinger House, by Ernö Goldfinger, 1939. Hampstead, London
.
First: yes, Ian Fleming named his villain after Erno Goldfinger, and no, it’s not because Fleming hated modernist architecture. (Though many of his villains are from Eastern Europe and all of them have modernist lairs.)
In the leafy suburb of Hampstead, north of central London, the Hungarian-born Erno built three row houses, taking the double-wide center unit for himself and his family. Influenced by Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret, the concrete structure nonetheless blends in with its neighbors in scale and modesty. The staircase is probably the most overtly modern and glamorous element of the house, though these days most Londoners probably covet the extra large modernist backyard. The house is now (probably) the newest and smallest property under the care of the National Trust.
“Some architects, famously, live in homes they design. Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto are two good examples, in which their own homes exemplified their particular philosophy of architecture. Other architects, somewhat less famously, did not live in homes they designed. Notably, Mies van der Rohe lived in an early twentieth-century neo-Georgian apartment building in Chicago, within eyeshot of his famous apartment towers. Olle Lundberg does neither; he lives above the shop.”
This statement above is the start of the afterword I wrote for a new monograph on the work of Olle Lundberg, which I was thrilled to have edited, and will be coming out in two weeks. Olle and his band of merry architects have designed many houses for tech billionaires, some bits of which can be seen in the book, but we decided to focus on his love of crafts and materials — the heart and soul of Olle’s practice and the large workshop in his San Francisco studio. The man literally lives above the shop (images 9–11).
My favorite of Olle’s projects, though, is his own Northern California weekend cabin, which he has been tinkering with over two decades. There’s a lot to ooh and aah over, but nothing beats the 50,000 gallon capacity swimming pool, converted from an enormous redwood water tank, from an old cattle ranch. It’s truly the ultimate upcycled object.
OLLE LUNDBERG
AN ARCHITECTURE OF CRAFT
Foreword by Andy Goldsworthy
Edited by Dung Ngo
256 pages / 8.75 x 11.25 inches
Published by Princeton Architectural Press
With commissioned photography by Yoshihiro Makino
Available October 28, 2025
@lundbergdesign@papress@chroniclebooks@yoshihiromakino
The Guardian Building, by Wirt C. Rowland. Downtown Detroit, Michigan, 1929.
-
Originally known at the Union Trust Building, the Guardian was designed by Wirt Rowland, who was the head designer of the architectural firm of Smith Hinchman and Grylls (now SmithGroup). With the design for the Union Trust Building completed in March 1927, a full city block was cleared to make way for the 40-story skyscraper. The building was completed in early 1929 — the year of the stock market crash. The Union Trust Company fell victim to the crash, but was saved by investors who believed in the future of Detroit and was reorganized into the Union Guardian Trust Company. The building became known as the Union Guardian Building and today is known as the Guardian Building. Its nickname, Cathedral of Finance, alludes both to the building’s resemblance to a cathedral—with its tower over the main entrance and octagonal apse at the opposite end—and to New York City’s Woolworth Building, which had earlier been dubbed the Cathedral of Commerce.
Rowland specified Monel metal (a nickel-copper alloy) in place of the commonly used brass and bronze for all exposed metalwork on the building, an innovation which was widely adopted, most notably on New York’s Chrysler Building. The Griswold Street entrance is demarcated with a semi-dome lined with symbolic custom tiles by Mary Chase Stratton’s Pewabic Pottery of Detroit. Michigan artist Ezra Winter designed the large glass mosaic featured in the main lobby as well as the mural in the original banking hall. Flanking the sides of the main entrance are reliefs designed by Detroit architectural sculptor Corrado Parducci. Forty artisans and craft studios contributed to the structure’s painted murals and ceilings, intricate tile work, mosaic and stained glass, marble fixtures, and vaulted lobby, including Pewabic, Rookwood Pottery, and a clock by Tiffany. William Edward Kapp, also an architect at Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, has been credited with interior design work. The building is currently owned and used by Wayne County, Michigan, for their offices.
The Cranbrook Academy of Art and Cranbrook Schools, by Eliel Saarinen. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1928-40
.
Imagine if there was an American Bauhaus. It existed (and still exists). In 1925 the publishing magnate George Booth invited the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen to start a new artist community called Cranbrook. The history of the graduate program is well-known, but less known are the primary and secondary schools that the Booths started in the late 1920s, and the Cranbrook School for Boys was the first structure on the campus finished by Saarinen, in 1929 (photos 3-5) with the Kingswood School for Girls following in 1931 (photos 7-15). The two boys merged as a co-ed institution in 1970. The library and museum structure of the Cranbrook Academy of Art was the last to be built, in 1940. Saarinen invited the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles to be the first professor of sculpture, and his work are seen throughout the campus.
Lafayette Park, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Detroit. 1959–63
.
Begun in 1956 and completed in stages through the 1960s, the Mies van der Rohe Residential District is considered one of America's most successful post-World War II urban redevelopment projects. Lafayette Park was the collaborative effort of Mies van der Rohe, landscape designer Alfred Caldwell, and planner Ludwig Hilberseimer. Herb Greenwald, the developer, worked with Mies previously on the apartments at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive.
The Saarinen House, by Eliel Saarinen with Loja, Pipsen, and Eero Saarinen. Cranbrook Academy, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1929.
.
I first saw this house twenty years ago, but this time it seems different: more intimate, more physically modest, but also more layered. So many design through lines are now distinct to my eyes: English Arts & Crafts, National Romanticism, Viennese Secession, Swedish Grace, American Depression Deco — yet distinctively Eliel Saarinen. And the whole family pitched in: Loja’s many carpets and weavings, Pipsan’s stencils and color schemes, young Eero’s touches here and there (and a Womb chair in the parents’ bedroom). It’s an immigrant story that seems relevant and important at this moment, all illuminated by late afternoon light.
Thank you @k_adkisson for the special tour!
