Articles by Laura Raskin

Studio Ma, Phoenix

A sustainability-focused firm draws from the desert environment for its economical, innovative designs.
Laura Raskin
December 16, 2014
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Kindred spirits” is how the four partners at Studio Ma describe themselves, and their affinities can be broadly divided into two camps: their respect for and love of the American Southwest, where they are based, and the drive to produce good design on tight budgets.
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Manzanita Hall at Arizona State University

Diamonds are Forever: A beloved '60s dormitory—once the tallest building in Arizona—was adapted to the needs of today's plugged-in students
Laura Raskin
November 15, 2014
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A beloved '60s dormitory—once the tallest building in Arizona—was adapted to the needs of today's plugged-in students Manzanita Hall makes a striking statement on the northern edge of the Arizona State University, Tempe, campus, across from the Sun Devil Stadium and blocks from the downtown.


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Emergency Health Care Gets a New Face in NYC

Laura Raskin
September 15, 2014
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Perkins Eastman restored Albert Ledner’s 1964 National Maritime Union headquarters in Manhattan’s West Village, and inserted a stand-alone emergency department inside. When New York’s St. Vincent’s Hospital closed in 2010 after years of financial strife, Greenwich Village lost a beloved 150-year-old institution that had served the poor and working class and was “ground zero” when the AIDS epidemic erupted in the 1980s. While most of the St. Vincent’s campus was demolished, a quirky precast-concrete building on Seventh Avenue between West 12th and 13th streets, designed by Albert Ledner and completed in 1964, remained. St. Vincent’s purchased it in 1973, but
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Sarah Oppenheimer

Sarah Oppenheimer

Laura Raskin
August 16, 2014
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Sarah Oppenheimer studied painting at Yale, where she received her M.F.A. in 1999, but, over the last decade, architecture has been her canvas and medium. Oppenheimer manipulates existing architectural spaces, distorting our perception of an interior’s geometry and programmatic logic. 


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Rob Fischer

Rob Fischer

Laura Raskin
August 16, 2014
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Rob Fischer, whose background is in sculpture, has been building domestic structures since college and often moves them from one remote rural landscape to another, exploring the seemingly opposing ideas of protection and adventure. 


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Katrin Sigurdardottir

Katrín Sigurdardóttir

Laura Raskin
August 16, 2014
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Katrín Sigurdardóttir was born in Reykjavik and moved to the United States in 1988 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. The artist now splits her time between studios in Long Island City, New York, and Iceland. As it is in her life, a kind of diasporic mobility is a key theme in Sigurdardóttir’s work. 


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Dallas City Performance Hall

Laura Raskin
June 16, 2014
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The dallas Arts District—a 68-acre area in the city's downtown masterplanned by Sasaki Associates—is dense with architectural gems devoted to the visual and performing arts. Its anchor is Edward Larrabee Barnes's Dallas Museum of Art, completed in 1984. Over the next 20 years, up went I.M. Pei's Symphony Center (1989), Renzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center (2003), and Allied Works' expansion of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (2008), among other new buildings and renovations. A Foster + Partners performing arts center followed in 2009, as did the REX/OMA Wyly Theatre. James Burnett's Klyde Warren
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Fall House

Cliff Hanger: A volumetric copper and glass form sidles up to the edge of a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Laura Raskin
April 16, 2014
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Driving to Big Sur on coast-hugging Highway 1 — say, south from San Francisco — you have to be cautious.


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