Charles Eames would have turned 100 on June 17. To commemorate his birthday, the United States Postal Service is issuing 42-cent stamps featuring the collaborative work of the influential designer and his wife, Ray.

While “adaptive reuse” and “loft living” have become popular catch phrases for developers transforming old industrial buildings into trendy condominiums, others are shouting “not so fast”—and perhaps none as loudly as those opposed to converting the Domino Sugar plant in Brooklyn into a residential complex. During a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) public hearing, Beyer Blinder Belle Architects was sent back to the drawing board after its proposal for a five-story glass rooftop addition to a landmarked refinery was met with considerable disapproval.

There was a time when architects designed furniture at the start of their careers while patiently waiting for their first buildings to be constructed. In 1972, some six years before Frank Gehry created a stir with his unorthodox house in Santa Monica, California, he was designing his beloved cardboard chairs.

Within the span of a few years, Marcel Wanders has made the transition from brazen, young upstart, with his novel designs for the Dutch avant-garde label Droog, to become a leading figure in contemporary design, all the while creating innovative, often quirky objects.

From tables and chairs to buckets and shoe racks, the young German designer Konstantin Grcic (pronounced gir-chic) has an ability to inject both beauty and wit into the objects he creates.