By Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove. Monacelli Press, 2013, 1,072 pages, $95. Utopia by Design When Paradise Planned arrived at my home—all 1,072 extra-thick high-gloss pages—my first instinct was to set the volume down on its own half-acre lot, give it a peaked roof, and simply move in. Instead, I rushed to the gym and spent a few days building up the biceps needed to lift the thing. Then, awed by the sheer cumulative industry of writing triumvirate Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove, I lowered their exhaustive survey of the garden suburb onto my
Mariinsky II Diamond Schmitt Architects St. Petersburg, Russia After a decade of hotly contested design and construction, conductor Valery Gergiev's opera house thrills audiences amid ongoing discord. Photo by Tim Griffith Almost any route through St. Petersburg leads among florid palazzos, their pastel plumage reflected in quiet canals. Founded almost exactly 300 years ago, the city's core is pretty much complete, so it's surprising that one new architectural extravaganza, the 2,000-seat Mariinsky II opera house by Toronto-based Diamond Schmitt Architects, should be so ostentatiously neutral (RECORD, April 2013, page 21). On first encounter you notice only its stolid bulk, that