There’s something about encountering Tadao Ando’s work in person that permanently shifts your understanding of space. I first felt it on my honeymoon, traveling through Naoshima, a Japanese island where the 84-year-old has built 10 museums over the course of 33 years. As we moved between buildings, the concrete corridors seemed to hold both silence and light in equal measure. Ando’s architecture shapes how you move, pause, and even think.  

I remember being struck by how intentional everything felt. There was an otherworldly way light entered a room and a synchronized way the landscape and architecture blurred into one another. The experience gave me a deeper appreciation for the kind of restraint and discipline behind his work, and a lasting fascination with the mind of the architect himself.

After experiencing his buildings in person, I knew I wanted to feature Ando in “In the Know.” The winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize for Architecture, Ando has designed celebrated projects including the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis and the Church of Light in Osaka. (The building Adrien Brody’s character designs in the Oscar-winning film The Brutalist bears a striking resemblance to the latter.)

In his own words, Ando often returns to the idea of “light within darkness,” a sensibility rooted in his early life and carried through his practice. It’s a philosophy that not only defines his buildings, but also reveals how deeply architecture, for him, is intertwined with memory, emotion, the act of seeing, and the art of living.

Tell us about the home you grew up in. How did it inform your ideas about space, light, and structure?

I grew up in a traditional wooden row house (nagaya) in a working-class neighborhood of Osaka. It was a long, narrow two-story house, about two bays wide and eight bays deep. Far from the kind of bright, comfortable homes people imagine today, it was a place where darkness was simply part of daily life—cold in winter, hot in summer—and we accepted that as natural. At the back of the house, there was a small, west-facing garden. For only a brief moment each day, light would enter from there and illuminate the interior. I still remember the beauty of that light. I lived in that house until my late 40s. The instinctive desire I have for “light within darkness,” and my inclination toward cave-like spaces—not uniformly open, but gradually revealed through depth—may well have its origins in those years.

Before you became an architect, you trained to become a boxer. What do boxing and architecture have in common?

Of course, an architect who holds a pencil and draws, and a boxer who steps into the ring wearing gloves, are entirely different professions and ways of life. Yet for me, they are fundamentally the same in one respect: both are struggles in which one must confront inner fear and move forward with courage.

In boxing, you endure rigorous training and repeated weight cuts, only to pour everything into a single, fleeting match. In the end, you have nothing to rely on but your own body. It is an intensely stoic and solitary sport. But it is precisely in pushing both body and mind to their limits that a certain kind of strength is awakened.

Architecture is no different. When working under severe constraints—tight programs and limited budgets, with little freedom in design—you are forced to ask yourself: what is truly necessary, and what is it that I must create? It is through this process that “light” begins to emerge. The Church of the Light in Osaka, completed in 1989 on an extremely limited budget, is a work that could only have been realized under such extreme conditions.

You are self-taught. If you were to design a curriculum to help other autodidacts study the craft of architecture, what five buildings would you tell them to see in person?

To be self-taught means deciding for yourself what to learn and how to learn it. In that sense, the question is somewhat beside the point. Anyone who sets out to study architecture through travel will, without being told, seek out great works on their own.

Instead, I would offer this advice: At the same time that you look at architecture around the world, experience the earth itself. Its vastness, and the diversity shaped by different regions and climates, cannot be grasped unless you encounter them with your own body.

How have your collaborations with artists—like working with Lee Ufan on the Lee Ufan Museum—challenged you or made you think differently?

Collaborating with artists often becomes a clash of egos. In particular, the closer an artist’s sensibility is to mine—as with Lee Ufan—the stronger their will, and the less they are willing to yield. Such tension can give rise to a force in the space that exceeds one’s original intent, while also prompting me to reexamine my own thinking. The process is not an easy one. But that is precisely what makes it compelling.

Can you think of a situation where the artist wanted to go in one direction, you wanted to go in another, and you ended up finding a resolution that surprised both of you?

The column standing in the forecourt of the Lee Ufan Museum was introduced at Mr. Lee’s suggestion, at a stage when the architectural framework had already been largely completed. The space had been resolved through a series of horizontally extended concrete walls, yet he proposed inserting a vertical element to set the space in motion. It was not part of my original conception; rather, it was a proposal that called into question the very order of the space. In the end, the addition of that single column brought a new sense of depth and tension, allowing the architectural composition to acquire a different meaning. Collaboration with artists, in this sense, is an act of unsettling established frameworks and discovering unforeseen relationships through that process.

You are known for designing buildings that cut into the earth or burrow underground. So many architects seek to build towering monuments.

It is not that I reject towering monuments; in fact, although not many, I have designed such buildings myself. Yet, as you suggest, the idea of underground space holds a particular fascination for me. The underground is a “site” that cannot be grasped from an external viewpoint; the form of architecture disappears, leaving only the space as perceived by those within. In that condition, I sense the possibility of approaching a space of pure and essential force, and whenever the opportunity arises, I take it as a challenge.

At the same time, beyond such conscious intentions, I seem to have an instinctive attraction to cavernous, vertically charged subterranean spaces. When I reflect on my own spatial memories, what remains most deeply etched are experiences such as the stepwell in Ahmedabad, the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, and the cave dwellings of Cappadocia. As one descends, the light is gradually reduced, and the body is enveloped in a dense, silent darkness—the space begins to permeate the mind.

Such images of space, independent of given conditions or rational thought, suddenly seize me and come to shape the project itself.

Despite the fact that many of your buildings are below grade, you still manage to let in lots of natural light. In fact, sometimes it’s difficult to know whether you are on the first floor, ground floor, or underground. In as simple terms as possible, can you explain how you achieve this sense of openness?

What I seek to create is a space that emerges through the flow of air and the presence of light. By stripping away the many conditions imposed on architecture, one by one, and reducing it to its most fundamental form, I aim to approach a space that is pure and filled with essential force.

In underground spaces, where external points of reference are lost, the presence of light becomes more acutely felt. As one descends, the atmosphere of the ground level gradually fades, and a quiet darkness deepens. When light enters from above and strikes the walls that shape this darkness, space finally reveals itself.

Guided by light, and unfolding with a certain rhythm, this sequence of spaces is what I have long pursued—an invisible architecture.

Some of your buildings have complex paths of circulation that can leave people disoriented. What draws you to this approach? How do you feel if people get lost?

I believe that the value of architecture often lies in deliberately stepping outside the bounds of functional rationality, even after pursuing it to its fullest extent. For that reason, I sometimes design labyrinthine paths that encourage people to wander. At first glance, this may seem to contradict my architectural approach, which is grounded in limited materials, geometric composition, and a pursuit of clarity. Yet it is precisely this tension that is essential to my work. In 1987, upon completing the Kidosaki House, I wrote an essay titled “The Overlapping of the Abstract and the Concrete.” In it, I described architecture as a dialogue between abstraction and concreteness, referring to Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square as a symbol of abstraction, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons as an embodiment of physicality and experiential space. I concluded that my ongoing challenge is to embed a Piranesian labyrinth within an Albers-like structural order.

What matters to me is not minimal form itself. Rather, through simplification, I seek to clarify the intent of construction, and through abstraction, to more fully evoke the vitality of nature that lies beyond.

You’ve said you approach designing homes in the same way you approach designing houses of worship. Why?

Architecture is a medium through which people enter into dialogue with others and with the world at large. The home is the origin of this dialogue in everyday life, while the place of prayer represents its non-ordinary form. What matters is how to make this dialogue rich and meaningful—this has always been my constant pursuit.

You’ve signed some of your buildings in the same way an artist signs their paintings. In your mind, where does architecture end and art begin?

When people speak of my “signature,” I understand it to refer to elements such as exposed concrete or geometric compositions—forms of expression that run consistently through my architecture.

For me, architecture and art are quite different. Architecture, which is inevitably tied to society and the economy, is always caught between ideals and reality, between abstraction and the concrete. The intensity of the energy spent within this tension determines the vitality of what is built. Yet with experience, one can easily, and often unconsciously, drift toward compromise. Art, on the other hand, exists in a constant struggle to remain free. It is in the purity of that freedom that architecture and art ultimately belong to entirely different realms.

What is a building you didn’t design, but wish you did?

It’s not a question I care much to answer, but if I had to, it would be the projects I fought for in competitions—and did not win.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the architecture and design world about concrete’s carbon footprint. Are you adapting your design approach or use of materials to address climate concerns?

I am fully aware that human activity has expanded to a scale that significantly impacts the global environment, and I understand that a certain degree of control is necessary to address this. However, I find it problematic to reduce the issue to the simple conclusion that “concrete is bad.”

Technological updates—such as the development of alternative materials to replace cement, enabling both lower cost and lower carbon emissions—are essential. At the same time, I do not believe that concrete itself, which has brought great possibilities to modern architecture through its rationality and versatility, should be dismissed altogether. If a new form of concrete were to emerge, I would be the first to take on the challenge. To create something that no one else can replicate using means available to all—this is the reason I have continued to work with concrete to this day.

You opened the 10th museum you’ve designed on Naoshima, dedicated to Asian art, last year. At this stage in your career, how are you balancing the desire to look ahead and complete new projects with the desire to look backward and secure your legacy?

Architecture, at its core, is the act of creating forms of the future that do not yet exist before us. Once you begin to speak of your “legacy” and look back, it is already over. That is how I see it.

What do you hope will be the fate of your firm, Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, 25 years from now?

I’ll think about that 25 years from now.

Frida Escobedo is a rarity in architecture, a male-dominated field obsessed with dues-paying. After founding her Mexico City studio at 23, she became the youngest architect to win the Serpentine Pavilion commission—and in 2030, she’ll debut her biggest project yet: the Met’s new modern and contemporary wing.

What keeps you up at night?

The state of the world today.

What are you looking forward to this year?  

Peace.

What do you think is your biggest contribution to culture?

I’ll leave that to others.

What’s something people get wrong about you?

That I won’t push back. I will.

When you were little, what were you known for?

For being “well-behaved.” I think I just learned to be patient growing up, thanks to my parents. Boredom was not a thing at my home. You had to entertain yourself. Looking back, imagination is something that is born out of necessity, out of boredom.

Name an influence of yours that might surprise people.

Lebbeus Woods. I discovered his work when I started architecture school, and it still surprises me. I recently acquired one of his drawings, it’s one of my favorite possessions.

What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work?

How is this meaningful?

When’s the last time you laughed hysterically?

I can’t remember. Which means it’s been too long.

What’s your biggest vice? Your greatest virtue?

Fashion. Patience.

What would you like the headline of your obituary to be?

I am more interested in the living than the dying.

What would you wear to meet your greatest enemy?

Patience.

What’s been the hardest part of your career so far?

Learning to protect my time.

What grounds you, and what invigorates you?

Reminding myself that nothing really matters.

To read more from the 2026 CULT100 honorees, see the full list here.

Walter Hood transforms areas others might write off—like a traffic island or a vacant lot—into vibrant gathering spaces. The award-winning landscape designer’s next project is his most high-profile yet: the new $335 million park at Lincoln Center Plaza in Manhattan.

What’s something people get wrong about you?  

That I’m angry when I’m just excited. My voice tends to get really high-pitched.

What keeps you up at night?  

The suffering in the world right now. We are reminded every day of strife in the world, and we seem to care more about the markets.

Where do you feel most at home? 

Near warm water. I love the ocean and being at the edge.

What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work?  

How to make it better!

When you were little, what were you known for? 

Drawing cowboys with chaps and a Superman forehead hair curl.

What would you wear to meet your greatest enemy?

Issey Miyake. At least I’d be comfortable.

What’s one work of art that got you through an important moment in your life?  

To Sir, with Love. I turned to Sidney Poitier’s character as I made my way through academia and the challenges of being the only one in the room.

Name an influence of yours that might surprise people.  

Italian culture: everything from food, fashion, cars, and art, and particularly dolce vita… siestas and long meals.

To read more from the 2026 CULT100 honorees, see the full list here.

Few students have the privilege of consulting one of the world’s foremost land art experts on a school paper. I am one of the lucky ones. When I was writing my master’s thesis on Michael Heizer’s City, the mile-and-a-half-long sculpture in the Nevada desert, I called up my old friend Michael Govan, the director of LACMA and a close friend of Heizer. I’ve known Govan for more than a decade, including during my time as a global ambassador at the museum.

Govan, who started out as an artist and curator, has always had a special talent for helping make the impractical come to life. His latest feat may be the most consequential of his career. On April 19, LACMA will open the new $720 million David Geffen Galleries, designed by renowned architect Peter Zumthor. The 110,000-square-foot gallery space is far from the traditional white cube: There are concrete walls, ample natural light, and a building that stretches across Wilshire Boulevard.

Below, I speak with Govan about realizing the dream he and his team have been working toward for two decades.

What problems with the conventional museum were you trying to solve with this new space?

For many decades, I’ve thought long and hard about museums. When the opportunity came up 20 years ago to rebuild a civic scale art museum, three or four city blocks, with collections that are from thousands of years ago to the present and future. As we’ve talked about, I had a beautiful life in New York. I was not looking to leave, but not only was [LACMA] a once-in-a-lifetime chance, it also felt like a once-in-a century obligation because there wouldn’t be another one of these animals, these encyclopedic museums with art of everything probably made again. They were built with a 19th-century perspective, and times have changed over a couple hundred years. I felt this sense of obligation to take all the learning and thinking of decades of academic research, of artists’ points of views and rethinking histories, plural, of my traveling the world, looking at museums, and try to provide a different point of view.

My view is there is no one point of view for all museums to have. There’s no perfect museum. There’s no perfect building. I wanted to create a more mobile, ever-evolving platform for world art history.

It’s the idea that you’re taking away one art history in favor of multiple art histories, and that the building isn’t architecturally adopting that Eurocentric storyline, but instead, allowing what’s inside to speak for itself. 

The title of the little guidebook of highlights we’re putting together is called Wander. The idea is to encourage your wandering because there are many mini stories. It’s like the most awesome playlist you could imagine as you walk through the space. Most 19th-century thinking about museums was, “Well, we’re going to take land masses and nations and we’re going to find the borders and clarify what’s Italian or whatever.” And this is the opposite. This is to say mostly that what we are today is a hybrid of many migrations and interconnectedness. We have to acknowledge that so many of the things we take for granted around us are a process of migration and interconnectedness of cultures. This installation is organized around bodies of water: Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea. People shared ideas and intersected over bodies of water, which are also metaphorically free flowing, like water is free flowing. 

Whenever you tell one grand storyline of art history, that’s what leaves people out. I would argue that by opening the exchange of many media, no chronology, and no strict geography, you can tell better stories because those things have been holding us back. How can you tell a true story if you can’t include decorative arts, photography, prints, drawings, painting, sculpture, architecture? You can’t. In order to do that, because you can’t know everything yourself, you have to work collaboratively because the only way to tell a better story is to include, for example, the decorative arts that aren’t your expertise, so you have to go talk to somebody. So it’s the collaboration that’s been the key.

Is there anything about that collaboration that has surprised you, in a good or bad way, maybe the tensions that it could bring up… I do feel like curators and department heads are used to doing things the way they like to do things.

Honestly, the best ideas that came forward in how to use the collection were 80 to 90% very collaborative. So number one, I think the curators themselves were excited that that collaboration yielded better ideas. Another thing about art history is that education changes. I would never talk about how old a person is. It’s about when they were educated and what it takes to be continually educated in new norms as they keep shifting. But you will find that people who were educated recently, and their thesis projects, their interests are already quite hybridized. Right now there’s a demand, I think, from newer scholars to rove and cut through many of these expertises

You’re almost missing something if you’re siloing yourself. 

I think so. And it’s not to say there isn’t a place for intense concentrations. What happens is you get both. You get galleries that are connecting across media and time and look very eclectic. And then you’ll go into a place which is all photography, all 20th-century, all artists in this case, the curator selected, who are interested in kind of rhythms and musicality and they picked only photographers who played piano. And so you get this weird, fantastic, compressed immersion. 

It also allows in a playful way just to tell people, “We weren’t started in the mid 19th-century, so we don’t have giant things from Egypt when people were doing that in those days.” But on the other hand, I can ask Lauren Halsey to make me a sphinx. [Laughs] It looks amazing in the context of our smaller granite Egyptian pieces, and it’s looking over at South Central LA and taking in those stories and mapping them on the others. 

I think being in LA too has a whole different storyline that you can’t recreate anywhere else. But some of the pushback you might’ve gotten is whether this space decreases the amount of art that LACMA can show from its collection itself. What’s your response to that? 

It’s actually just not true. When the project to replace the permanent collection galleries was announced, the county required us to not have any more public square footage, otherwise we would’ve triggered unnecessary parking requirements, which would’ve been tens of millions of dollars. So it turns out the gallery space as part of the public space equation is 5,000 square feet less. They said it was 10, we measured it. It doesn’t matter because we built two buildings, which you know well, the Broad and the Resnick Pavilion that are another 100,000 square feet. I would say, 80,000 square feet of that right now is permanent collection today. So actually that makes what we had almost 180% bigger, and that’s what people don’t recognize. It’s just spread over multiple buildings, and it makes each building more accessible and more navigable. 

I will say there’s something to that dialogue where some people thought that we weren’t maximizing space for square footage in the sense that we built this building that has open space on the ground floor for dinners and events and outdoor movies and concerts. We pulled the building back from Wilshire Boulevard to create some green space and gardens. We could have done what they did in the old days, which is push everything right to the boulevard, build up many stories, and imagine that someday we would be as big as the Met. I was fiercely against that for many reasons. One is that I think museums have started to get too big in that sense. Wouldn’t you rather have more hours open, more days open than more square footage? Because accessibility now has risen in our value system over ownership and treasure. So the new value system requires that. Also, experience. Now that we have things like the Internet and you have access to lots of information, the reason you go to a museum is because you want to feel it in this analog, deep, emotional way. And so everything we’ve done has been to kind of heighten the sense of the experience of real materials and real art.

What about the building caused the biggest debate internally?

I chose Peter Zumthor [as the architect] in part because of his ability to work with stone, concrete, and the play of light and shadow. You can imagine the questions: “Wait, all the walls are concrete and they’re not movable?” I was like, “Yeah, we already have two buildings of sheetrock and movable walls.” One, that’s a big waste of energy every time you tear down walls and rebuild them. That’s an environmental sin. The Guggenheim is all concrete. You don’t change the walls, you adapt to it. But it turns out over time, I would say 99% of everybody here at LACMA and the curators are now super enthusiastic. And each of the experts loves the way their art looks on the concrete. You’ll see when you see it all installed, it’s just like, Whoa. And my big complaint about museums, one of my many complaints about museums, is that old art doesn’t look good on sheet rock. Sheetrock was invented in the 20th-century. It looks very temporary, commercial, contemporary, ever-changing. Whereas concrete has been around for millennia and you’ll see it just feels better.

And how do you think the new building will impact LACMA’s collecting future?

There’s this idea of collecting into a different set of possibilities. Our collecting already for 20 years has shown that in terms of the diversity of the collecting. I am a big object person. I think people really respond to objects and light and space. Museums of the 19th century are painting-heavy because picture galleries were the norm for 200 years. The natural light and windows and views of LA are so powerful that now people are like, “I got to get my hands on more ceramics.” We commissioned a work from artist Todd Gray, and he printed it with a digital sign photo technique so that it can last for hundreds of years in daylight. There’s going to be a lot of photography in daylight.

Has your perspective of the value of a physical building project changed over time?

In LA, you can’t just fix up an old building. You have to spend millions on seismic retrofit. They say that seismic engineering has hit a certain plateau, that this building could last for hundreds of years, which would be great. The second thing is this idea that if you build confidence, then you will get donations. That has happened. We spent $720 million on a building. If you do the calculation on the Perenchio collection, the Pearlman collection, and how much Elaine Wynn spent to acquire the Bacon triptych of Lucian Freud, the value of that art is pretty much equal to the cost of the building. Those collections came to LACMA specifically because of the building. They were all collectors who would not have invested without this building and in the case of the Pearlman Collection, this new way of thinking. So I’m just going to say, the value of that art is pretty much equal to the cost of the building. 

Jerry Perenchio was very direct. He was like, “Well, I’m not giving the collection to those buildings. They’re not even safe. If we build a new building, I will consider that.” Then you think, Where did the money go? It went into the pockets mostly of workers. It fed families, concrete workers, steel workers. Most of it was labor. And then what you get back is an equal amount in art. As a donor you think about giving a dollar, it going into your community, and then somebody else giving you art of that equal value, it’s an incredible deal. 

What’s a hidden gem in the museum you want people to not miss?

There are hundreds of those little moments of discovery. There’s this Adolf Loos clock, where it’s glass with a bronze edge and the clock is floating in glass and you’re just like, “Oh my God, that’s the most extraordinary expression of architecture and a new vision of modernity in a clock.”

If you could steal one work from the museum and live with it for the night, which one would you pick right now?

Pieter Saenredam’s Interior of the Mariakerk, Utrecht, 1651. It’s a minimalist painting, but with this spiritual energy. It’s one of my favorite things in the whole museum.

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Since its founding in Milan in 1975, Armani has become a global benchmark of Italian taste, rooted in disciplined elegance, understated luxury, and a deep understanding of proportion and atmosphere. Clothing, as it turned out, was just one mode of expression. At the dawn of this century, Armani established Armani/Casa, bringing the fashion house’s sharp sensibility into the environments that people inhabit daily. By 2004, the Armani/Casa Interior Design Studio was fashioning a litany of interiors for private clients and major developments under the artistic direction of the brand’s founder, Giorgio Armani. Today, Armani/Casa spans 40 outlets across 29 countries.

Before he died last September at the age of 91, Giorgio was closely involved in one of the team’s most ambitious American projects to date: the Armani/Casa Residences Pompano Beach, set to open in 2028. The boutique oceanfront development is taking shape in a growing residential hub between Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach at a moment when new waterfront property in the region is particularly hard to come by. But Armani’s project boasts collaborations with a number of South Florida’s most prominent developers (Vertical Developments, WellDuo, GCF Development, and SP Developments), G3 Architecture, and the landscape architecture firm West 8.

“We’re excited to partner with Armani as they expand their brand of luxury condos,” says Tomas Sinisterra of SP Developments. “Armani/Casa Residences Pompano Beach introduces a new standard of elegance to Pompano Beach, making it a premier destination for those seeking refined condominium living and exceptional design.”

The building—one of only a few projects in the U.S. with input from Giorgio himself—features 28 residences offering 360-degree views, finishings imported direct from Italy, and the privacy of one home per floor. On Ocean Boulevard, the enclave will exude the sophistication that has become emblematic of Giorgio Armani and, with wellness features and a sanctuary-like atmosphere, daily life will feel like an escape to the late founder’s own immaculate Italian home.

In 1954, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held its first and only competition for creative playground equipment designs. The top submissions, culled from 360 entries from around the world, were presented in the exhibition “Playground Sculpture.” Three of them went on to be commercially produced. 

“Play and art have a lot more in common than we might think,” the historian Emmy Watts points out in her 2024 book The Art of Play. Both “derive from the same root—that of humanity’s endless creativity.”

Perhaps that’s why artists have created some of the most inspiring playgrounds. The first-place winner of MoMA’s competition was Fantastic Village by painter Virginia Dortch Dorazio, a series of concrete-paneled cubicles with organic-shaped openings to crawl through. The mini huts were fitted with climbing pegs, ladders, ropes, and sliding poles, providing ample opportunity for self-directed play. 

Sculptor and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi proposed numerous unbuilt Playscapes and completed his first playground outside Tokyo in 1965. While he attempted for decades to build a playground in New York, his only U.S. Playscape is in Piedmont Park, Atlanta, commissioned by the High Museum of Art in 1975 and completed the following year. The remit was a children’s playground that was also a work of art: Noguchi’s abstract sculptural forms often evoked ancient civilizations, an open-ended invitation to explore and make your own rules. To coincide with the project’s 50th anniversary, the High Museum is opening an exhibition of Noguchi’s work, including his innovative playscape designs, on April 10. 

Here are my four favorite playgrounds—one for each season—that double as works of art.

Winter
Pink Mirror Carousel, Kulm Hotel, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Created by Carsten Höller
Opened 2025

St. Moritz is known as a playground for the rich and famous, and at the Kulm Hotel, the city delivers on that promise—literally. Founded in 1856, the grand property is considered the birthplace of winter tourism. The candy-colored carousel is situated on the hotel’s ice rink. It’s an apt and ironic location for the work by conceptual artist Carsten Höller, who often re-conceives playground equipment as contemplative art installations that bore children and amuse adults. Here, he replaces painted horses with suspended single seats that face outward. This mirrored ride rotates very, very slowly (it takes 12 minutes to complete one revolution), enabling viewers to take in the wonder that surrounds them.

Spring
Woods of Net, Kanagawa, Japan
Designed by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam and Tezuka Architects
Opened 2009

The Japanese architecture firm Tezuka Architects teamed up with artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam to create a timber-beamed pavilion in the middle of a Japanese forest. Part of the Hakone Open-Air Museum, Woods of Net employs traditional temple engineering: The trusses are fastened without metal and provide a monumental nesting structure for the showy climbing net, hand-knitted by Horiuchi MacAdam. The spirited dreamcatcher captures the youthful energy of hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Kids (and adults) crawl into the primary-colored knitted, crocheted, and knotted nylon cocoon while upside-down lollipops provide maximum interaction: push, pull, and ride. Horiuchi MacAdam began making work expressly for children in the early ’70s, and over the next 30 years, her interactive spaces flourished. In 1990, she and her husband established Interplay Design and Manufacturing to develop play sculptures specially engineered to entertain children.

Summer
Il Giardino dei Tarocchi (The Tarot Garden), Grosseto, Italy
Conceived and overseen by Niki de Saint Phalle
Opened 1998

Ninety minutes from Rome, nestled in the hills of Tuscany, is Franco-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s monumental artwork, The Tarot Garden. This five-acre fantasy village is filled with 22 sculptures celebrating the life lessons also known as Major Arcana in Tarot. Funded with her own money and that of the Agnelli family, who founded Fiat, with engineering expertise by her husband Jean Tinguely, Saint Phalle spent nearly 20 years creating a wonderland of architecture, craft, and art. Her elaborate structures—named after symbols including the High Priestess, the Fool, and the Lovers—are formed in steel and iron, plastered with concrete, and then painted or inlaid with mosaics of glass, ceramic, mirror and stone. When the project finally opened in 1998, Saint Phalle decreed there would be no tours. The Tarot Garden was strictly to be a place of discovery—and, perhaps, a place to discover oneself.

Fall
Superkilen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Designed by BIG, Topotek1, and Superflex
Opened 2012

Superkilen is an endurance playscape—a color-coded, half-mile-long trail in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Nørrebro. In 2005, the city partnered with the Realdania Foundation to commission an urban playground celebrating local immigrant communities. It offers periodic stops along the way: The Red Square hosts cultural activities and sports; the Black Square is an outdoor living room for games, including chess; and the Green Park is a set of artificial rolling hills for picnics. The art collective Superflex also asked locals to nominate their favorite benches, bins, playground equipment, trees, and utility holes from their homelands, which the artists imported or recreated for the park site. The result is an international showcase of 100 playground objects from 50 different countries—a participatory work of art in more ways than one. 

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The hotel is also a source of inspiration for architects. Consider husband-and-wife creative team Elia and Zoe Zenghelis’s Hotel Sphinx, a never-built tower conceived in 1975 for the intersection of 7th Avenue and Broadway in Times Square. Immortalized in architect Rem Koolhaas’s book Delirious New York, it was an urban hotel that doubled as a model for mass housing. 

Each part of the Hotel Sphinx had a different function: the legs held escalators, the two towers of the tail held studio apartments, the neck housed social clubs, and the spine housed hotel rooms. The ground floor straddled 48th Street, literally bringing the city life into the hotel and the hotel out into Times Square. Today, Hotel Sphinx is the blueprint for the mega-hotels we see in Las Vegas, Singapore, and, notably, the Abraj Kudai in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. 

I canvassed architects who have been featured in my Spatial Awareness column about their favorite getaways, and the flurry of responses suggests that the hotel remains a rich typology of possibilities. The best of them, sphinx-like, provide various kinds of comfort.

​Heritance Kandalama

Where: Dambulla, Sri Lanka 

Chosen by: Minsuk Cho, founder of the firm Mass Studies

What to Know: Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, known as the father of the Tropical Modernist movement, designed and completed Heritance Kandalama in 1994. The 152-room compound is built into a mountainside in a protected forest, and its nearby neighbor is the Ancient City of Sigiriya. It is the world’s first LEED-certified green hotel.

In His Own Words: “It was not an accommodation; it was the destination itself.” 

Miyamasou

Where: Near Kyoto, Japan 

Chosen by: Kulapat Yantrasast, founding partner and creative director of WHY Architecture

What to Know: Originally a hostel for pilgrims visiting the nearby Bujo-ji Temple, the ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) has been run by the Nakahigashi family for four generations. The dwelling’s architecture is based on tea house aesthetics known as sukiya-zukuri, and the inn is renowned for its Tsumikusa cuisine, foraged from surrounding streams and forests.

In His Own Words: “Because time stops / But the creek flows / into your tummy”

Hotel Hércules

Where: Queretaro, Mexico 

Chosen by: Charles Renfro, a partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro 

In His Own Words: “There’s always a magical property that captures the spirit of a place, and if it’s my first time and if I’ve fallen in love with the place, then I fall in love with the hotel. My most recent hotel crush is in Queretaro, Mexico. It’s the Hotel Hercules.

It started as a fabric factory built in palatial style and was later converted into a brewery, a spa built into the factory’s ruins, several farm-to-table restaurants, and a collection of artisanal fabricators with shops and artists’ workshops. It’s a city within a city.

There are no TVs in the rooms. No minibars. Only old squeaky parquet floors, oversized doors, hand-made tiles, and of course artisanal linens.”

​Nima Local House

Location: Mexico City, Mexico 

Chosen by: Miriam Peterson, co-founder of Peterson Rich Office

What to Know: The owner, Regina Montes, converted a historic early-20th-century mansion in a hip neighborhood that boasts art and design galleries, trendy restaurants, and street food.

In Her Own Words: “Nima Local House in Mexico City is the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in. The four-room hotel is in an old mansion in Roma Norte, and the quality of staff, food, and services is incredible and feels very personal. It’s low-key, but luxurious.”

Albergo Hotel

Location: Beirut, Lebanon

Chosen by: Amale Andraos, co-founder of WORKac

What to Know: Originally a 1930s mansion, the Albergo Hotel is located in the historic Achrafieh district. It is designed by Atelier des Architectes Associés and the majority of the interiors are by Lebanese designer Maria Ousseimi.

In Her Own Words: “An adaptive reuse of an old Lebanese house in one of Beirut’s most picturesque streets, the hotel feels like a wonderful mix of epochs. From Ottoman grandeur to Parisian chic, it layers atmospheres and objects collected from around the world to bring you back to a dream-like Orient that inspires you to imagine what Beirut could be again. The rooftop terrace bar is particularly charming, offering an intimate panoramic view of the city.”

Maritim Hotel Plaza

Location: Tirana, Albania 

Chosen by: Florian Idenburg, co-founder of SO – IL

What to Know: The 24-floor hotel is located in the center of town. The Belgian architecture firm 51N4E designed a structure on the ground floor that is elliptical; as it rises to the top, it gradually becomes rectangular. A companion structure hollows out a dome recess to accommodate the tomb of Süleyman Pasha, an Ottoman prince.

In His Own Words: “The 51N4E-designed tower is a calm, stoic tower offering expansive views over a city that [Albanian Prime Minister] Edi Rama and his team are rapidly recasting into an unexpected laboratory for architectural ambition.”

Le Cloître

Location: Arles, France

Chosen by: Annabelle Selldorf, founder, Selldorf Architects

What to Know: Sited over the remains of a 12th-century Roman basilica, the townhouse is home to visiting artists and architects to the nearby art campus Luma, created by the Swiss philanthropist and art collector Maja Hoffmann.​

In Her Own Words: “Hotel Le Cloitre in Arles is one of Maja Hoffmann’s hotels, cleverly and innovatively designed by [French architect] India Mahdavi in the heart of the old town. Every room is different yet comfortable, and the individual qualities are held together by the same materiality and the range of furnishings, all designed by Mahdavi. The service is generous and unpretentious. Writing about it makes me miss spending time in Arles.”

La Colombe d’Or

Location: Saint Paul de Vence, France

Chosen by: Dominic Leong, founding partner, Leong Leong

What to Know: In 1920, Paul Roux opened the café-bar Chez Robinson, which evolved into a legendary hotel where artists (Léger, Matisse, Braque, Chagall) bartered their work in exchange for rooms and meals. The Roux family continues to operate this beloved inn and lovingly maintains its traditional Provençal architecture.

In His Own Words: “Although it was a hotel, it offered all the essential elements of an ideal artist residency—history, seclusion, intimacy, and community—a restorative sanctuary in a stunning setting.”

​Unité d’Habitation

​Location: Marseille, France

Chosen by: Zeina Koreitem, co-founder, MILLIØNS

What to Know: Unité D’habitation by Le Corbusier is a modernist concept of a housing development consisting of 330 units and collective spaces. Although not officially a hotel, a lucky few may have the chance to stay as guests. 

In Her Own Words: “I’ve stayed at the Unité d’Habitation several times, and it was remarkable to get to know local residents who have been living there since the project was completed in 1952. I spoke with retired public school teachers, an electrician, and an épicier in their 80s. Listening to their stories was heart-warming. They spoke of their communal experience: raising their children with their neighbors; hosting cultural events like plays, concerts and collective meals. They spoke openly of their experience as working-class citizens with a good quality of life and a community that cared for their families.”

Johnston Marklee’s Canal House sits on one of Kyoto’s centuries-old cherry-tree-lined canals. Completed in 2021, it embodies the fluid convergence of American and Japanese architectural traditions: where neighboring homes are made with a reverence for wood, the Canal House is built from concrete. Single Yoshino-style windows float below its terraced eaves like moons, each tier buttressed by concrete struts instead of traditional bamboo ones.

Inside, the house revels in itself: each level looks onto a glass-enclosed inner courtyard studded with mossy rocks, while cantilever staircases offer a glimpse at above from below. The house’s street level holds both a two-car garage and a Sukiya-style, wood-panelled tea room.

The phrase “exit through the gift shop” has come to signify the growing commercialization of our museum spaces. Retail pop-ups now cluster near the exits of major exhibitions. Museums face pressure to compete with other forms of entertainment and to find additional income streams beyond donors and admissions. Meanwhile, some galleries are working to turn themselves into leisure or community destinations, complete with restaurants, listening rooms, and libraries. 

Amid these increasingly blurry goals to be omnichannel (something for everyone), the architectural studio Peterson Rich Office (PRO) has emerged as a key force in determining what the spaces where art and commerce collide actually look and feel like. 

PRO was founded by husband-and-wife team Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich in 2014. (They discussed what starting a studio practice together would look like on their very first date as students at the Yale School of Architecture.) Since then, they have designed Perrotin’s 25,000-square-foot Lower East Side gallery and numerous artist studios. Three recent and ongoing projects—one in Detroit and two in New York—showcase their welcoming and expansive approach to designing cultural spaces. 

In East Detroit, gallery owners JJ and Anthony Curis’s Library Street Collective is transforming several buildings into a cultural campus for a neighborhood lacking in investment and attention to infrastructure. PRO took on a core role in converting a Romanesque church into the Shepherd, a space for public exhibitions, a community library, and performances. 

Peterson says the firm loves working in Detroit because it’s a “community that is willing to take risks, and the city provides an accessible feedback loop for helping to make things happen.” While PRO’s interior interventions are rightly praised, their exterior improvements equally stand out. In collaboration with the landscape architect OSD, the firm removed the Shepherd’s black iron fencing, installed new lighting, and landscaped the grounds into a sculpture garden—announcing the area as a creative oasis to passersby.

PRO faced a different challenge in the SoHo neighborhood of New York, where foot traffic often bypassed the MoMA Design Store at Spring and Crosby Streets. The 19th-century cast-iron building is part of a retail empire with a staff team rivaling any mid-size museum. PRO’s task: draw in more visitors and serve as a satellite gateway to MoMA, the Midtown institution welcoming three million annually. 

PRO stripped away old decals, window displays, and drop ceilings, bringing in more light and creating a loft-like space. They reconfigured two corner entrances into one on Spring Street, aligned with the main axis. Peterson aimed to enliven the space and more explicitly link the store to contemporary artists. 

“Foundational to the store’s concept was an idea for a mural at the back wall that would tie the store inextricably to the museum and be visible as a focal point from the street,” Peterson says. MoMA’s decision to commission the artist Nina Chanel Abney for the inaugural mural “was a special coincidence because we’ve been working with her on a few projects and she has become a friend,” she continues.

The fluid co-mingling of galleries, retail, and dining, is what drives PRO’s most ambitious and high-profile commission yet for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The scope of the forthcoming project includes a special exhibition gallery, dining and retail spaces, and a new entrance at 83rd Street. “The project forges new connections across eight different eras of Met construction and engages just about every stakeholder group in the museum,” Peterson explains. “We are juggling multiple stakeholders and agendas, weaving it all together into a new museum experience that will hopefully feel effortless and timeless.” 

To develop its plan, PRO envisioned the Met as a city in miniature, composed of 21 interlocking buildings that house 800 galleries, and mapped out the visitor circulation—which can surge to more than 30,000 a day during holidays—as streets with storefronts. Their new 83rd Street entrance will accommodate the extensive crowds that currently gather on the Met’s front steps and offer a bold, fully accessible gateway to the museum.

With increasingly large-stakes projects, a significant ground-up cultural or civic commission likely isn’t too far off. For her part, Peterson doesn’t mind being called “buzzy”—just “as long as it also means our work will stand the test of time.” 

IN HER OWN WORDS: Miriam Peterson

What was your favorite toy growing up?

To be honest, I have no memory of playing with toys. But I had somewhat of an unusual childhood because I was a very serious ballet dancer. I was cast in my first professional production at 6 years old. And then I was a student at the School of American Ballet here in New York. At that time, it was the 10-year anniversary of George Balanchine’s death and they were reviving several of his ballets, many of which involved children’s roles and Peter Martins was choreographing new ballets that also involved children. So I spent a lot of time at Lincoln Center. Now that I think about it, we played a lot of jacks backstage when we weren’t performing. I wonder if the kids at SAB still play with jacks today—it was pretty old school and analog even back then.

Whose house would you live in (real or fictional) and why?

My own house, but renovated, and it would probably have to be designed by someone else because Nathan [Rich] and I are terrible at making design decisions when we are the architect and the client.  

What is your go-to uniform when you’re powering through a project?

Black Gap jeans, a James Perse T-shirt, Bensimon sneaks, and, if it’s cold, a blazer. I wear that most days. 

Are there any analog materials you return to in spite of the prevalence of new technologies?

Daylight. The oldest, best, and most enduring material! 

Who chooses the playlist in your studio?

Nathan [Rich]! 

What’s a trend in architecture you wish would die out?

Biomimetic design. 

What is one detail of a structure that most people wouldn’t notice, but that you always look to for insight?

Seams in materials—where the limit of a material’s size, its manageable scale or practical weight, requires a seam, and how that’s articulated or subverted, which is not the same thing as a transition between materials. We were in Versailles last spring. I’d never been there before. There is this incredible stone stair, the Escalier des Princes, built in 1672. At the seams in the balustrade, there are metal butterfly-shaped inlays that hold the two pieces of stone together. I’d never seen anything like it before. I think the technical term is an agrafe.

What is the most progressive architectural city you’ve visited?

Detroit. Compared to New York, where there is so much red tape and the cost of doing something out of the box is prohibitively high to most people, Detroiters welcome progressive architectural ideas and it doesn’t need to cost more to achieve them. I love Detroit. 

What is your last source of inspiration that surprised you?

The Escalier des Princes, in Versailles.

In name, the Municipal Arts Society of New York City sounds like it’s from another era. And it is. It was founded in 1893 to beautify New York with public art and, over the past century, has evolved into a juggernaut of advocacy for a more beautiful and livable city. MASNYC helped to create the Landmarks Commission and saved Radio City Hall, Lever House, and Grand Central Station from demolition. 

It was the threat against Grand Central Station that led Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to telephone MAS’s director Kent Barwick in 1975 and ask how she could help. She became the face of the campaign, working in front of the cameras and as a shrewd strategist behind the scenes. She spent two decades as a passionate board member and in 1994, when she died, MASNYC renamed its highest honor, the President’s Medal, to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (JKO) Medal, recognizing an outstanding citizen who has made an extraordinary contribution to New York.

The Occasion: On Oct. 6, MASNYC celebrated the 2025 JKO Medal Winners, architects Elizabeth Diller and Annabelle Selldorf. These women, who have made their mark in New York and around the world (hello Pritzker Prize!), join an esteemed group of winners including Agnes Gund (2004), Diane von Furstenberg (2011), Candice Bergen (2019), and Yoko Ono (2024).

Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) and has made an outsize imprint on the city’s cultural landscape with projects like Lincoln Center, the Shed, and the High Line. 

If the High Line is the spine of Chelsea’s reinvention, then the galleries designed by Selldorf Architects—Barbara Gladstone, David Zwirner, and Hauser & Wirth among them—are its ribcage. Selldorf is currently basking in the glow of the celebrated update of the Frick Collection, which reopened to great fanfare this spring. 

The Scene: While the Pool and the Grill at the Seagram Building is a gala hotspot for New York’s glitterati, the location holds an extra special place for this year’s JKO Medal Dinner. The tower designed by Mies van der Rohe and the restaurant interiors by Phillip Johnson both gained landmark status in 1989. DS+R made the tower’s basement the coolest place to be seen a decade later, when they turned the Brasserie into a movie set, complete with video monitors surveilling guests, projections, and lots of structural glass. Then, when the landlord, Aby Rosen, needed to update the Four Seasons Restaurant in 2016, he called upon Selldorf Architects to oversee the meticulous renovation.

The Crowd: A who’s who of the architecture and design worlds. Guests included Bloomberg administration power brokers Dan Doctoroff and Amanda Burden; curators Roselee Goldberg and Paola Antonelli; Beatrice Galilee, founder of the World Around; Tina Vaz, newly appointed director of MTA Art and Design; and architects Charles Renfro, Vishaan Chakrabarti, and Hashim Sarkis.

Soundbites: “If I told you how long I have lived in New York, I’d have to kill you! This city matters, it’s my home… a kinship that was born from my first renovation projects for individuals to larger projects that connect all of us.” – Annabelle Selldorf

“Culture is in perpetual flux….change has never been faster, architecture has never felt slower to respond. The discipline itself needs a redesign and we are hoping to do that with my colleagues. The preservation of New York’s identity and its civic values is a shared responsibility amongst us all.” – Elizabeth Diller

Wilson W. Smith III is Nike’s best-kept secret no more. Those in the know have often described him as the Jackie Robinson of the athletic footwear industry: the company’s first Black designer, who created shoes for the likes of Michael Jordan, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, and Serena Williams.

The athletic footwear industry is notoriously tightlipped, fiercely guarding trade secrets and top talent. But after a 41-year run at Nike, Smith retired this winter and is seizing the moment to reflect on his career, giving one of his first interviews to CULTURED. 

Born and bred in Oregon, Smith graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Oregon and began his career at the Portland office of the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. After being laid off in 1983, he interviewed with U of O alumnus and Nike corporate architect Tinker Hatfield. After spending two years designing showrooms, stores, and offices for the company, he followed Hatfield into shoe design in 1985. 

There were no wrong moves in the ’80s and ’90s for Nike—Jordan was signed in 1984, ad agency Wieden and Kennedy coined the phrase “Just do it” in 1988, and, in 1990, Nike moved into their World Headquarters and launched their first immersive retail environment, NikeTown, in downtown Portland. In the ensuing decades, Nike has dominated the categories of running, basketball, and American football. And Smith made his name designing shoes for some of the biggest tennis stars in the world. 

During the inaugural Sneaker Week in August, the Portland Art Museum hosted a celebration honoring Smith. We were introduced and later sat down for a conversation exploring the intersection of architecture and sneakers.

What was your favorite toy growing up?

I drew a lot of pictures and played with building blocks. When I was 5, my mom said I should be an architect because architects make a lot of money. [Laughs] She didn’t want me to be a starving artist nor squelch my love of design and curious nature, so architecture from grade school to college became my North Star.

What is one of your earliest architectural projects for Nike?

Tinker [Hatfield, Nike’s corporate architect] designed the Nike 1984 Olympics Store in Westwood, Los Angeles. One of the main elements was a huge swoosh crashing through the front facade. On the odd day that it would rain in LA, water would trickle down the swoosh and into the store. I developed a gutter for the swoosh, a clear plastic sheath that captured the run-off. I got a couple of trips to LA for that!

What Nike project was a game-changer for you personally?

In 1984, I designed a new retail concept that Nike named the “factory store.” The very first one was in North Portland, a vibrant Black neighborhood. No one had invested in this area, and Nike set its intentions on building community by hiring from the community and creating neighborhood initiatives. I detailed a lot of odd angles for the interior, and I recall founder Phil Knight attending the opening to cut the ribbon. At that time, the significance was lost on me, but today there are hundreds of Nike Factory Stores around the world, and I’m proud of my contribution.

Was it easy to pivot from architecture to shoe design?

In 1986, I was called into a back room, and thought I was going to be laid off. Instead, they said, “Do you want to design shoes?” and I said, “I’ve always wanted to design shoes!” I had never considered designing shoes. I was a snobbish architect, and architecture was considered the highest form of design expression. But sitting next to Tinker, an architect who was so adept and thorough, he saw it as a practice of designing homes for the feet, shoes were like little buildings. And it was a revelation that I was as fulfilled designing shoes as I was designing buildings.

Are athletic shoes overdesigned today?  

Your question reminds me of what a good friend, a pastor, said to me: “When I heard you and Tinker, two architects, were starting to design shoes, I thought shoes were going to get complicated.” When design prioritizes style over story and style over performance, we lose something. For me, the best architecture is one that is attached to function and context, and so it is with footwear design.

Our feet represent the place where our body meets the earth. And this is the point where you need to identify all the forces in your movements in the sport. It’s a sacred design opportunity, but also we have to get out of the way and let the foot be the foot.

You’ve had a long chapter designing shoes for the GOATs of tennis. How did that come about?

I grew up playing basketball and loved tennis in college. At one point, management offered me the opportunity to help lead tennis or basketball, and basketball was well established, arguably Nike’s second most important category after running. Running is the heart of Nike, and basketball is the soul. Basketball was a big deal with a lot of eyes on it. Tennis—there was less pressure. And honestly, a Black guy doing a basketball shoe felt expected. Moving into the tennis world was an opportunity to bring some diversity into a sport that lacked it.  

​My goal was to become Mr. Tennis, and I found a world of joy in building relationships with Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Mary Joe Fernández, Monica Seles, and Mary Pierce.

You had a deep design run with Agassi. What was that like?

From 1994 to 2001, I designed a shoe for Andre every six months, a collection of 15 or more shoes. It’s fun to develop a storyline from one shoe to the next, and we were always trying to bring to light something Andre was into, as well as a new performance insight. And we discussed beauty and the shoe; ultimately, beauty needs to perform.

If shoes are little buildings, you designed a skyscraper for Serena!

Serena is wonderful, and she helped build a new era, a new evolution for Nike. [The largest building at Nike HQ is named after her.] I met her in October 2003, and she signed with Nike in December of that year. We had 10 months to design a shoe for her to debut at the 2004 U.S. Open. I asked my boss, Mark Parker [who became CEO in 2012 and retired in 2020], what he would do differently when designing for Serena. He suggested letting her sense of fashion fuel the performance design—make that the innovation. 

Over the winter months, Serena was always wearing boots, and I said, “What about a tennis boot?” She signed up for the concept and then I took the sketches to the Nike Sports Research Lab. Sure enough, they were also interested in a tennis boot. We treated the boot as a long sock with a bottom stirrup, which warms up her calf muscles to prevent cramping, mimicking a compression sleeve that can be easily zipped off.

And the Serena boot becomes infamous. Why?

It’s a nighttime session, and Serena walks out in the Arthur Ashe Stadium in a Nike-designed denim tennis skirt—channeling Agassi—a studded tank top, and a pair of black boots. The cameras are flashing like she’s on a Paris runway. Tournament officials deemed them too dramatic to be worn during matches, so she warms up in them, zips them off, and goes on to crush her opponent. Later that evening on ESPN’s SportsCenter, Serena and the boots are featured, and the next day, on USA Today’s front cover, in the upper left-hand corner, there was a close-up of the boots. Our takeaway: Serena had the ability to tell stories and influence culture way beyond the sports world.

With the growing popularity of hip hop and basketball, collecting sneakers became a trend during the 1980s. Some say it was legendary DJ and basketball enthusiast Bobbito Garcia who coined the word “sneakerheads.” What’s your role in this cultural phenomenon?

I surfed the wave of Nike’s culture, starting as an architect, and became a storyteller. Later in my career, I was a key team member of the Department of Nike Archives (DNA) and at one point, my title included the word “sneaker” in it. I was initially taken aback; the word “sneaker” felt informal, but really, it’s a cultural concept. Sneakerheads are kids who grow up loving the stories around each release and how it connects to their own journeys. As an older person, they can actually afford sneakers, collect them, and it’s a nostalgic connection.

Do you collect anything?

Besides pounds? On a more serious note, I never had my own children, but I’ve taught hundreds of students over the past 15 years. Not so much a collection, but rather a collective where I can be an inspiration and share my experiences to help empower the next generation of visionary designers.