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Special Interest

Special Interest

Brasilia!

Few places in the world offer such an expansive, extraordinary composition of Modernist architecture as the Brazilian capital. Part of a handful of Modernist clusters around the world – such as, for example, Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh in India – Brasilia combines the gravitas, drama and scale of the International Style with the glamour and power…

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Stay at a traditional Japanese house

It had been a packed afternoon of exploring the charming city of Tamba Sasayama, where the vibrant energy of young businesses ran hot through the city. But it was also a relentlessly cold and rainy day. so I was already fantasizing about hot baths and steaming hot pots when we arrived at the 100-year-old traditional Japanese house.…

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A self-isolation silver lining?

Behind the unprecedented disruption of routine life by the recent Coronavirus could lie one of the most profound transformations of our lives: closer connections, greater happiness, and a healthier relationship to work. Despite the anxiety, fear, and illness that is likely to touch each of our lives, there may be a silver lining once we’re…

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Chateau bravo!

With their lofty towers, glittering ballrooms, geometric gardens and all that gilded finery, no one does castles better than France. From the Dordogne’s renaissance piles flanked by dusty olive groves and pretty hilltop villages to the turret-studded landscape of the Loire Valley, French châteaux are a brilliant display of the country’s rich architectural and cultural…

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Let’s rock!

Rock art, that is paintings and carvings on natural rock formations, is one of the earliest forms of creative expression and a universal phenomenon among prehistoric societies, in this case, Indian. An instrument of communication rather than simply art, it is an assemblage of material culture which provides a glimpse into the lives of people…

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門前の小僧習わぬ経を読む。

The environment makes our characters. (Japanese proverb.) A large number of Japanese companies have instituted telecommuting policies over the past few weeks, under the logic that the crowded conditions of commuter trains and enclosed offices are high-risk environments for the transmission of coronavirus. However, with Japanese houses and apartments being decidedly on the small side,…

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Déjà vu, all over again

A brain glitch? A sign of quantum entanglement? What science says about déjà vu. Roughly two-thirds of people have had déjà vu, or the weird feeling that a new situation has been experienced before. Yet its prevalence belies just how mysterious the phenomenon remains to researchers, despite some extraordinary recent leaps in neuroscience. In part,…

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Calling all professionals!

Spin a globe, point your finger, and see where it lands—if only planning a trip were that easy. For those who prefer to take a more rational approach when arranging travel, look to your Myers-Briggs personality type. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a behavioral assessment that calculates how people perceive the world and make…

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A brutal refuge?

In the course of the nearly thirty years of his practice, Sir David Adjaye’s projects have been realized on five continents.  Here he reflects on what kinds of homes we build, and how we live in them. They include cultural and historical landmarks—such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C.,…

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