Category: architect

Avoid These Mistakes in Residential Home Building

Each week, I have the good fortune to speak on the phone with homeowners all across the USA who ask me to solve problems at their homes. Many of these homeowners are facing expensive repairs because of mistakes made by the home builder. Each error is avoidable. The link to arrange a coaching phone call…


Rafael Guastavino’s Indelible Mark on America

When entering a building or a room, one naturally looks around. Yet Rafael Guastavino’s engineering and architectural artistry immediately draws the eyes upward. For a century and longer, the juxtaposition of tiles arranged in domes and arches have awed countless people. In fact, the Spanish immigrant’s indelible mark graces numerous iconic American structures, including New…


Suspect Charged Nearly 7 Years After Iowa Architect’s Death

DES MOINES, Iowa—Nearly seven years after the death of a prominent Des Moines architect, police have arrested a suspect. Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Parizek said investigators uncovered enough evidence to charge Zachary Allen Gaskill on Wednesday with second-degree murder in the January 2016 death of Kirk Blunck. The 62-year-old was found severely injured in the…


A Tour of Fonthill Castle, the Home of a 19th-Century Archaeologist Full of Eclectic Wonders

While from a distance Fonthill Castle does much to evoke its European counterparts—with its imposing, bulky countenance, its heavenward towers and spires, its parapets and chimneys—inside, and at its heart, it’s an altogether different creature. If the castles of yore across the Atlantic were meant to protect and deter, this is every bit the opposite:…


Life of Bramante Da Urbino, Architect

Of very great advantage to architecture, in truth, was the new method of Filippo Brunelleschi, who imitated and restored to the light, after many ages, the noble works of the most learned and marvellous ancients. But no less useful to our age was Bramante, in following the footsteps of Filippo, and making the path of…


Life of Raffaello Da Urbino, Painter and Architect

How bountiful and benign Heaven sometimes shows itself in showering upon one single person the infinite riches of its treasures, and all those graces and rarest gifts that it is wont to distribute among many individuals, over a long space of time, could be clearly seen in the no less excellent than gracious Raffaello Sanzio…


The Life of Filippo Brunelleschi, Sculptor and Architect

Many men are created by nature small in person and in features, who have a mind full of such greatness and a heart of such irresistible vehemence, that if they do not begin difficult—nay, almost impossible—undertakings, and bring them to completion to the marvel of all who behold them, they have never any peace in…


Giusi Mastro: Born Architect

A column capital’s intricate decorative motifs, an arched window’s perfect proportions, a majestic Greek statue beneath a frieze—you’ll notice these fine architectural details in New York City if you take a moment to look up at some of the buildings, those landmarks that have been preserved over the course of the city’s history. Italian architect…