Alexandra Lange writes the Critical Eye column for Curbed, covering design in many forms: new parks and Instagram playgrounds, teen urbanists and architectural icons, postmodernism and the post-retail era. Her latest book, The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids, is being published by Bloomsbury USA in June 2018.
Alexandra was a 2014 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and received a publication grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for her new book. She has taught design criticism at the School of Visual Arts and New York University, and also wrote the book on it: Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012).
Alexandra lives in Brooklyn with her family.
The women designers who made Herman Miller furniture shine
Sizzling graphics, bright colors, and bold juxtapositions
Design within reach
The Cooper-Hewitt’s latest exhibition clarifies why accessible design is not a privilege, but a right.
8 buildings we think should get the AIA’s 25-year award
The AIA announced it won’t bestow a 2018 25-year Award for architecture. Here’s what Curbed editors would have nominated.
Apple Park: The one that got away
An architecture critic reflects on the most-hyped building of 2017.
How teen-focused design can help reshape our cities
Sometimes it seems like there is nowhere for teens to be. Here’s what they are doing about it.
These are the best scissors I’ve ever owned
Sized for smaller hands, they’re big enough to cut cardboard and maneuverable enough to cut out a snowflake. And the blades stay sharp.
Judging a book by its cover
Why vintage design books are now so radical—and radically expensive.
Are we having fun yet?
The Museum of Ice Cream is popular, colorful, and sugary, but are visitors playing—or playing themselves?
Eavesdropping on the design icons who made Washington’s Metro
Harry Weese designed DC’s famously Brutalist metro system—with a little constructive criticism from Gordon Bunshaft, Aline Saarinen, and Hideo Sasaki.
The A-frame effect
The A-frame, both doll- and human-sized, is back, and for all the same reasons that made it a phenomenon in the first place.