Alexandra Lange
Architecture Critic
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.
A journey to Isamu Noguchi's last work
Moerenuma Koen is Isamu Noguchi’s last work, a 400-acre public park, completed in 2005, that includes mountains, rivers, beaches, and forests of play equipment.
10 things I learned on a pilgrimage to the iconic Vanna Venturi House
On Thursday, November 10, the Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, providing the 54-year-old house with its first preservation protection. We stopped by for a tour.
The other glass house: ‘30s Paris residence takes center stage in new exhibition
Diller Scofidio + Renfro creates a technology-forward exhibition about French architect Pierre Chareau’s seminal 1930s Maison de Verre.
Darkness and light: A bold new museum helps tell multifaceted African-American story
Our critic visits the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and examines its place on the National Mall and the ways the institution's architecture helps tell a complex, still-unfolding story.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, on the edge
Is architecture’s most cutting-edge firm on the precipice of innovation or ubiquity? Our critic takes a look at the firm's body of work, from New York to Los Angeles and in between.
How one designer's vision of tech's future embraced the black and boxy
Apple, under the meticulous design direction of Jonathan Ive, continues to dominate the collective imagination with a singular vision the tech’s future. But what if the company's influential aesthetic wasn't cute, soft, and round?
Michael Heizer is the manliest artist in history, apparently
Just reading this profile will put hair on your chest.
The problem with believing half the world’s population lives in cities
Alexandra Lange debunks the oft-cited statistic that 50 percent of the world's population lives in cities, and makes a case for why holding on to that number is harming our design discourse.
Inside the Four Seasons Restaurant auction
We take a look at what will be on auction from the restaurant on July 26.
Ray Eames and the art of entertaining
Curbed critic Alexandra Lange dives into The World of Charles and Ray Eames, a new book that reveals how the design duo lived, and examines how Ray turned house work and entertaining into performance art.