<p> Pioneering Postmodernist Robert Venturi is still given to
architectural wisecracks--an ironic use of old-fashioned
forms, a cartoony application of classical ornament--but for
this most important job of his career, he (and partner Denise
Scott Brown) behaved just enough. The new wing can speak the
decorous language of the old museum: the facade is the same
limestone block; the galleries, naturally lit John Soane-ish
spaces. But the design is also quietly irreverent: pilasters,
above, pile up on one another like so much extruded Play-Doh,
and the Tuscan columns inside are impossibly faux.
</p>
<p> OHRSTROM LIBRARY, ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL
</p>
<p> Jews were a rarity at St. Paul's when Robert A.M. Stern
was growing up in the 1950s, but today Stern's son is an
alumnus of the Wasp citadel in Concord, N.H., and Stern has
designed its fine new library. Such happy assimilation: the $9
million structure, which fits into and improves a campus blessed
with distinguished buildings, is among Stern's best work. It is
Richardsonian (the arches, the churchlike massing) but not
slavishly old-fashioned, and the jaunty bits (the eyebrow
dormers and the tower) mitigate any neo-Victorian
lugubriousness.
</p>
<p> MORPHING
</p>
<p> Once or twice a decade, the geek visionaries at Industrial
Light & Magic concoct a special effect that wows even jaded,
high-tech-savvy audiences. The latest is morphing, as in
metamorphosis, a technique that reduces a film image to a
numerical code that a computer can manipulate almost endlessly.
One image can melt into another, for example, as when Linda
Hamilton turns into Robert Patrick in Terminator 2, right, or
when disparate races, genders and ages blend together in Michael
Jackson's video Black or White.
</p>
<p> ENCORE SPACE HEATERS
</p>
<p> Ziba Design's heaters are not in production yet, but the
prototypes have won a prize from the Industrial Designers
Society of America. While they celebrate simplicity (each
contains a single screw, and the controls are self-explanatory),
they avoid both stripped-down K Mart grimness and unsmiling
Germanic pretension. Just as moderne objects in the '30s
suggested speed, the curves of these heaters evoke waves of
warmth: form (metaphorically) follows function.
</p>
<p> THE SEAMEN'S CHURCH INSTITUTE, MANHATTAN
</p>
<p> The institute is so little known and so anachronistic--a club, chapel and classroom complex for merchant mariners--that it seems like a novelistic conceit. Its fey charms
evidently inspired James Stewart Polshek as he designed its new
quarters. Instead of creating a boringly deferential pseudo-18th
century building, he has both respected tradition and done
something entirely original. From a new, neighborly four-story
red brick base, Polshek has popped two prow-shaped floors clad
in a modernist grid of white enameled metal. Such a building
could be tricky and meretricious, but Polshek, one of the finest
uncelebrated architects working today, is a master of restraint.
</p>
<p> TEAM DISNEY OFFICE, LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA.
</p>
<p> Disney's patronage of famous architects has produced many
entertaining buildings. Now it has produced a great one. Arata
Isozaki's office block at Walt Disney World manages to be both
utilitarian and whimsical, to convey a sense of gravitas and
architectural boogie-woogie. For a company that prides itself
on extreme frugality and makes a virtue of simplemindedness,
Isozaki's building is happily improbable. After entering via a
large red granite cube punched with dozens of not exactly
functional windows, the army of bean counters who work there
pass through a 120-ft.-tall, open-to-the-sky cylinder--actually, a vast sundial--whose floor is covered in loose
river stones. Ever been to a cathedral on Venus?
</p>
<p> KENTLANDS, MD. "They don't make `em like they used to" has
become an all-purpose kvetch when confronted by the shoddy and
the dreary. Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a
brilliant and relentless husband-and-wife team of architects and
planners, are devoting their lives to convincing Americans that
when it comes to neighborhoods and towns, they can make `em like
they used to. Kentlands, a new town in the suburban Maryland
countryside outside Washington, is the couple's most ambitious
project to get under way. Streets are narrow; houses are close
to one another and to the street; materials and basic styles are
reassuringly traditional. With any luck, in Kentlands the early
21st century will be the good old days.
</p>
<p> MALCOLM X HAT
</p>
<p> Seldom has such a complicated knot of racial politics and
hagiographic pride been expressed with such economy. Director
Spike Lee's baseball hat emblazoned with a silver X--created
to promote his forthcoming film on Malcolm X--is grass-roots
iconography of a high order. Two years ago, the
ubiquitous-superhero-logo-of-choice was that of a white
playboy-vigilante who dresses like a bat; now it is a real-life
black pimp turned philosopher.
</p>
<p> APPLE COMPUTER POWERBOOKS
</p>
<p> No large electronics company has set a higher standard for
product design than Apple. The genius of the Macintosh was that
it made using a real computer seem like children's fun and
games. For the new PowerBook 170, Apple and Lunar Design have
done the converse, creating a toylike object (it weighs 6.8 lbs.
and has a built-in video-game-style track ball) that has
serious power and looks more sexy than wholesome. And it's
practical: because notebook computers are often used away from
a desk, there are palm-rest surfaces between keyboard and lap
to prevent wrist cramping.
</p>
<p> DOUBLE-OR-NOTHING FURNITURE
</p>
<p> At last, proof that a product can be thoroughly '90s--simple, ingenious and cost- and space-saving--yet have nothing
to do with biodegradability. Marco Pasanella has designed a
handsome, amusing line of furniture in which each piece does
double duty: an ottoman also serves as a bookshelf, a bench has
built-in reading lamps, and on the seven-drawer bureau, the
