When Toshiyuki Kita graduated from Naniwa College, Osaka, in 1964, he immediately became a furniture designer. After working in Italy for designers Mario Bellini and Silvio Coppola, he quickly built a reputation as one of the "most European" of Japanese designers. This reputation stands today, as he

Bright, Charming, Functional, Pop, Quirky

Geoffrey Bawa doesn't work without first reading the lines of the land, the influence of the climate, the kinds of things that grow here or there. His is an architecture that conforms as it adorns. He thinks through the landscape, opens space up to it, lets the outside mingle within. His structures a

Charming, Composed, Elegant, Modernist architecture, Opulent

As social animals, we are forced into constant acts of duplicity. Certain situations demand that we act ebullient when we feel depressed, polite when we feel hatred, social when we feel hermetic. Such is the conflicted nature of the social mask. Exchanging these masks at a moment's notice seems to be

Artificial life, Bubblicious, Charming, Hi-tech, Interactive installation, Open-ended

The electrifying artistic force that was Elvis Presley can't be contained in a single account. Variously thought of as the King, Elvis the Pelvis, a degenerate, and a teen icon, Presley was the living confluence of America's multiple cultures. Born to poor parents in Tupelo, Mississippi, he lived w

Charming, Cool, Lush, Masculine, Mythic, Oldies rock, Pioneering, Pop, Sexy