This issue’s theme, celebrating modern design and architecture across the United States, is a favorite for the creative team because it gives us a chance to take a Janus-like editorial approach—at once we survey the past and look to the future.
Beyond taking our readers inside newly constructed houses in the Midwest, Northeast, South, and the West Coast, we take a moment to explore how the superefficient icient Passive House standard, long a staple of European single-family home design, is appearing in apartment buildings in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and in Portland and Eugene, Oregon, helping low- and moderate-income residents save on living expenses (page 76). We share the story of the creative adaptive reuse of an unsung modernist gem in Los Angeles— Welton Becket’s New York Life Building—resurrected as a campus…