Barbara Penner

The French Chef’s focus on function over style in the kitchen boosted the accessibility movement that became known as Universal Design.

Robert C. Weaver was a central figure in the 20th-century battles for housing justice and civil rights in the United States. His life and legacy deserve to be better known.

What does the disappearance of once popular or ubiquitous objects — ranging from tools and equipment to structures and infrastructures — tell us about the world we have created?

The first installment of a narrative survey focusing on the massive move to emergency online instruction.

Decades ago Catherine Bauer argued passionately that governments must ensure that all citizens are well housed — a call to action more vital than ever as our shelter crisis deepens.

Issues of gender, disability, and user-centeredness have long been relegated to the margins of design history. A new look at postwar home economics complicates the prevailing narratives.

Reyner Banham was not only an extraordinary scholar but also a prodigiously productive journalist. Consider his remarkable analysis of a legendary crash-test dummy.

The radical reformers who sought to redesign the American bathroom, and the inhibitions and taboos that got in the way.

It may be the smallest room in the house, but the humble bathroom is where our daily domestic lives connect with large-scale infrastructures of water, waste, and sanitation.

The politics of sanitation in post-apartheid South Africa, where toilets have become potent symbols of human dignity and equal rights.

An architectural historian reviews a digital video installation by Peter Greenaway, part of the series “Nine Classic Paintings Revisited,” shown at the Venice Biennale.

Honeymoon spot, casino resort, Superfund site. Niagara has always been a place of extreme contrasts, where the sublime and magnificent cozies up to the tawdry and brutal.