Marina Abramović has garnered attention with performance works characterized by extreme ambition and discipline. In her new memoir, Walk Through Walls, Abramović cathartically writes on life, love, art, and loss.

In a weird world that’s getting weirder every day, Karim Rashid is the designer we deserve.

Peter Marino is a self-proclaimed “black sheep” of the architecture world. Well known for his black leather attire, Marino has designed many of the world’s most forward-thinking retail temples.

FROM THE ARCHIVE: Don of contemporary furniture Giulio Cappellini has had a decades-long career helming the family business. The architect, art director, and talent scout of international design excellence focuses on real products, not on lifestyle.

Ai Weiwei makes art. His own government has barred him from leaving China, and so, for the artist and activist, architect and anomaly, the show must go on—without him.

Daniel Libeskind builds on very big ideas. Shards and fragments, symbolic undertones, and a philosophical approach inform the architect’s work.

Richard Meier, renowned as a member of the New York Five and recipient of some of the architecture world’s highest accolades, is more interested in the ongoing challenges of design innovation than in slowing down.

Thatcher Wine of Juniper Books has turned his hobby of custom-curated book jackets into a business venture of functional art.

One of the intriguing aspects of the defunct Soviet regime was its special regard for traditional art forms like opera and ballet. The result is that even today, two decades after the collapse of communism, classical Russian culture is still preserved and celebrated as it is nowhere in the West.

Netherlands-based Droog is a design company that’s been, at various times, a store, a consultancy, and an all-purpose think tank for new ideas in interiors, furniture, and more. In just the last few months, the group has become something else as well: a hotelier.