Interviews

James Brayton Hall has since 2010 served as executive ­director of one of the Northeast’s most active and successful historical preservation organizations, the Providence Preservation Society. New England Home’s Kyle Hoep­ner queried him recently about his past, his mission and the importance of preservation to our collective sense of self.

Kyle Hoepner: How did you find yourself heading PPS?

Christina Romann and Craig Smith have been collaborating for many years on the design of luxury hospitality projects around the world, first with various firms in New York City and more recently (since 2008) as principals of C2 Limited Design Associates in Fairfield. New England Home’s Connecticut talked with them just before the holidays about how their business and their partnership have evolved.

John Derian spent much of his youth collecting and assembling found objects, creating outdoor “rooms” composed of twigs, branches and stones. By the time he was in seventh grade, his watercolor paintings were winning awards. A Boston native and New York transplant, Derian now oversees three shops, a line of furniture and a decoupage collection that is carried in stores throughout the United States—including a shop in Provincetown, Massachusetts—Canada and Europe. I caught up with him recently at his shop in New York City’s East Village.

Fresh from the successes of organizing 2010’s inaugural Maine Prize for Architecture and the Storefront for Architecture exhibition, Maine Modern: 50 Years of Modern Architecture in Maine, architect Carol Wilson has moved on to a new challenge equally close to her heart: curating a new show this summer at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Haystack’s Architecture: Vision and Legacy will feature work by architects influenced by Edward Larrabee Barnes, who in 1961 created the school’s award-winning campus, now widely considered an American classic.

Christy MacLear, for the past five years executive director of the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, will be leaving at the end of November to become the first executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Yet her departure coincides with the fruition of Modern Views, a major project she helped initiate to raise funds and awareness for two seminal sites of modern architecture in the United States: the Glass House itself and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Illinois.