“Celebrate what you want to see more of”...
Thomas J. Peters

THERE ARE SO many reasons to celebrate; the coming of spring, fresh starts, new beginnings and of course the Fourth Annual Suite Sixteen Issue is one of them! In this issue we share with you, sixteen individuals, who in our opinion, are making their mark in the design world. This is never an easy task, to narrow down our list to just sixteen individuals, but we always seem to manage. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading about them as much as we did finding them.

Our Art Attack featurette this issue takes you to Edmonton, Canada where Los-Angeles based architect Randall Stout transformed an 85,000 square foot concrete structure into a glass and steel sculpture including a 625 foot ‘ribbon’ that winds it’s way around the building. Our staff writer, Harlene Ellin sits down with the museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator to tell us how this amazing structure evolved.

With the coming of Spring, come rites of passage and keeping that spirit of tradition in mind, we invited Moving Design to pick 10 of the brightest stars from Harrington College of Design’s Communication Department to give us their point of view on our design world. A Special thanks to Richard Wright of Wright Auctions who was this project’s patron, he closes the feature with his ‘virtual applause’.

As we put the finishing touches on this issue before sending it to the printer, my thoughts are already filled with optimism and anticipation of an exciting year ahead of us. Designers are calling to share with me their new projects that were on hold, principals at the major architectural firms are telling me that they are hiring again and showrooms are asking me to help them staff up as well. I’m thrilled to see our design community full of energy and optimism once again.

Speaking of new beginnings, I am excited to share with you a new venture we have embarked on ourselves, the i4design Art Consulting Group. After having been informally helping designers place art this past year, combined with a lot of encouragement from architects and designers to do this, we have launched this newly formed division designed to serve as an extension of architectural and interior design firms seeking to find works of art for commercial, public and residential placement. Exciting stuff!

Special thanks to the many individuals who helped to make this issue such a success, Erin McClellan, our new staff photographer and good friend, Trisha Star, our make-up and hair stylist who is from an eco-friendly salon in Bucktown, Rick Valicenti, for all his hard work with mentoring the Harrington Students, Lisa Skolnik, for her tireless and unrelenting energy to make sure we met our deadlines and of course our Design Diva, Zulema Covarrubias, who designed one of my favorite issues of i4design.i4