Design

THE ROLAND PARK Second Presbyterian Church looked absolutely stunning last Saturday for the wedding of Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer and Richard Matthew Dohler. Thousands of wildflowers, miles of lace ribbons and tulle, and window sills decorated with Singapore orchids set the stage for the nuptials of the daughter of pop music star Donna Summer and her first husband, Helmut Sommer,and the son of Dick and Bonna Dohler, he's an Ellicott City builder.The church was filled with the music of German trumpeteer Langston Fitzgerald and selections of Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi, played by the church's music director Margaret Budd on the organ.

John and Leila Juracek's British friends tell them their 1929 Tudor Revival house in Baltimore's Homeland neighborhood is more like an English cottage than the country cottages in England. The L-shaped exterior is of 18-inch-thick stone dressed in ivy and topped with a second-story, timber and stucco construction. Formal gardens grace the back of the home, while inside, leaded-glass mullioned windows with chintz and toile draperies, solid traditional furniture and needlepoint rugs impart a heady sense of living on the pages of an Agatha Christie novel.

Four trucks laden with 100 slot machines arrived early Wednesday morning at the nearly completed casino at Arundel Mills mall. For the next two hours, workers wheeled banks of the gleaming new machines, one by one, inside on hand trucks. Installation of the first set of slots moved Maryland Live! Casino, the state's largest, another step closer to its scheduled opening in three months. That's progress for Maryland's lackluster gambling program, which has yet to be fully implemented more than three years after voters approved five slots locations statewide.

Towson University will receive $2 million in state and private grant funds to start a new program designed to increase production of math and science teachers. The initiative will be based on the 15-year-old UTeach program, which more than doubled the output of math and science teachers at the University of Texas in Austin and is widely regarded as a model for training teachers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. UTeach offers financial incentives for math, science and computer science majors to train and enter the workforce as teachers.

High Point, N.C. -- Dakota Jackson, a leading designer of high-end contemporary furniture, once made his living catching bullets in his teeth."I began flamboyantly," he admits. The 45-year-old designer -- at the International Home Furnishings Market to introduce his first mass-market collection for the Lane Co. -- furrows his patrician brow and smoothes the silvery hair that curls over his collar and almost matches the color of his elegant suit.Although he's talking about his design career, Mr. Jackson's early life was flamboyant as well.

Ron Pivarnik steadied a long, slender piece of wood on his work table and quickly marked it using his carpenter's pencil. The ordinary timber was slated to be part of something more spectacular: a bakery-themed piece of furniture for one of the bedrooms in the largest home in the history of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." "We're trying to take their vision and make it tangible," said Pivarnik, 40, a self-employed project manager from Glen Burnie who spent an entire week making custom furniture for the recipients of the Northeast Baltimore home: seven girls from Boys Hope Girls Hope, an international nonprofit that places bright, at-risk children into group-home-style settings.

When Johns Hopkins University civil engineering student Erin Kelly was assigned a class project to design a steel structure, her thoughts went to her sorority "big sister," Miriam Frankl. Frankl, a fellow Hopkins student, was killed last year in a hit-and-run crash involving a chronic drunk driver while she was crossing St. Paul Street near campus. Kelly thought it would be fitting to make her project the design of a pedestrian bridge that might keep other Hopkins students safe. So she teamed up with two engineering school classmates, Charlotte Healy and Alison Ignatowski, to research what it would take to build a bridge across Charles Street — the main north-south road through campus — and whether there was a demand for it. Kelly said that would be a better location for the bridge than the site on St. Paul Street where Frankl was killed.

Baltimore-based RTKL Associates Inc. recently beat two international rivals to win a contract to design an iconic structure for a city along the Yangtze River in China. Last winter, RTKL and two other architectural firms — one British, the other French — were invited by a real estate subsidiary of Chinese steel conglomerate Jiangsu Shagang Group to submit plans for a twin-tower, mixed-use project in Zhangjiagang, a city of about 1.5 million people 60 miles west of Shanghai.

DETROIT -- What if an engineer could design a car on a computer screen, then don a pair of magic glasses and walk around the image of the car he designed? What if he could get in, close the door, adjust the mirrors and play with the controls of this imaginary car?Phil Little says it isn't a matter of "what if." It is a matter of "when." The technology is called virtual reality. And he intends to be ready for it.Mr. Little is director of computer graphics for the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, a school that has turned out many prominent auto designers in the past four decades, as well as product designers and commercial artists.

There are no wallflowers among the hippest cover-ups today. Walls are taking on patterns that are big, bold, color-crazy and modern, although sometimes rooted in traditional design. Some trend-spotters say this signals a return to more lavish, over-the-top and possibly even cluttered interiors. It may be a reaction to of-the-moment minimalism that seems to pervade design magazines and retail catalogs. What's different about this renewed craving to put up paper, something we haven't seen a rush to do since the 1980s, is that even some diehard modernists dig it. The pattern may be startling.

Ashley Boycher has always considered public museums "magic places. " "Growing up with modest means in rural Louisiana sure will make a kid curious about the world," said Boycher. That curiosity never left her, and she now has been at the Walters for 18 months, designing interiors for all temporary exhibitions and touching up permanent displays. Next month, you can see her handiwork in the exhibition "Public Property. " "We will showcase our visitors' voices and choices more than ever before," she said.

The master developer of Columbia's Town Center aims to begin construction by early next year on a $100 million apartment and retail complex, the area's first new housing in a decade. The Metropolitan Downtown Columbia will be a six-story, 380-unit development that the Howard Hughes Corp. plans to build in a joint venture with Kettler of McLean, Va., and Orchard Development of Ellicott City, on land next to The Mall in Columbia. Rents are expected to range from $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment to $2,800 for a three-bedroom unit — making them among the highest in the region.

It's 10 in the morning and Tracy Campola has already been up for hours, putting the finishing touches on one of 14 racing silks that are due by the end of the week. The Arbutus resident is surprisingly calm, considering that she's up to her neck in orders and less than three days away from the state's largest horse race — the Preakness. Campola's calm demeanor and attention to detail brought her success as a jockey agent, but the long hours, constant travel to racetracks in other states, and the desire to spend time with her elderly father sent her in search of a different career.

To make room for outfielder Xavier Avery on their 25- and 40-man rosters, the Orioles have optioned reliever Stu Pomeranz back to Triple-A Norfolk and designated infielder Matt Antonelli for assignment. Pomeranz is somewhat of a surprise, especially since he's thrown four scoreless innings in two relief appearances -- and seemed a natural fit for the bullpen's absent long-relief role -- since his arrival a week ago. Antonelli, a former first-round draft pick of the Padres in 2006, has been struggling at Norfolk, hitting .204/.357/.280 with four doubles, one homer and seven RBIs in 29 games.

The Orioles continue to make roster moves at a dizzying pace, the latest occurring Saturday afternoon when third baseman Mark Reynolds was placed on the disabled list with a strained oblique. To replace Reynolds on the 25-man roster, the Orioles purchased the contract of veteran infielder-outfielder Bill Hall and immediately inserted him into left field and in the seventh spot of the starting lineup against the Tampa Bay Rays. Hall, who was signed last month after failing to make the New York Yankees out of spring training, was not on the 40-man roster, so the Orioles had to make a corresponding move.

The Orioles have designated Brad Bergesen for assignment, according to a source. The move has not been made official, but the club needs to make a move by tonight because infielder/outfielder Bill Hall has been called up from Triple-A Norfolk. The 26-year-old Bergesen, a former fourth-rounder in 2004 by the Orioles, is 17-24 with a 4.68 ERA in 83 games, 59 starts, for the Orioles in his career. He did not make the team out of spring and has been in Norfolk, where he is 1-2 with a 5.13 ERA in eight games (six starts)

"Art Is Work: Graphic Design, Interiors, Objects and Illustrations," by Milton Glaser. The Overlook Press. 272 pages. $85. For anyone fascinated by objects, Milton Glaser's "Art Is Work" provides a rare and impressive glimpse into the mind of one of America's leading designers. The book is filled with images, of course. But its strength is not just final products -- rather the various stages of reaching completion, shown in sketches with captions that explain Glaser's thoughts as each project became real.

A "hardhat tour" of an old brewery that's coming back to life, art exhibits, talks on preservation and waterfront design, and a costume ball in a former department store are among the highlights of Baltimore Architecture Week, which starts Thursday. The Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects sponsors the event each year to call attention to the built environment and what architects are doing to improve it. This year's event spans 11 days, making it Architecture Week and a Half.

The Orioles have placed right-handed reliever Matt Lindstrom on the disabled list with a right middle finger injury in order to make space on the 25-man roster for tonight's starter, left-hander Dana Eveland. Eveland's contract was purchased from Triple-A Norfolk, and the Orioles designated minor-leaguer Zelous Wheeler for assignment in a corresponding 40-man roster move. Lindstrom allowed his first earned runs of the season in the second game of Thursday's doubleheader (3 runs, two earned, in one inning)

A decade-long vision to have Baltimore become the next hub of fashion and design will begin to take shape as construction begins at the old Lebow Clothing Factory, which beginning in fall 2013, will be the home of the Baltimore Design School. City and education leaders gathered Monday to celebrate the official groundbreaking for the 120,000-square-foot building, which will begin undergoing a $25 million renovation to accommodate aspiring fashion artists in grades six through 12. The school, co-founded by Baltimore state Sen. Catherine Pugh and Fred Lazarus, president of the Maryland Institute College of Art, is designed after the Baltimore School for the Arts and will focus on nonperformance arts like fashion, graphic design and architecture.