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Mara Fisher

Mara is a writer, researcher, and designer based in Los Angeles. A guiding interest in her work is design history, including topics related to architecture, ephemera, and hyperlocal geographic areas. Her writing has appeared in the Graphite Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts.


Mara's Articles

Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
An Exhibition at Oxford Highlights the Sensorial Splendor of Books
10 minute read
Courtesy Lara Call Gastinger
Botanical Artist Lara Call Gastinger on Seeing Scents
7 minute read
Courtesy the Chipstone Foundation
Glenn Adamson on “Material Intelligence” and Why It Matters
13 minute read
The Future Library Forest. (Photo: Rio Gandara. Courtesy Helsingin Sanomat)
At a Library in Oslo, the Books Can’t Be Read Until 2114
5 minute read
“Windy” spins on New York’s High Line. (Courtesy Meriem Bennani, High Line Art, and Audemars Piguet)
On Manhattan’s High Line, Experimentation Leads to a Whirling, Whizzing, Whooshing Sculpture
5 minute read
A still from Kandis Williams’s multiscreen work “Triadic Ballet” (2021). (Courtesy the artist and the Rosenkranz Collection.)
In Aspen, an Exhibition Meditates on “Mountain Time”
5 minute read
(Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani)
A Book About Joints Celebrates the Big Ideas Behind Tiny Details
4 minute read
Maria Cristina Didero. (Photo: Stefan Giftthaler)
Design Miami’s Curatorial Director Sees Art Fairs as Powerful Platforms for Cultural Exchange
8 minute read
Alexandre Benjamin Navet. (Courtesy Van Cleef & Arpels)
Alexandre Benjamin Navet Presents Flowers, Real and Imagined, on New York’s Fifth Avenue
7 minute read
Installation view of “Plastic: Remaking Our World.” (Photo: Bettina Matthiessen)
At Germany’s Vitra Design Museum, an Exhibition Considers the Promises and Problems of Plastic
6 minute read
Cover of “Nichetto Studio: Projects, Collaborations, and Conversations in Design”
The Prolific, Genre-Defying Output of Luca Nichetto
5 minute read
Ceramic vessels by Omar Sosa
These Earthenware Vessels by Omar Sosa Invite Improvisation and Play
3 minute read
“Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand” by John Markoff
A New Biography Looks Back on Stewart Brand’s Planetary Impact
12 minute read
A patchwork tapestry by Megumi Shauna Arai.
Megumi Shauna Arai’s Enchanting Textiles Are Patchworks of Stories and Traditions
4 minute read
Audio works from Nancy Holt’s “Tours” and “Visual Sound Zones” series in The Warehouse Dallas exhibition “Sound as Sculpture.” (Photo: Kevin Todora)
In Dallas, the First In-Depth Presentation of Nancy Holt’s Audio Works
4 minute read
Sky High Farm Workwear’s recycled denim chore coat and double-knee pants. (Photo: ​​Ramie Ahmed)
Clothes Fit for Modern Farmers, With a Message
3 minute read
Journalist and novelist John Colapinto
The Magic and Miracle of the Human Voice
5 minute read
Ecologist Carole Collet. (Photo: Misha Haller)
What the Fashion Industry Can Learn From Biology
11 minute read
Jana Winderen using a hydrophone to record underwater in the Dominican Republic. (Photo: José Alejandro Alvarez)
By Listening to the Ocean, Jana Winderen Exposes the Vital Role of Sound in Aquatic Life
3 minute read
Vollebak’s Indestructible Puffer. (Courtesy Vollebak)
From an Indestructible Puffer to 100-Year Pants, Vollebak Makes Clothes for the Future
4 minute read
A spread from “How to Take a Japanese Bath.” (Courtesy Stone Bridge Press)
For Leonard Koren, Taking a Japanese Bath is the “Ultimate Experience”
10 minute read
A hallway in AORA’s virtual gallery. (Courtesy AORA)
These Virtual Exhibitions Draw on the Real-Life Health Benefits of Art
8 minute read
CW&T’s Time Since Launch clock. (Courtesy CW&T)
A Brooklyn Studio Whose Creations Alter Our Perspectives on Time
3 minute read
Walden meditation cushion and mat
A Brooklyn Wellness Brand That Harnesses the Power of Good Design
4 minute read
Soft Baroque’s coffee table for Vaarnii. (Courtesy Vaarnii)
How a Finnish Furniture Company Explores the Potential of Pine
4 minute read
A Smallhold minifarm installed at a Whole Foods in Brooklyn. (Photo: Deirdre Lewis)
Smallhold’s Mushroom Minifarms Give New Meaning to the Term “Local Food”
3 minute read
Wild Design book by Kimberly Ridley
Nature’s Functional Forms, Billions of Years in the Making
3 minute read
Cheese expert Erika Kubick
How Cheeses Get Their Funk, According to a Self-Proclaimed Cheese Evangelist
7 minute read
Mycologist Giuliana Furci
How Fungi Can Save the World
4 minute read
A visitor at the Van Abbemuseum’s “Delinking and Relinking” exhibition. (Photo: Joep Jacobs)
When Scent Meets the Museum, Do We See Art Differently?
4 minute read
Modernist Pizza book
Modernist Cuisine Applies Its Signature Science-Meets-Art Approach to Pizza
3 minute read
“Untitled” (2018–2019), by Kazunori Hamana and Yukiko Kuroda.
At a Los Angeles Exhibition, “Almost-Dysfunctional” Japanese Pottery That Conveys the Circle of Life
3 minute read
Return Brewing’s inaugural beers, Heathenous and Polished Pilsner.
In New York’s Hudson Valley, a Brewery of Innovation and Intent
3 minute read