Downtown Seattle is quite literally marked by growth. Cranes clutter the skyline and diggers burrow into the ground, laying the foundation for a dramatically different cityscape on the rise. A June 2016 report by the Downtown Seattle Association counted 65 major buildings under construction in the area—the most since the organization began keeping a tally in 2005. Already the tenth densest city in U.S., Seattle is on pace to move up the ranks.

Architect and developer Cary Tamarkin is a man both out of step with time and totally in synch. He doesn’t own a smartphone, he believes “technology will ultimately be the ruination of our society,” and he plays bluegrass and other “old timey tunes” on banjo and mandolin. And yet, Tamarkin’s prescient real estate investments have led to a thriving—and lucrative—career.

Margaret Montgomery, sustainability leader at architecture firm NBBJ, believes that daily access to nature is a basic human right. At the Seattle-based NBBJ, she’s working to strengthen our connection to the natural environment in a variety of contexts, among them the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s headquarters in Seattle.

Through repetitive, mindful weaving, Erin M. Riley keeps her impulse to pluck her hair out under control. At age 13, Erin M. Riley started plucking her hair as a way to relieve stress caused by her family’s substance abuse problems. Throughout her childhood on Cape Cod, her dad used drugs and her mom drank.

This blind travel writer featured on This American Life says the world gets smaller for him when he travels, not bigger. On Ryan Knighton’s 18th birthday, his doctor told him he had retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a progressive genetic disease that leads to night blindness, tunnel vision, and eventually total blindness.

Known for his massive, photorealistic portraits, American artist Chuck Close says he owes all of his artistic success to his limitations. If Chuck Close had his way, we’d all walk around with name tags and short bios pinned to our chests. While riding on the subway, he once failed to recognize an ex-lover whom he had lived with for a year only two years prior.

As the engineer behind the Sydney Opera House and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Ove Arup was a singular talent. But it was his collaborative, multidisciplinary approach that made the greatest impact on the built environment, and helped grow a uniquely innovative firm. Today, his eponymous company employs 12,000 planners, designers, engineers, and consultants, in 40 countries.

The impressionist painter completed nearly 400 paintings after rheumatoid arthritis deformed his hands. In Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting, “The Bathers” (“Les Baigneuses”), two young women lounge in the foreground. They are round and relaxed, all rosy curves and pink flesh on a bed of grass and blossoms.

Stink bombs, it turns out, are not merely weapons made for high school hallways. As science writer Mary Roach documents in her new book, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, the U.S. Department of Defense has invested considerable time and money into developing "the world's most objectionable smell."

Sick of pitiful gluten-free meals, Oakland chef Lizzy Boelter set out to prove that having celiac disease doesn’t need to end anyone’s love affair with delicious fried foods. The only building on a block that feels more like a small traffic island, Oakland’s Grease Box restaurant is both unassuming and unexpected.

In their new exhibit, Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo explore immigration's human cost through personal belongings found along the US-Mexico border. In 2011, the photographer Richard Misrach saw experimental composer and performance artist Guillermo Galindo play a five-minute composition using instruments made from migrants' discarded belongings found near the US-Mexico border.

Pamela Babey is an expert collector and creator of memories. A founding principal of San Francisco interior design firm BAMO, Babey brings an expansive curiosity, a flair for pattern and color, and an eye for artisan crafts to luxury projects around the world. With a reverence for the past that matches her love of the modern, her work often combines the two in unexpected ways.

In 2008, San Francisco-based architect Chris Downey underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor that was pressing against his optic nerve. The surgery was successful, but three days later his sight was gone. Given the visual nature of his profession, that could have been a career-ending event.

Seattle-based LMN Architects, winner of the American Institute of Architects 2016 Architecture Firm Award, creates buildings that foster interactions between individuals, communities, and the natural world. Since opening in 1979, the firm has advanced our understanding of what sustainable design means through such innovative projects as the Vancouver Convention Centre West, which features a 6-acre bird habitat on top and an underwater reef below.

Amsterdam-based designer Piet Boon began his career as a frustrated contractor. Clients kept saddling him with either beautiful designs that weren’t functional, or functional designs that weren’t beautiful. Boon thought he could do better, so in 1982 he founded his eponymous design studio. Turns out his instincts were right.

Nearly 60 years after its hotel heyday, Cuba is back in business with U.S. hospitality companies. Earlier this month, Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Marriott International were among a slate of hospitality and travel companies to gain approval from the U.S. Treasury Department to operate in Cuba.