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Vital, convivial, and humble” is how Alan Wanzenberg characterizes the oeuvre of architect William Wurster, one of his aesthetic heroes. But those words could well apply to many of the houses and apartments the Manhattan-based Wanzenberg has designed—in styles spanning Shaker simplicity and Art Deco elegance—for clients such as actor Richard Gere and philanthropist Sandy Hill. Cool and calm, each home is suffused with resonant natural materials and understated yet expressive details. His staircases, for instance, are tours de force—here a wood-paneled ascent perforated with rhythmic squares and circles à la Charles Rennie Mackintosh, there a brawny industrial-chic ribbon of moody metal. Wanzenberg, whose three-decade career is recounted in the new monograph Journey: The Life and Times of an American Architect (Pointed Leaf Press), often favors open rooms that lead into one another so “the architecture never looks quite the scale it actually is.” alanwanzenbergom

Meet the other architects and designers on the 2014 AD100 list.