A friend’s wedding recently brought me to Boston. Not having visited for many years, I was now able to explore the city with more admiration for the styles of the buildings, the architects that built them, and some of the challenges that came with constructing them - making me appreciate walking around downtown Boston that much more. Here are some of my favorites.

The Art Museum relocated from Merion, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia in 2012 and boasts a large collection of French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern paintings. I enjoyed seeing many Seurat, Monet, Rousseau, early Picasso and Cezanne paintings (to name a few) but couldn’t help constantly admire the building’s architecture and details.

Nestled on Detroit's East Jefferson Avenue stands a Tudor-style building that has been quietly shaping American ceramic art for over 120 years. Pewabic Pottery, founded in 1903, represents one of the oldest continuously operating ceramic facilities in the United States and serves as a living testament to Detroit's rich artistic heritage.

A new project recently brought us to Michigan. In our free time we explored Detroit's Michigan Central Station. The station stands as one of the most remarkable comeback stories in American architecture. This magnificent Beaux-Arts masterpiece has transformed from a symbol of urban decay into a shining beacon of Detroit's renewal, and its journey is nothing short of extraordinary.

European design has always been ahead of its time and I for one believe that its the French Designers that do it best! Well… Italian too but that can be it’s own blog post.

Three French interior designers stand out to me. We often turn to their work for inspiration. All three are well known for their attention to light, volumes and details, transforming the spaces they work on to be contemporary and elegant.

The Darwin D. Martin sits in a beautiful neighborhood called Parkside. As you make your way through Parkside, you pass hundreds of beautiful old homes. The Darwin D. Martin house is a radical deviation from the rest of the neighborhood, a neighborhood filled with Victorian and shingle style homes. The home is a perfect example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style; it’s characterized by low, horizontal lines that intend to blend the building in with its flat landscape.

Built by the Franciscan monks in 1867, the "Paterskirk" in Mechelen, Belgium looks like an ordinary church- which is what I thought it was prior to entering. As I walked in I was greeted by a doorman ready to take my suitcase.

In 2009 the Paterskirk church opened as a 4-star hotel known as Martin’s Patershof. Nowhere else in the world is there a five-story hotel with 56 rooms inscribed within a church.

The Dansaekhwa movement emphasized going back to nature. The return to nature denied the artist as a subject. Working on canvas, artists paid attention to the properties of soft objects and renounced figuration. Use of hanji Korean paper and earthy tones became popular.

As you turn onto the Rue Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakech, Morocco, you hear many different languages coming from the line of tourists waiting to enter the Jardin Majorelle. The famous garden was started in 1923 when artist Jacques Majorelle bought a four-acre plot of land on the border of a palm grove. Eventually Majorelle purchased adjacent land, growing the garden to ten acres.