PETER EISENMAN

The Tailgating Architect
A lifelong football fan gets his dream job: designing a stadium from scratch

In 1997, Michael Rushman of the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals called architectural iconoclast Peter Eisenman to see if he would be interested in submitting a design for a new stadium. Do you know anything about football? Rushman asked. The 74-year-old Eisenman, famous for high-concept projects such as Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, replied that he did, in fact, know a few things about the sport. He explained how he spends Sundays every fall sitting in the nosebleed section of Giants Stadium drinking beer and eating hot dogs while cheering on his beloved team. Then he named the 1947 Chicago Cardinals backfield. He won the job a week later...

THE STANLEY DISCOVERY TEAM

The Tool-Doctors Are On Call
Where do new tools come from? Angry workmen and this R&D Squad. Meet the Stanley Discovery Team

The first time Jimmy Addison remembers thinking that the world needed a new breed of hammer, he was on a construction site in Texas, doing what he does for a living: talking to a construction worker. The guy was semi-successfully using the claw of a hammer to twist a 2x4 warped by the summer humidity. He sure wished his hammer did a better job at it, he said. Addison wrote that down...

ANTHONY ATALA

The Organ Farmer
A doctor’s quest to grow body parts from scratch could spell the end of waiting lists

Anthony Atala makes bladders. Not the plastic-model kind but actual living, human organs. Step into his office at Wake Forest University’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IRM), where the 48-year-old tissue engineer is director, and you’ll find a suite of climate-controlled chambers the size of hotel mini fridges. Inside, spheres of human bladder cells resembling deflated pink balloons divide and grow. Culled from patients with incontinence problems, these cells will assemble themselves over time, forming into brand-new replacement bladders for the cell donors...

SCOTT SHIPLEY

Rapid Development
A pro paddler has built the biggest river park ever, and he’s just getting started

Scott Shipley is standing on an island in the North Carolina woods surrounded by whitewater. It’s a familiar perspective for the former Olympic kayaker, who trained for years on the tumbling rivers west of here, but today he’s not scouting rapids. He’s talking into his cellphone, orchestrating the movements of forklifts from the vantage point of a concrete dam at the center of the island. An island, not incidentally, that he designed himself...