In our ongoing series 'Travel by Design," we've asked the world's
leading architects to act as tour guides for the places that have
most influenced their work. So far, Richard Meier has taken us to
New York City, Michael Graves has told us about Rome, and Jon Jerde
has shared his fascination with Les Beaux, a little village in France.
For
the fourth installment of the series, renowned architect Eric
Owen Moss -- whose prolific body of work includes the Queens Museum
of Art in New York and an innovate redesign of a huge block of
industrial buildings in Culver City, Calif. -- takes us to a source
of major inspiration, St. Petersburg, Russia. Eric has chosen
St. Petersburg because he's pursuing the job to redesign the fabled
Mariinsky Theater, home of the Kirov Ballet. He's already made
several trips to Russia and, as you'll hear, Eric is in awe of
the city's history, going back all the way to Peter the Great.