Ikebana & Other Infidelities By Coy Howard

In Ikebana & Other Infidelities, Coy Howard crafts a mesmerizing interplay of space, form, and impermanence—where architecture dissolves into poetry and every arrangement hums with quiet rebellion. Like the ancient art of ikebana, his compositions balance tension and harmony, but with a subversive twist: the infidelities. Here, geometry betrays expectation, lines flirt with collapse, and stillness pulses with latent motion. Howard’s work is a meditation on the beauty of the unresolved—a stem bent just beyond its natural arc, a plane suspended in mid-breath. The "infidelities" are not betrayals but liberations: from rigidity, from tradition, from the tyranny of function. Each piece whispers that imperfection is its own perfection, that the fleeting is eternal if framed by a daring eye. To witness Ikebana & Other Infidelities is to wander through a garden of controlled chaos, where every shadow, every negative space, is an invitation to reimagine the world. Howard doesn’t arrange—he seduces. And in the end, we are complicit in the infidelity, longing for the next delicate rupture. A reverie of structure and sin, where even the silence is charged with desire.

Coy Howard is a designer living in Venice, California. He has won a broad range of awards for his work: three national citations for design excellence from Progressive Architecture magazine, Architectural Record magazine Record Houses of 1988, the Woodworkers Institute of America Award for Excellence, and five awards from the Western Art Directors Club. His furniture has been accepted for inclusion into the permanent collections of the most prominent design collections of the United States: The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and The Denver Art Museum. Examples of his graphic designs are held in several international museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Howard has directed two educational programs; the Undergraduate Program at SCI-Arc, and the Environmental Arts Program at the Otis School of Art and Design which he founded. He is currently a Professor at SCI-Arc. Honorary positions Howard has held are the 2008 Eliel Saarinen Distinguished Professor at the University of Michigan, and the Bernoudy Architect in Residence at The American Academy in Rome in 2011.

In 2016 Design Intelligence selected Howard as one of 25 of the most admired architectural educators in America.