James Wines (b. 1932) is an American architect and artist who founded SITE—Sculpture in the Environment—in New York City in 1970. His work spans buildings, land-art interventions, and product designs, all aimed at turning everyday commercial or civic settings into arenas for environmental and cultural critique. Early sketches often splice ink drawings with photographs of the site, hinting at façades that crack open, sink, or sprout trees to reveal the systems behind consumer life. That spirit shaped the famously “de-architected” BEST Products showrooms of the 1970s, the asphalt-entombed Ghost Parking Lot in Connecticut, and later projects such as the floating McDonald’s in Illinois and the original Shake Shack kiosk in Madison Square Park. Materials stay ordinary—cinder block, chain-link, poured asphalt—but are deployed with theatrical wit, inviting passers-by to question what architecture is supposed to do. A longtime New York City resident, Wines balances practice with teaching and writing; he has held visiting posts worldwide and served as professor of architecture at Penn State University. Now in his nineties, he continues to lecture, draw by hand daily, and guide SITE’s collaborations, maintaining an outspoken commitment to ecological thinking and public engagement.