October 2010
13 posts
4 tags
GourmetLive: The Architecture of Food
Luckily for me, since I don’t own an iPad (or an iPhone, for that matter, which has begun to make me seem like a freak) my first story for GourmetLive is now online. When asked if there was anything to write about design and food this instantly came to mind.
Jam-making jams, fertilized grow pockets, edible schoolyards, skyscraper farms. Every day my Twitter feed, nominally devoted to ...
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What I Would Have Bought in Sweden
Had the exchange rate not been so disastrous, my luggage so stuffed. Pattern porn, if you will.
10 Swedish Designers, Rope oilcloth
Svenskt Tenn, Elephant linen
Polarn O. Pyret, onesie, Landscape Print
Lotta Kuhlhorn pear mugs
Maria Dahlgren, Breakfast in Bed Tray (so many trays!)
Mon Amie porcelain, Rorstrand
Viola Grasten “Festivo” fabric, Ljungbergs Textiltryck
...
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Join the Conversation!
I am hosting this week’s Glass House Conversations, inspired by the comments (on and off the blogosphere) in reaction to my negative review of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Small Scale, Big Change” exhibition.
Here’s what I said:
This is the museum’s second foray into the world of social and sustainable design, after last winter’s successful “Rising ...
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AN Friday Review: Harry Weese
Inadvertent mid-century modern week on A Bit Late draws to a close with Harry Weese. Read me on Alexander Girard here, Warren Platner here, and alarm bells for Harry Bertoia’s bronze screen for Manufacturers Hanover (SOM, 1954) here.
Today on The Architect’s Newspaper site, I review the new book The Architecture of Harry Weese. I was dreaming of a monograph on Weese only a few months...
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Northern Highlights
European Environment Agency, Copenhagen
I don’t usually do photo posts, but while I am mentally processing my trip to Denmark and Sweden, I thought I would share some architecture, design, foliage moments from the trip. I think the theme is texture.
Live 2001, Malmo [Sweden = amazing ivies and trees en espalier]
Gruntvigskirken, Copenhagen
Central Train Station (under...
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In Dwell: Platner's Opulent Modernism
Can’t get more fabulous than that, right? The CBS Ground Floor Restaurant, circa 1964.
I am a little obsessed with Warren Platner. Partly because no one else seems to be, and I find work like this very hard to ignore. In the tome-like Eero Saarinen catalog, to which I contributed, Platner was mentioned only a handful of times, despite being the hand and eye behind a number of the Saarinen...
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On DO: Girard + Folk Art
As faithful readers of this blog know, I had hoped to be writing a monograph on Alexander Girard right now. A minor figure in my dissertation, and in many histories of mid-century modernism, Girard fascinates me as an architect who refused to play the skyscraper game, focusing his considerable talents on restaurants, textiles, exhibitions and murals. His work looks exuberant, and sometimes...
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FT Weekend: People in glass houses
Usually it feels churlish, biting the hand that feeds, to draw back the curtain on reporting. But in the case of my story, People in glass houses, for FT Weekend, every step of the process of spending the night in two National Trust properties was such a contrast to my assignment to experience living in a glass house and an 18th century plantation, I just can’t help it. If the lovely women...
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Change Observer: "Small Scale" Reviewed
Today on Change Observer, my review of the Museum of Modern Art’s first foray into socially conscious design: Small Scale, Big Change.
In Uncommon Ground, I say:
This is the museum’s second foray into the world of social and sustainable design, after last winter’s successful “Rising Currents.” While it contains a number of worthy (if occasionally over-exposed) projects,...
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Yummy Too
Missing from my previous post on the Cooper Union exhibit Appetite (closing Saturday) were images of Milton Glaser’s work for Grand Union. The exhibition had just a few, mostly the white-on-blue grid packaging I remember from my youth. But Container List, the excellent blog of SVA’s Milton Glaser Design Study Center, has kindly posted many more at my request, plus a more detailed...
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Family Business
I’ve often alluded to my designer grandparents on this blog, and here is visual proof: two posters by my grandfather, John R. Scotford Jr., during his long career designing for Dartmouth. My mother has been organizing his vast collection (70s movies, mod travel, random famous names, as well as his own work) and this summer, after the family took its pick, she brought a set to a Boston...
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Not Afraid of Color
For once, Alice Rawsthorn and I think alike.
From her T Magazine piece on the Le Corbusier palette.
Whatever you imagined, I’ll bet it was in black and white. It’s a safe bet, because our perceptions of early Modernism — at the Bauhaus design school in 1920s Germany, or the purist villas that Le Corbusier was building in France — are shaped by the photographs taken at the time, and they were...
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In T: The Zootopian
In early August I had the pleasure of traveling (by plane, train, local train and subway) to Sonneberg, Germany to interview toy designer Renate Müller. It was a wonderful experience, since I went from knowing nothing about Müller, the East German toy industry and Thuringia to being a huge fan. You can see her work, starting October 12, at R 20th Century in Tribeca.
My profile of Müller,...
