November 2010
13 posts
5 tags
Marimekko, Atlantic Yards, Critics: Common Ground?
“Color Mesh” by Mauricio Lopez. Photograph by Jesse Ross © 2010. Since I am still picking up followers over here, let me tell you what I have been up to over in Observers Room at Design Observer, my new blog. I’m doing major posting there, but some matters seem best maintained intra-Tumblr. And I miss Tumblr… Who knew I would feel warm and fuzzy about a blogging...
Nov 27th
1 note
3 tags
Nov 24th
81 notes
4 tags
Skibinskipedia: Changing Tastes →
skibinskipedia: I somehow missed this fantastic piece by the amazing design critic Alexandra Lange when it first appeared on Design Observer back in December of 2009, so I was exceedingly pleased when a Twitter acquaintance directed my attention to it this morning. In it, Lange focuses on the work of Warren Platner (architect, interior designer, creator of Windows on the World) in order to...
Nov 19th
4 notes
4 tags
Change Observer: Dan Wood Q&A
On Change Observer today, my interview with Dan Wood of WORK Architecture Company, on his firm’s design for New York’s first Edible Schoolyard (now underway), the history of cities and food, and how Ebenezer Howard could be updated for the 21 Century. If you ask a bunch of strangers to help you build an architectural folly, you are going to get architecture students. But if you...
Nov 17th
2 notes
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Nov 16th
11 notes
3 tags
Observers Room: Ornament & Time
Latest post in the Observers Room, and the last in my series on Scandinavia. The minute we got to Copenhagen, I noticed the clocks. Big, beautiful, architectural analog clocks like this one on the Imperial Hotel. Just behind Arne Jacobsen’s SAS Hotel, clearly from the same era, looking like a modernist desk object blown up to city scale. Read the rest, and please follow me, over...
Nov 12th
1 note
Feed Me
If you have been following A Bit Late via RSS, and want to do the same for the new blog, here is the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/designobserver/observersroom/alexandralange
Nov 10th
4 tags
Observers Room: Super 8
Here we build our glass houses for rich people, with a view, along the lines of 100 Eleventh Avenue or On Prospect Park. In Copenhagen the idea seemed to be glass houses for families, a radiant city built by many hands, most with the same aesthetic. My second Observers Room post, on 8 House by Bjarke Ingels (suddenly poised to take Manhattan). Please follow me over there.
Nov 9th
1 note
4 tags
Moving Day
As of today, I am leaving A Bit Late and reincarnating as myself in the new Observers Room at Design Observer. I am very excited to be joining John Thackara, Rick Poynor and Mark Lamster as regular bloggers there, along with DO editors William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand, Michael Beirut, Julie Lasky, Nancy Levinson, Jade-Snow Carroll, Chappell Ellison, and Josh Wallaert. The Observers Room idea...
Nov 8th
5 notes
3 tags
Ada Louise to the Rescue
Ada Louise Huxtable takes up the cudgel for leaving Harry Bertoia’s bronze screen right where it was intended to be: on the piano nobile of SOM’s 1954 Manufacturer’s Trust Bank. She says everything I would have liked to, but better, and in the Wall Street Journal. It’s time to stop worrying about whether New York has enough “starchitecture” and consider the...
Nov 5th
4 notes
3 tags
"Does Longform Have a Woman Problem?" →
longformorg: Alexandra Lange from A Bit Late just wrote a thoughtful critique of our selections on longform.org. abitlate: Don’t get me wrong, Longform is great… But. But. I couldn’t help but notice how few pieces by women are on the site. Twelve pieces on the home page right now, one by a woman. Twelve pieces on the second page right now, two by women. Twelve Editor’s Picks right...
Nov 4th
9 notes
2 tags
Does Longform Have a Woman Problem?
Don’t get me wrong, Longform is great. The time and effort and skill that go into the best pieces of magazine journalism deserve more than their week or month on the newsstand, their few days at the top of the website. I never understood who bought anthologies of longform non-fiction writing, and while that type of book may now migrate to the iPad, I can’t see many more hardcovers...
Nov 3rd
9 notes
3 tags
Is the Blogroll Over?
Ever since I started this blog, 16 months ago, I have regretted not being able to figure out how to have a blogroll. All those sites that tell you how to increase your traffic insist upon it. But yesterday I had to put one together for this blog’s big move (news on that very soon) and it felt totally beside the point. Most of my choices were banal to the point of unnecessary, but on the...
Nov 2nd