A bit late

newyorker: Alexandra Lange on the “must-see” Le Corbusier...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:00:23 -0400

Alexandra Lange on the “must-see” Le Corbusier retrospective at the MoMA: http://nyr.kr/11XokUS

designage: Design legend Milton Glaser has a new piece in...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:45:07 -0400

Design legend Milton Glaser has a new piece in Dwell’s July/August issue. And with it, he sent along a documentary on the Color Fuses mural he designed for a federal building in Indianapolis, Indiana. Here are two still images, shot by the filmmaker Mark Williams. (Watch the 14-minute-long mini-doc here.)

Previously.

A few telling details from my quick trip to Detroit and its...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:14:27 -0400

A few telling details from my quick trip to Detroit and its suburbs last week. I’ll be writing more on Design Observer later this week. Designer IDs, from the top: Eliel Saarinen, Sol LeWitt and Harry Bertoia, William Rupprecht, Minoru Yamasaki, more Yamasaki, Marianne Strengell, Tod Williams Billie Tsien & Associates.

Cooking project that turned into something more interesting.

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:42:50 -0400

Cooking project that turned into something more interesting.

Metamuseum: Today marks the last day of the Metamuseum Tumblr, a three-month...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:38:24 -0400

Metamuseum: Today marks the last day of the Metamuseum Tumblr, a three-month...:...

metamuseum: Racine Art MuseumPhotography: Christopher Barrett,...

Tue, 28 May 2013 10:08:43 -0400

metamuseum:

Racine Art Museum
Photography: Christopher Barrett, Hedrich Blessing, Chicago, IL

Celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2013, the Racine Art Museum is a distinctive presence in the downtown Racine community. Designed by award winning Chicago-based architects Brininstool + Lynch, the RAM building is a Modernist structure softened with light and a sensitive handling of architectural proportions. The museum incorporates sustainable elements such as recycled rubber flooring, and includes Japanese-inspired design, such as the exterior with its translucent acrylic cladding that illuminates at night.

Lena Vigna

Curator of Exhibitions
Racine Art Museum
http://www.ramart.org/

Final week at Metamuseum, and we’ve gone back to the future: artifacts and photographs from Year One at each institution. Here is the baby of the bunch.

Tadao Ando’s 2008 Stone Hill Center at the Clark in...

Sun, 26 May 2013 21:42:09 -0400

Tadao Ando’s 2008 Stone Hill Center at the Clark in Williamstown. The Clark is currently much under construction: Annabelle Selldorf is renovating both the original institute and the study center; Ando has designed a new visitor center.

Had a lovely visit to the Sol LeWitt retrospective at Mass MoCA....

Sun, 26 May 2013 21:36:37 -0400

Had a lovely visit to the Sol LeWitt retrospective at Mass MoCA. Installed chronologically on three floors, you move from the delicate line drawings to black-and-white to bright, bright color. I loved being able to see LeWitt talking to LeWitt, and sometimes colliding. Lucky for us all it is on view through 2033 (?).

agi-open-london: Werner Jeker — Le Corbusier (1987) Two weeks...

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:30:08 -0400

agi-open-london:

Werner Jeker — Le Corbusier (1987)

Two weeks out from the big Le Corbusier exhibition at MoMA.

fuckyeahbrutalism: Mount Anthony District High School,...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:57:27 -0400

fuckyeahbrutalism:

Mount Anthony District High School, Bennington, Vermont, 1964

(The Architects Collaborative)

“Collaboration at TAC meant something very different from the specialization common to other large-scale practices. Key to this approach was the idea that teams should consist of generalists able to criticize each other as equals, rather than the parceling of tasks among specialized practitioners according to principles of efficiency and division of labor.”

Check out Michael Kubo’s revealing article on practices of collaboration at TAC, published in Architecture Boston and available online here. With his collaborators Chris Grimley and Mark Pasnik, Kubo also recently contributed to CLOG: Brutalism, which is available for purchase here.

And of course, this is the project on which Ben Thompson met the future Jane Thompson.

Made a short visit to the Bertoia Unbound show at DORMA...

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:38:35 -0400

Made a short visit to the Bertoia Unbound show at DORMA yesterday, ends May 24. Nice to be able to visit with these sculptures up close. The textures are quite amazing. And doesn’t the bottom image, a monoprint, look just like Bertoia’s installation at the MIT Chapel?

metamuseum: Armchair, Stronza, c. 1900Made by Liberty &...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:10:58 -0400

metamuseum:

Armchair, Stronza, c. 1900
Made by Liberty & Co., London
Oak and rush
The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection, TD1990.269.1

Liberty & Company, founded in London in 1875 by Arthur Lasenby Liberty, popularized home furnishings that embodied the ideals of the British Arts and Crafts movement. By the 1880s, the company began selling furniture commissioned from designers or imported from other countries. The “Stronza” armchair was an adaptation of a traditional chair, made with local materials, from the Scottish island of Orkney. The chair was offered in the 1901 Liberty & Co. Yule-tide Gifts catalog, in two sizes and with a choice of a wood or straw seat.

Ivana Rodriguez

Curatorial & Exhibitions Assistant
The Wolfsonian - FIU
https://www.wolfsonian.org/

Nice coincidence: my latest Design Observer post on Ruth Asawa and this week’s Metamuseum theme: WEAVE.

Ruth Asawa at Christie’s. Exhibit up until May 31.

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:48:00 -0400

Ruth Asawa at Christie’s. Exhibit up until May 31.

design-law: Issued this week to LEGO—D682,367, for a “Female...

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:17:33 -0400

design-law:

Issued this week to LEGO—D682,367, for a “Female Toy Figure.”

thingsorganizedneatly: SUBMISSION: One to Forty-Nine (c. 1968)...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:41:31 -0400

thingsorganizedneatly:

SUBMISSION: One to Forty-Nine (c. 1968) by Alexander Girard. Gift of the Estate of Xenia S. Miller to the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Missed this. Saw in person at the Miller House, just inside the front door. Totally charming, especially in a house made of squares.

andrewromano: I’ve spent the past few months flying back and...

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:49:05 -0400

andrewromano:

I’ve spent the past few months flying back and forth between New York and Los Angeles, and every time I land at LAX I’ve had to make my escape through some long, windowless tunnel. The only redeeming aspect of these transitional spaces has been the colorful tile mosaics running along one wall, from one end to the other.

At first I didn’t really notice them. Then, at some point, I started to look forward to them. But it wasn’t until now that I actually bothered to find out who put them there.

Turns out it was an L.A. designer named Charles Kratka, who studied with Alvin Lustig, worked for Charles and Ray Eames, and had a rewarding career of his own.

The son of a printer, Kratka was born Oct. 12, 1922, in Pasadena and grew up in Eagle Rock.

After attending UCLA, he enrolled at the Art Center College of Design and later taught at the school. During World War II he served as a pilot in the Navy.

From 1947 to 1953, Kratka worked as a graphic designer for architect and designer Charles Eames. Kratka left to teach before going into interior design and planning.

Kratka also oversaw the design of the original interiors for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art when it opened in 1965.

Two years later he opened his own interior design firm in West Hollywood.

As for the mosaics themselves…

Completed in 1961, the mosaics were designed to make the approximately 300-foot tunnels seem shorter, said Ethel Pattison, the airport’s historian.

“He was a grand artist, way ahead of his time,” Pattison said. “His approach to the walls was novel and gave passengers something of interest to look at.”

Kratka told his daughter that the brightly colored geometric panels in the seven tunnels were designed to represent the changing seasons.

School students on field trips heard another story. Tour guides compared a walk alongside the mosaic to traveling across the U.S., which reflected Kratka’s original intent, said Ann Proctor, director of volunteers at the Flight Path Learning Center-Museum at LAX.

The blue tiles at the entrance represent the ocean and are followed by browns, yellows and oranges for the geography of the heartland, according to the museum.

“There was one line of red tile in the middle, and we’d say, ‘We’re halfway across now, in the Midwest,’” Proctor said. “The blue on the other end, that was the Atlantic Ocean.”

Photos via Kid Made Modern.

metamuseum: Golf MagicDesigned by Brian Connelly (American,...

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:29:31 -0400

metamuseum:

Golf Magic
Designed by Brian Connelly (American, 1926 – 1962).
Produced by Associated American Artists. United States, ca. 1953.
Screen printed on cotton. Collection of Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Museum purchase through gift of Mrs. William Goulding, 2002-23-1.

Early intimiations of Pop Art are seen in this fabric produced by Associated American Artists—a Reeves Lewenthal project to make fine art accessible to the public. The deep shadows make the golf balls seem to pop off the acid yellow ground.

Ellen Lupton

Senior Curator of Contemporary Design
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
http://www.cooperhewitt.org/

Would this not make the ideal duvet cover for someone you know?

metamuseum: Eyal Burstein (Israeli, born 1977),Michele Gauler...

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:33:07 -0400

metamuseum:

Eyal Burstein (Israeli, born 1977),
Michele Gauler (German, born 1973)
Beta Tank (UK, est. 2007)
Eye Candy from the Sensory Plasticity project 2007
Copper, steel, polyurethane, and sugar
Gift of the Speyer Family Foundation. © 2013 Beta Tank Ltd.

Scientists are exploring the brain’s ability to process sensory stimuli as visual input, enabling, for instance, blind people to receive balance-correcting sensory information from an electrode array placed atop the tongue. Burstein, Gauler, and Beta Tank expanded this research into a hypothetical scenario in which electrodes on the surface of Eye Candy transmit visual information (uploaded to the device via USB) through the tongue to the brain at the same frequency as the eyes send visual information. The mind decodes the taste of the sweet candy as vivid pictures. A playful piece of critical design, Eye Candy underscores the brain’s extraordinary plasticity, exploiting the human potential to create new synapses and adapt to sensory input, to substitute one sense for another, and to use a variety of information sources to augment an experience of the world.

Paola Antonelli
Senior Curator, Architecture & Design Director, Research & Development

Barbara Eldredge
Research Coordinator, Research & Development

Museum of Modern Art
http://www.moma.org/

This week’s theme might be my favorite: Trompe L’Oeil.

typetoy: Thanks for the write-up Design Observer:...

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:34:28 -0400

typetoy:

Thanks for the write-up Design Observer: http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/enjoying-typetoy/37868/

I am enjoying too!

thetypologist: Typology of chairs. Collections of: Indianapolis...

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:09:31 -0400

thetypologist:

Typology of chairs. Collections of: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Compiled via the Digital Public Library of America.