British Columbia

Montreal vs. Vancouver Olympics graphics – a little comparative photo essay

October 18, 2009

Ignoring the problems of hosting the Olympics, which are serious and many (and as a Vancouverite I’m speaking from experience), let’s just compare the graphic design from two different Canadian Olympics.

Fish-on-the-line coffee table

September 25, 2009

Discuss.

Categories: British Columbia, design, furniture, humour, Uncategorised

Wood and paper lamps from Japan

September 11, 2009

“Our lighting is hand-built in Japan from natural materials, including the hand-made paper (washi) of Eriko Horiki, the bent Japanese cedar of Toshiyuki Tani’s Wappa series, the coiled beech wood of the Bunaco Lacquer Ware Company, and the todomatsu pine slats of Takumi Kohgei.

Categories: British Columbia, craft, design, interiors, Uncategorised, Vancouver

Paper architecture for Habitat 1976 by Arthur Erickson

August 13, 2009

This is the paper-based pavilion designed by Arthur Erickson for the UN Habitat Conference on Human Settlements that took place in Vancouver in June of 1976. The pavilion, part of Habitat’s exhibit, was erected in front of the old courthouse (now the Vancouver Art Gallery).

Whatever happened to the seating platform, the conversation pit?

June 23, 2009

Above, the 1970s modern two-level platform in painter Frank Stella’s loft, from the classic book Inside Today’s Home. Below, a recent photo of the renovated 1950s conversation pit in the Number 31 Hotel in Dublin.

Painted houses

June 10, 2009

Modernist Vancouver house of the painter BC Binning, who painted his own interior and exterior murals. Photo by Arne Haraldsson. See here for more information on this heritage-protected house.

In my neighbourhood there’s a heritage program called True Colours wherein you can receive a pat on the back from heritage types and sometimes free paint if you agree to paint your house in the original house colours circa 1901.

Goodbye, Arthur Erickson

May 20, 2009

Goodbye to Arthur Erickson, a native of Vancouver and one of its most famous inhabitants, let alone architects. He died in Vancouver today at age 84.

“Put down those pens, authors! Put down those brushes, artists! Why not go into the service industry? Or banking?”

April 20, 2009

Apologies to non-Canadian readers, but I need to address our national broadcaster. Dear CBC, Canadians need much more Seán Cullen on CBC radio, and much less Stuart McLean. Why do we have to wait until summer to listen to Simply Seán on the radio?

Categories: British Columbia, film & TV, humour, politics, Uncategorised, video

So you think you’d like to live in a church…

March 26, 2009

When I was a kid my parents had Arlo Guthrie’s record Alice’s Restaurant , a spoken folk song plus narrative set in a converted church in Massachusetts in the sixties, and I knew the full monologue off by heart.

Handbuilt houses of the Pacific coast

February 10, 2009

Sometimes after seeing too many chichi, precious, and citified houses, too much shiny, overproduced design, and everything just starts to look too estranged from the materials it was made from, as an antidote I go look at pictures of handbuilt houses.

Categories: architecture, British Columbia, design, green, Uncategorised

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This blog is a long, somewhat messy photo essay on the history and politics of design. Design's socio-historical context—that is, the constraints and influences on the way we make objects, dwellings and cities—seems too often ignored. We no longer know where our styles, tastes or objects really come from, and this damages our creativity and sense of meaning. Historical knowledge is so fugitive in the New World, with everything so decontextualized in the rapid flow of commodities and images. Don't even get me started on tumblr and pinterest. As Fran Lebowitz said, "Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board." As for the sort of design I'm personally interested in, full disclaimer.....read more ____________________________________

To read about my book project on Vancouver's UN-Habitat Forum event of 1976 concerning just and sustainable urban settlements, click here. Few know that Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead, Mother Teresa, Paolo Soleri and Maggie & Pierre Trudeau, along with many thousands of others, came to Vancouver in 1976 to talk about better, safer, fairer and greener cities worldwide. In fact it was the founding conference of UN Habitat, an agency built around a foundational document called The Vancouver Declaration. My book is about what happened that year and is a snapshot not just of Vancouver but of how people around the world began to view cities and themselves differently in the wake of, among other things, the first oil crisis. ____________________________________

British Columbia

Montreal vs. Vancouver Olympics graphics – a little comparative photo essay

Fish-on-the-line coffee table

Wood and paper lamps from Japan

Paper architecture for Habitat 1976 by Arthur Erickson

Whatever happened to the seating platform, the conversation pit?

Painted houses

Goodbye, Arthur Erickson

“Put down those pens, authors! Put down those brushes, artists! Why not go into the service industry? Or banking?”

So you think you’d like to live in a church…

Handbuilt houses of the Pacific coast

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