DIY

These are all of our posts that include DIY ideas or actual tutorials. Please contact us if you want more information about any of these projects!

“Around the time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, Pastafarians celebrate a vaguely defined holiday named “Holiday.””

December 10, 2010

This is my Holiday post, but I’m referring to the Pastafarian holiday known helpfully as “Holiday.” ‘Pastafarians’ for those who don’t know the term are followers of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (or FSM), the spoof religion invented by American physics graduate student Bobby Henderson who launched his own ‘church’ as a challenge to the Kansas School Board’s attempt to teach creationism in schools.

Categories: art, craft, design, DIY, favourite, graphics and signage, humour, politics, Uncategorised

Beckwoman’s

November 14, 2010

At Beckwoman’s, an old Vancouver institution on Commercial Drive. DON’T PRAY IN MY SCHOOL AND I WON’T THINK IN YOUR CHURCH. And lots more where that came from, if you want slogans.

The Brick House

October 6, 2010

Often the “before” shot is better than the “after,” but not here. Above is a nice use of nearly black paint on an old plaster wall in this Hemet, California midcentury cinderblock house.

Categories: architecture, design, DIY, interiors, Uncategorised

Window advice please

September 2, 2010

Need advice! The thought of going through another winter with the cold pouring through thin, damaged church windows seems unbearable. The building dates from the 1930s and quite possibly the window frames do too, though perhaps not the glass.

Categories: architecture, British Columbia, design, DIY, interiors, Uncategorised, Vancouver

The Comfort of Things, by Daniel Miller

July 27, 2010

“We live today in a world of ever more stuff – what sometimes seems a deluge of goods and shopping. We tend to assume that this has two results: that we are more superficial, and that we are more materialistic, our relationships to things coming at the expense of our relationships to people.

Categories: design, DIY, politics, Uncategorised

La Mexicaine de Perforation, Paris

July 26, 2010

These are the only two photographs I could find of a clandestine cinema temporarily located in the Paris Catacombs and accidentally discovered by the police in 2006 while on a training exercise.

Categories: architecture, art, design, DIY, favourite, Uncategorised

Todd Selby on mess

July 21, 2010

Canadian House and Home recently asked photographer Todd Selby about the aesthetic of his photography and blog:

Q: What’s with all the crazy collections and homes with a borderline messy aesthetic?

Categories: design, DIY, humour, Uncategorised

Custom woodwork by Vladimir

July 5, 2010

This is my friend Vladimir, a master woodworker in Vancouver who is originally from Moscow. I feel that local craftspeople like Vlad who produce one-of-a-kind objects and high-level custom work do not get enough press.

Categories: art, British Columbia, Canadian design, design, DIY, furniture, humour, Uncategorised, Vancouver

HAVE NICE SHORT HAIRCUT YOU WILL LOOK BETTER

April 14, 2010

Commercial Drive, Vancouver. I hope this category of sign isn’t a thing of the past, but I expect it probably is. Who makes hand drawn signs on this continent anymore?

The Cowichan sweater of Vancouver Island

December 21, 2009

The late Amelia Charlie, prominent designer and promoter of the Cowichan sweater

Above is an example of the Cowichan sweater (photo courtesy Cowichan Tribes).

Categories: art, British Columbia, Canadian design, craft, design, DIY, fashion, favourite, green, politics, 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. ____________________________________

DIY

“Around the time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, Pastafarians celebrate a vaguely defined holiday named “Holiday.””

Beckwoman’s

The Brick House

Window advice please

The Comfort of Things, by Daniel Miller

La Mexicaine de Perforation, Paris

Todd Selby on mess

Custom woodwork by Vladimir

HAVE NICE SHORT HAIRCUT YOU WILL LOOK BETTER

The Cowichan sweater of Vancouver Island

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