May 25, 2009
I first found out about the architect Paul Rudolph after posting an image of one of his other houses, and reading a response to it by Kelvin Dickson of the Paul Rudolph Foundation.
May 24, 2009
Linda and John Meyers of Wary Meyers Decorative Arts assemble these mod, chic, distinctly 1960s and 70s interiors almost entirely from furniture and objects they find in thrift and vintage sales.
May 23, 2009
From Godard’s 1964 film Bande à part, or Band of Outsiders. Not design except in the larger sense, but it’s in the favourites category thanks to my friends Maxwell and Hadley who made about thirty of us learn this sequence for an art event a couple of years ago.
May 22, 2009
One last Vancouver house by Arthur Erickson. The house was built for and is still owned by the painterGordon Smith and his partner Marion. They have carefully maintained it over the years, in keeping with Erickson’s original design and intention.
May 21, 2009
The Keevil House, Savary Island, British Columbia. Photos are from arthurerickson.com. Arthur Erickson, 1924-2009.
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.
You could almost call these buildings archeotecture, or perhaps archeolitecture, because though all three were built recently, they look and feel profoundly archeological. All of them have the mute, mysterious quality of monumental ancient ruins and they produce – for me, anyway – that weird, quiet, prickling-the-back-of-the-neck sensation you sometimes get when viewing something impossibly old.
The Chen House in North Taiwan, design and constructed by Finnish architect Marco Casagrande and Taiwanese architect Frank Chen, was built for an older couple who wanted to retire to the country and grow bamboo and cherry trees – on a flood plain also beset by hurricanes and earthquakes.
May 18, 2009
This Paris loft was renovated by architects Karine Chartier and Thomas Corbasson who trained in the studio of Jean Nouvel (last year’s Pritzker Award winner). The space is an old industrial laboratory – you can see the building’s original freight elevator below.
Takashi Iwasaki‘s March show in Vancouver was postponed, so we’re doing our own little show here. Iwasaki, who was born in Japan and studied in both Japan and Canada, also produces paintings and drawings but it’s his embroideries that are particularly interesting, not just because it’s nice to see embroidery being done by a male artist, but also because of their unconventional, non-fussy style – he somehow bends the medium to make embroidery lines appear loosely hand-painted or drawn, so that there’s an interesting disjunction between method and effect.
