Ouno Design

The ladies of 20th century furniture design were offered to pose on fur rugs or ponies, which is why, we suppose, that photo was never to be.

January 20, 2009

Left to Right: George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames and Jens Risom

Photo from a 1961 Playboy article on 20th C “masters of design,” who are here dressed either as accountants or architects, it’s hard to tell which, but it’s a lot of zippers.

Categories: architect, design, furniture, humour, politics, Uncategorised

“Raw blonde”

Supposedly raw blonde is a trend for 2009. I think that might be me, based on this definition. Warm but austere and at this point pretty pale.

This room somehow manages to be both sensual and monastic at the same time, so perhaps it represents the perfect refuge for a recession.

Categories: design, furniture, interiors, textiles, Uncategorised

Cringe List, Part 1: Alessi

I always meant to initiate a regular feature about bad design but for a long time I didn’t have the heart for it. For one thing, finding insincere design is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Categories: craft, cringe list, design, interiors, Uncategorised

Final Wooden House by Sou Fujimoto

January 18, 2009

This is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen. It is the “Final Wooden House” by Sou Fujimoto, 2008, in Kamamura village in the south of Kyushu. It has just won Best Private Home award in the Wallpaper Design Awards 2009 and is probably on every design blog this week.

Categories: architect, architecture, design, interiors, Uncategorised

Shingle pillow by Anek Taanka

The textile company Anek Taanka, which means “infinite stitches,” was founded by Indian textile designer Varsha Sharma. She has said that “my challenge is to create pieces of textile that could inspire spaces to be designed around them rather than the other way around.” That’s a bold ambition but this pillow makes you think she could actually do it.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

The dangers of discomfort.

I found this tragic modern poem online while researching ventilation for the studio. I took a screenshot of it just in case someone failed to recognize its morose genius and removed it from the public domain.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Pole shelving – turn this ugly example into something better

January 17, 2009

Yet another 60s DIY project from The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, Greystone Press, 1970. While the bookshelf directly above is cringe-worthy (almost in the “so bad it’s good” category, but not quite), it could be very mod if it were updated and re-made properly with more attractive materials.

Categories: design, DIY, furniture, interiors, Uncategorised

Egle Amaldi’s bookshelf & modernist Cado shelving

These staggered, airy midcentury modern arrangements are so much less chichi than the many fancified contemporary bookshelves you see around.

I love this simple, balanced living room belonging to Italian architect Egle Amaldi in the 1960s.

Categories: architect, book, design, DIY, furniture, interiors, Uncategorised

Elsbeth Kupferoth

January 16, 2009

Fantastic 1970s geometric supergraphic textile by German designer Elsbeth Kupferoth, who deserves to be much better known. Interesting short essay on her work and more photos at The Textile Blog.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Molo

January 15, 2009

Just a few blocks up the road from my studio is the workshop of Vancouver’s Molo Design. You’ve probably seen their accordioning softseating or their softwall room dividers which are now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

< 1 … 81 82 83 84 85 … 96 >

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. ____________________________________

The ladies of 20th century furniture design were offered to pose on fur rugs or ponies, which is why, we suppose, that photo was never to be.

“Raw blonde”

Cringe List, Part 1: Alessi

Final Wooden House by Sou Fujimoto

Shingle pillow by Anek Taanka

The dangers of discomfort.

Pole shelving – turn this ugly example into something better

Egle Amaldi’s bookshelf & modernist Cado shelving

Elsbeth Kupferoth

Molo

About

Search Blog

That essay on colonial heritage hipsters

Read this on cities

No ads or sponsored content

This Blog

Book in Progress: Habitat

Tweets by @ounodesign

Ouno is on Remodelista

Ouno Design’s Bookshop

Ouno Design Shop

Write me

Popular Posts

Archives