January 15, 2009
There’s something compelling about Ray Eames’ desk area, papered with work and photographs. Many people seem to have a fierce aversion to clutter these days (driven no doubt by the storage furniture industry) but artists like to have materials and visual stimulation at hand in their studios and there’s some evidence that this supports the creative process.
January 14, 2009
That’s the title of an interesting article in the NYT last week. By “design” the writer obviously means design itself, and not the world of commercial design which is in fact suffering during the current economic crisis.
The new building for the BC Cancer Agency is a good addition to Broadway, one of Vancouver’s most ridiculously unattractive streets. The building’s most obvious feature is its round windows which are meant to reference the glass petri dishes used in cancer research.
January 13, 2009
This amazing textile is actually the back of a quilt by Lauren Venell, but it could just as easily be the front. Venell’s fabric is dark blue denim, with light grey quilting thread to show the quilting design in contrast, and she pieced and quilted the whole thing by hand on the sewing machine.
January 12, 2009
Here are two quite beautiful DIY projects from the 60s, both found in The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, Greystone Press, 1970. Most of what you find in the book is a bit kitschy, but these two ideas seemed brilliant.
January 11, 2009
Bathroom futurism! Excellent circular spaceship thing going on here. I’m not sure about shag rugs in the bathroom, but will boldly go where no one has gone before. Still, how on earth would you clean this room?
January 10, 2009
A ketchup bottle on the stereo speaker really completes this. Maybe this is Sixties Baroque. Ketchup aside, the wall-mounted amp is cool, and the wall painted in four colour blocks is clever.
This post is a personal addendum to our earlier post about a discussion amongst readers of another design blog about whether one designer had copied or “borrowed” another designer’s idea.
January 9, 2009
A final post on great DIY furniture from Spiros Zakas’ 1979 “More Furniture in 24 Hours” book. If you want the building plans for any of these pieces, go to this Flickr set.
Wow. It might be difficult to pull off these colours in the watery light spectrum we have here in Vancouver. But frankly Vancouver ought to be able to do a lot better than the local Victorian colour scheme of dark maroon with sickly, pale butter-yellow trim.
