April 28, 2015
Apparently this is not a renegade settler war party, it’s a new “bloodgrass” band from Sudbury in Northern Ontario called Murder Murder. You can listen to their banjo-esque non-Northern-Ontario-ish neo-bluegrass murdery numbers at the link above.
January 30, 2014
Trying to laugh instead of cry over the announcement by Vancouver airport of a kitsch faux-nineteenth century monstrosity of a “luxury outlet mall” next to our quite attractive, Pacific NW contemporary airport with its forest water features, stunning aquariums and significant First Nations art.
October 20, 2012
There is a particular type of contemporary design that I deeply despise but for which there is no terminology. About six years ago, out of frustration, I started calling it “contempo.” It is a deliberately cheesy term for a cheesy aesthetic, an aesthetic of dumbed-down, cutesy faux-modernism.
December 3, 2010
“Compare and despair” is good advice, but I can’t help it. Here are two skyscrapers designed for the same public corporation, BC Hydro.
June 10, 2010
The decor at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s residence in Ottawa is almost as bad as the very fact of this distasteful event, which – can this really have happened?
January 17, 2010
Seemingly impossible, but true. Similar to the way the statement “Arnold Schwarzenegger is Governor of California” is true. The Canadian Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai is to be designed by Cirque du Soleil’s in-house designer.
January 2, 2010
When your decor is a romantic deal-breaker: a female visitor fled upon seeing this NYC lawyer’s sheets. My sister, by the way, had those exact sheets. When she was 12.
November 1, 2009
Seen in the lobby of the Hotel Monaco, Washington, DC. We gathered here for a drink, and I couldn’t get past this United Nations of design in the corner. Sorry about the photo, which exhibits that unique iPhone lack of any photographic excellence whatsoever.
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.
July 6, 2009
This is Karim Rashid’s new “Bite Me” Chair, a garish blobject in the shape of a bubblegum-pink molar. There was a pretty unanimous chorus of dislike and disapproval of this chair on the CDR (Canadian Design Resource) blog in May, and Rashid – the master of plasticky furniture that looks carelessly cheap when it’s made and then ages badly – totally deserved it.
