design

Soft modernism.

November 24, 2008

Hard-edged rooms, even the rustic kind, seem to need at least one big soft thing. Scandinavian interior design uses textiles in this way, and increasingly the term for the contemporary application of this idea seems to be “warm modernism” or “soft modernism.” The more unrelieved the hardness, the more warmth is needed and the more excessive the textures can be.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

San Francisco live/work loft with Frankenstein painting

November 23, 2008

A favourite San Francisco live/work loft space. I partly love it for the great painting of the burning ruin—the text at the bottom reads “Monument to Frankenstein.” I can’t find the source of this photo so if anyone knows, please tell me.

Categories: art, design, interiors, Ouno Design News, Uncategorised

Wooden pony walls.

November 18, 2008

Granted these are already amazing spaces, but wooden pony walls can work in smaller spaces also.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Cloud and Mix

November 14, 2008

It’s not clear who would have room for a large inflatable cloud at home, but technically we do actually have room for this in our studio and we’d love to have it, if we could afford it.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Sea Urchin Chair.

November 13, 2008

Yes, those sea urchin spines do look familiar – they’re 8000 black zip ties. From notcot via make.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

On the cheap in NYC

November 6, 2008

Art and architecture students produce creative DIY interiors on small budgets in NYC. For details see the NYT article. A wire cloud sculpture; a kitchen table made easily from a wood slab and tube legs from Home Depot; hanging wood light fixture made from ply offcuts; small space made larger via a loft bed and storage steps, with a desk surface made by resting a wood slab on two filing cabinets; spare paint used for wall decoration; spectacular chandelier made from plastic bags; kitchen cabinet made with a jigsaw and waste plywood.

Categories: art, design, DIY, furniture, interiors, Uncategorised

Loyal Loot.

November 5, 2008

Loyal Loot, four designers in Edmonton, Alberta who produce simple but interesting, stylish work, have one of the most enviable company names in Canadian design. Their Log Bowls are really appealing, and we also love their Coat Hang.

Categories: Canadian design, craft, design, furniture, Uncategorised

Musical bench.

November 3, 2008

Great execution of a great idea in this public xylophone bench by designer Paul Aloisi for the BenchMark Project in Toronto, Canada. From the Canadian Design Resource. There would be pressure to stand up whenever anyone else came by.

Categories: Canadian design, design, furniture, landscaping, Uncategorised

Felice Varini – geometry projected on architecture

October 30, 2008

Swiss artist Felice Varini applies these geometric “perspective-localized” paintings to rooms and other architectural surfaces. Varini’s perspectival installations are interesting in that they project visually compelling geometric shapes onto architectural spaces but the shapes are only seen in their perfect geometric form from a single, specific vantage point.

Categories: art, design, favourite, interiors, Uncategorised

The oldest textile fragment in the world.

For the record, an image of the oldest fragment of textile ever found. This is a Neolithic fragment of linen from Egypt circa 5000BC—a shred of clothing that belonged to someone 7000 years ago.

Categories: craft, design, favourite, textiles, 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. ____________________________________

design

Soft modernism.

San Francisco live/work loft with Frankenstein painting

Wooden pony walls.

Sea Urchin Chair.

On the cheap in NYC

Loyal Loot.

Musical bench.

Felice Varini – geometry projected on architecture

The oldest textile fragment in the world.

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