how to

Homemade pandemic mask patterns for the Covid-19 outbreak, & useful links

March 31, 2020

There has been too much confusion around whether we should be wearing masks while in public during the pandemic. I’m in the “Yes” camp, and I’ve noticed that all the doctors I’ve talked to are in the Yes camp too, no matter what politicians and public officials have been saying.

Categories: British Columbia, Canadian design, cities, design, DIY, fashion, urban planning, Vancouver

DIY Martin Margiela waistcoat

February 8, 2009

Martin Margiela is never entirely serious nor entirely flippant, which is part of what makes him an interesting artist. For example his site. This waistcoat how-to was produced by Maison Margiela and is courtesy The Guardian, where you can find many other odd DIY tutorials, like Jade Jagger’s punk bracelet.

Categories: design, DIY, Uncategorised

1960s DIY projects – geometric wall treatment, vertical lanterns

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.

Categories: craft, design, DIY, furniture, Uncategorised

More Furniture in 24 Hours, part 1 – Space Bench

January 7, 2009

Some of these designs are actually pretty good. I’ll post some more if anyone wants them! I don’t know if that’s Spiros on the cover there, sitting on this Space Bench, or if it’s George Thomopolos, but whoever he is, he’s… groovy.

Categories: book, design, DIY, furniture, Uncategorised

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. ____________________________________

how to

Homemade pandemic mask patterns for the Covid-19 outbreak, & useful links

DIY Martin Margiela waistcoat

1960s DIY projects – geometric wall treatment, vertical lanterns

More Furniture in 24 Hours, part 1 – Space Bench

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