midcentury modern

“Coast Modern” – film screenings in Vancouver this week

August 1, 2012

This film has been very difficult to see, consistently selling out (I saw scalpers at the last showing). The Vancouver International Film Fest is hosting this new set of screenings, based on the popular demand.

Unknown wooden chair

March 20, 2011

Can anyone identify this chair? Years ago, thinking I would ask a furniture making friend to reproduce it, I took its measurements but then did nothing with them. I’m passing them along in case anyone else would like to try.

Categories: design, furniture, Uncategorised

Wallander

January 25, 2011

Wallander, the Swedish detective of Swedish books, TV and film, has now appeared in a BBC remake starring Kenneth Branagh. Shot in Sweden, the BBC remake has a Bergman-like mute bleakness despite the attractive minimalism of (most of) the interiors.

Categories: architecture, design, furniture, interiors, Uncategorised

Midcentury modern hospital: House MD

December 11, 2010

My sister, an emergency pediatric doctor, can’t watch House M.D. because she says the medicine is either wrong or stupidly farfetched, and I feel the same way about the decor. What is all that pricey midcentury modern design doing in a hospital?

Categories: architecture, design, furniture, Uncategorised

The Brick House

October 6, 2010

Often the “before” shot is better than the “after,” but not here. Above is a nice use of nearly black paint on an old plaster wall in this Hemet, California midcentury cinderblock house.

Categories: architecture, design, DIY, interiors, Uncategorised

Rain chains or kusari toi

April 21, 2010

Kusari toi (sometimes translitered “doi”)—the Japanese characters are 鎖樋 which translates literally as “chain gutters”—are known in English as rain chains. They are used in Japan as downspouts to direct rain from a gutter to the ground, where it either flows into a gravel or pebble bed or into some sort of catchment.

Categories: architecture, design, green, landscaping, Uncategorised

Why rocks on the roof?

March 11, 2010

Pardon my ignorance, but please educate me – is there a non-aesthetic purpose for this, or is it just cool? We don’t have this where I come from. Does it stop water from flowing quickly off the roof, or prevent something from running around up there, or discourage sunbathing, or what does it do, exactly?

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Little house in La Quinta, California

March 10, 2010

I love this house in La Quinta. I asked my California friend Darren why the town is called La Quinta, which means “fifth” in Spanish, and he wrote: “It’s called that because in colonial times, there were haciendas along major commercial routes that were reached every fifth day of travel.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Why is Australian design so cool?

January 24, 2010

Not a rhetorical question. This is a hodgepodge sample, for sure, and spans decades, but all of it seems to partake of some form or other of adventurousness.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Patterned concrete screens

December 10, 2009

I’m developing a taste for these. There are lots of dinky suburban tract versions of these perforated walls, but when the scale and placement are well thought out, they can be the building’s most arresting feature.

Categories: design, 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. ____________________________________

midcentury modern

“Coast Modern” – film screenings in Vancouver this week

Unknown wooden chair

Wallander

Midcentury modern hospital: House MD

The Brick House

Rain chains or kusari toi

Why rocks on the roof?

Little house in La Quinta, California

Why is Australian design so cool?

Patterned concrete screens

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