room divider

Furniture makers of Middle Earth

April 5, 2009

I find this Todd Merrell Antiques magazine ad weirdly compelling. If you end up at his website (now defunct) it’s like being transported into Middle Earth or the underworld. You might have to retrieve an amulet with the help of a talking dog with eyes as big as saucers or something.

Categories: design, furniture, Uncategorised

DIY: paint your linoleum floor white

February 3, 2009

When I moved into this typical 1930s apartment in Vancouver’s east side in 1999, the first thing I did was paint over the kitchen’s dingy gold linoleum flooring. The linoleum was the worst thing about that apartment.

Pole shelving – turn this ugly example into something better

January 17, 2009

Yet another 60s DIY project from The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, Greystone Press, 1970. While the bookshelf directly above is cringe-worthy (almost in the “so bad it’s good” category, but not quite), it could be very mod if it were updated and re-made properly with more attractive materials.

Categories: design, DIY, furniture, interiors, Uncategorised

Molo

January 15, 2009

Just a few blocks up the road from my studio is the workshop of Vancouver’s Molo Design. You’ve probably seen their accordioning softseating or their softwall room dividers which are now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

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

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

What to do with all those doilies

August 22, 2008

This somehow manages to de-doilify doilies which is almost achieving the impossible. It makes the lace more reminiscent of bark or lichen or something from the bottom of the ocean—another example of how re-purposing a thing can actually improve on the original.

Categories: design, furniture, interiors, textiles, 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. ____________________________________

room divider

Furniture makers of Middle Earth

DIY: paint your linoleum floor white

Pole shelving – turn this ugly example into something better

Molo

1960s DIY projects – geometric wall treatment, vertical lanterns

Wooden pony walls.

What to do with all those doilies

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