trends

Ha, finally! The 90s are the new 80s.

February 25, 2009

That’s according to the New York Times, and since nostalgia seems to work in 20-year cycles, I guess anyone could have seen it coming. If, as the article says, the 90s were the sci fi thing and the Breeders, then excellent, but … what is that orange outfit!

Categories: design, Uncategorised

The words we use when we think about design, 1984 to 2009

February 18, 2009

This graph shows the occurrence of the terms “decor” (blue) and “interior design” (red) in The New York Times between 1984 and 2009. What happened to the word “decor”? It fell out of usage in approximately February, 2001, maybe a result of a change in editorial style policy?

Categories: design, Uncategorised

“Raw blonde”

January 20, 2009

Supposedly raw blonde is a trend for 2009. I think that might be me, based on this definition. Warm but austere and at this point pretty pale.

This room somehow manages to be both sensual and monastic at the same time, so perhaps it represents the perfect refuge for a recession.

Categories: design, furniture, interiors, textiles, Uncategorised

The “What’s In, What’s Out for 2009” list thing.

January 4, 2009

The “What’s In and What’s Out in 2009” lists are starting to appear. Not to be too protestant about it, since environmentalism in its more puritanical moment can make you want to stab yourself in the eye with a fork—a plastic fork—but these lists can get anxiety-provoking.

Categories: design, interiors, politics, 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. ____________________________________

trends

Ha, finally! The 90s are the new 80s.

The words we use when we think about design, 1984 to 2009

“Raw blonde”

The “What’s In, What’s Out for 2009” list thing.

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