wooden

Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Finland

June 20, 2009

Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, built between 1937 and 1939 as a rural retreat, is considered one of the greatest houses of the 20th century. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who curated a major retrospective of Aalto’s work at the Barbican in London in 2007, says photographs give no real sense of Aalto’s buildings.

Categories: architect, architecture, design, furniture, interiors, landscaping, Uncategorised

Chen House in Taiwan by Marco Casagrande/Frank Chen

May 20, 2009

The Chen House in North Taiwan, design and constructed by Finnish architect Marco Casagrande and Taiwanese architect Frank Chen, was built for an older couple who wanted to retire to the country and grow bamboo and cherry trees – on a flood plain also beset by hurricanes and earthquakes.

Categories: architect, architecture, art, design, favourite, landscaping, Uncategorised

Plywood in Paris loft

May 18, 2009

This Paris loft was renovated by architects Karine Chartier and Thomas Corbasson who trained in the studio of Jean Nouvel (last year’s Pritzker Award winner). The space is an old industrial laboratory – you can see the building’s original freight elevator below.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Donald Judd’s loft at 101 Spring Street

April 25, 2009

This is artist Donald Judd’s loft in Soho, maintained as a museum and open for viewing after recent restorations. It was one of the first artist’s lofts in Soho – not to mention in New York – and is now almost the paradigmatic example of loft living.

Categories: art, design, furniture, interiors, Uncategorised

Alvaro Siza

April 21, 2009

This is the Parish Church Complex of Marco de Canevezes, Portugal. It was designed by Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza with Rolando Torgo and completed in 1990. It’s a deceptively simple building.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Bed in Italy

When this old Italian farmhouse was renovated, boards salvaged from outbuildings were brought in to make doors, beams and furniture. I’ve had this magazine clipping on my bulletin board for five years and have never grown tired of it.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

New York loft with stripes

April 15, 2009

Probably everyone and his/her dog has seen this NYC loft apartment by now, and possibly also blogged about it, but this is one of those places that is so hypnotizing I can’t stop looking at it.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

It’s Spring, Let’s Go Outside!

April 11, 2009

These are all, as usual, from The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, Greystone Press, 1970. I love the photo of the little garden house with the abstract geometric painting, above, and the book actually includes plans for it (click at bottom).

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Handbuilt houses of the Pacific coast

February 10, 2009

Sometimes after seeing too many chichi, precious, and citified houses, too much shiny, overproduced design, and everything just starts to look too estranged from the materials it was made from, as an antidote I go look at pictures of handbuilt houses.

Categories: architecture, British Columbia, design, green, Uncategorised

Tetsu Teahouse in Japan, by Terunobu Fujimori

February 3, 2009

Minimalism and fantasy, together. The interior of this teahouse is simple and modern, while the fantastical exterior looks like something from a Hiyao Miyazaki film. The interior view of the sliding wooden doors or shutters is just beautiful.

Categories: architect, architecture, craft, 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. ____________________________________

wooden

Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Finland

Chen House in Taiwan by Marco Casagrande/Frank Chen

Plywood in Paris loft

Donald Judd’s loft at 101 Spring Street

Alvaro Siza

Bed in Italy

New York loft with stripes

It’s Spring, Let’s Go Outside!

Handbuilt houses of the Pacific coast

Tetsu Teahouse in Japan, by Terunobu Fujimori

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