A New Building.....

This is an image from the work of Cai Guo-Qiane, another Prospect 1 artist. he conveniently works with fireworks and today is the last post of 2008. I know its been a rough one but there has been some wonderful things that have happened. So lets breath deeply and be thankful for the good and learn from the not so good.
Happy New Year to ALL! Annie

Building friendships

We got a very nice shout out from Costas Voyazis, the editor of Yatzer. He picked a Little Building Cafe post one of his favorite posts from 2008! I have really enjoyed being part of Costas Blog community this year. He has a very strong vision of the design world....and so optimistic!

Building materials

I am going to look for this book while in NYC. Isabelle de Borchgrave work looks very intriguing, part artist part masterful business person.....Quite an inspiration.

Building terrain

Ah another artist I wish I was??? Leah Evans from Madison, Wisconsindoes very special work. Very large quilted maps. On her artist statement she very wisely says, "...maps create more of a question than an answer."

Sitting on a method

This is more work done by Neta Amir. I am very jealous that she had this idea first. I can just image a whole generation of people sewing there own apartment rather than buying small picture frames to make yourself happy????

More Soft Architecture

For the next week I am going to gather up all then examples I can find of work than is being done under the "Soft Architecture" genre. People who are working with textiles and fabric at an epic to furniture scale. The first to really open up this method of working is the wonderful Petra Blaisse. Founder of the studio Inside/Outside her work is balanced between the giant drapery work that she is known for and garden design. Her book has been on my bedside table for two years now and I look to her as to how an alternative practice can be developed.

A Soft Table

This is the work of Cris Bartels, another Eindhovan graduate. These are so inspiring because he is really struggling with the structural issues of working in fabric. He uses all the tricks to reinforce and stabilize-quilting, folding, sistering. It will be exciting to see more work like this.

Building Holiday Cheer......

This wacky Christmas tree at the Colton School venue in New Orleans was wonderful. Lots of wire and water bottles spray painted gold made for a very GREEN tree. We are off to NYC on Thursday and I will schedule posts for the week...I have an agenda! I want to wish everyone a very merry and real Holiday.

Building Delight

This Beatriz Milhazes installation was delightful. Cribbed from a dance set that she designed in 2004. A small square room full of glitter, feathers and pink targets is what everyone needs right now.

Building Media

Shawne Major's knock out tapesteries are a high point at Prospect 1. The Opelousas, Louisiana native makes huge pieces that are highly considered Five and Dime explosions.... They are big abstract expressions from far away and close up you recognize that gum ball machine pistol you had when you were small. Real focus, real passion.

Room Making

The work of Francis Cape in New Orleans was a revelation. An artist who is making the question, "What makes a room?" A question that will not save the world when answered but will continue to preoccupy me..... I am very lucky in that I saw his work at Prospect 1 and will get to run over and see a piece by him at Metro Tech in Brooklyn.

Building Drape

The amazing artist El Anatsui had three of his tapestries in the Mint building at Prospect 1. Made of dis-used aluminum strips and copper wire these pieces are the most majestic in the city. I am a little disappointed that he did not do a work that was more site specific like this piece done for the entrance Fortuny Museum in Venice, Nola could have handled this....beautiful.

Building images from a wall

We just got back from a weekend in new Orleans to see the Prospect 1 Bienniel. I really enjoyed it and will be posting my favorites for the week. The work that stuck with me for the drive up was Anne Deleporte. We only got to see one piece by her (there are two) but the process is well- haunting. She wallpapers a space with newpapers and magazines and then paints out everything but small iconic figures or images that just seem to hang in space. These are not great images but visiting her site www.annedeleporte.com will give you an idea of the process, there also seems to be a book which I will be on the look out for.

Building a Building

Speaking of Brooklyn, we got a very nice shout out from The Brownstoner about the 272 21st Street project. The building is rocking along, we get to go see it next week!

Having a coffee with a great building

Next week we are going to NYC to see old friends and I realized that one of my favorite buildings is designed by my friend Victoria Meyers. hanahanMeyers is the architect for the very beautiful Juliana Curran Terian Pratt Pavilion.
It is a perfect example of a small building that serves as an in between condition-almost court yard and connection from a number of different other buildings. Simple Brooklyn materials and just enough forward of the facade building line that you really want to go in. Visit it when you are in Brooklyn

Building Calm

There is something very calming and peaceful about this Rachel Whiteread daybed. Whiteread is the first British woman to win the Turner Prize and is most famous for her piece "Ghost" which was a large plaster cast of a Victorian house. I really love her big idea, quiet work approach.

Sitting on a thought

I have posted this bench before but as I was cleaning my desk and this photo that Rinne Allen did was next to a piece of paper where I had copied down this quote.


I have three chairs in my house, one for solitude,two for friendship, three for society. Henry David Thoreau

Building a tree?

I have been on the look out for sustainable tree. I have contacted near by tree farms, gone to the nursery for a magnolia, and no luck. Caleb designed this tree in L.A. years ago and I wish we had it now (looks less serious in color). Guess I am off to the Kroger.....

Sheet Building

I spotted these textile tea cups on at cribcandy. The author Neta Amir has a strange and wonderful site called Doll Stories. Normally I can't handle crocheted animals and dolls but her work well is just weird enough. And I am jealous that she had the where- with- all to sew a arm chair made of bed sheets.....

Building logic

I got to hand it to those Bludot guys. This is pure invention. The fact that maybe the laser cut extrusions might yield a structural role in the bench is wonderful. Its a very pure structural diagram. This piece does not show up on the Bludot web site but does on the Future Perfect site. So cool

Building monuments?

I am reading Interior Design history texts this weekend to prepare for next term. In the depths of understanding Empire furniture, I found this image of a early proposal, 1758, for a gateway at the site of Paris' Arc de Triomphe by Charles Ribart. Now would Paris be so chic if???? Well it never got built-let's leave it at that.

The secret history of form.

Yatzer had nice discussion about comtemporary large scale Queen Anne chairs....I was reading yesterday about French 1950's avant guard and I found this very similar Jean Royere chair from 1956. See Jaime Hayon site for more glam...

Building a Collection

The holidays are coming and I have the "I wants" for a Charles and Ray Eames molded plywood elephant. It was designed in 1954 and never produced until the Eames foundation did this edition last year. I do not need this but its lovely. I like to buy all Eames work from the Eames Gallery on line-it all supports the maintainence of the Eames house in Malibu.

Building More

"Amateurs borrow and professional steal....." A great someone once said. Well, I did not borrow, well I did from the Shakers not from these guys.. But this is a very nice resolve in a cafe that has all Thonet chairs...hum-needs more color. The space was designed by Architects Kahle, Oiza Arauza in Pamplona, Spain.

Building Compositions

I have been prepping lectures for next term and getting to re-read a lot about the great modernists painters. Along time ago a came across pictures of Josef and Anni Albers home while he was at Yale. This is the perfect composition for Albers' work. An all white house awaiting his paintings, perfect.

Building Black

I know, I am Design Academy Eindhoven mad!!!! But as a teacher it is fascinating how the work that comes out of there is so beautiful and so straight forward and functional. What do they say to the students to guide them.....This is the work of graduate Jo Meesters. Other work has been well received by bloggers but deep in the web site was this work and there is something very special about the handling of the black. The web site is really nice because the work is all over the map as far as point of view and use of new materials-also a well written mission statements. Someone to look out for.

Building business

This week I will be on a hunt for designers who are practicing a design entreprenerialship. I came across the work of Charlotte Sken -Catling via a post on remodelista about a residential project. On her web site she shows this project Eco-lab in which she was the director and visionary behind the project. It seems to be a health and wellness emporium along with a cafe. I know why I came to design project for myself in their entirety but why do others? Its an interesting point in time for designers with the economy and does that mean we may be our only client?

The measure of Building

These benches by Eindhoven graduate Sylvia siu fung Lai are a great example of the specificity of measure in design. All of the benches are the same form yet the use is from the dimension of the height of the bench. Also interesting is her contention that the form is derived from her memories of a traditional Chinese childhood. The narrative and measure.....

Building Light

One of the joys of being a designer for aloong time is that your friends and peers are now VERY talented and VERY accomplished. Some more of our dear friends are Laura Briggs and Jonathan Knowles. And when I think of beautiful staircases I think of this project in Harlem. See more work on their web site www.briggsknowles.com.

Place Building 2

It is cold wet and rainy here in East Mississippi today. But surprisingly next year's gardens seem to be on everyone's mind. We have two gardens to work on now, one at LBC and one here on Greensboro. When I think of gardens I always take a look at our dear friends at Plant in Toronto. Makers of many gardens for a decade now they are very skilled at making wonderful places.

Chair Power

This an image from the photo shoot that Rinne Allen did for Little Building this month. It really says it all.

Place building

The Campana brothers are the "fathers" of the found material in high design. What I find really important about their work is how they evoke a sense of place in each object. Don't these chairs all says Brazil!!!!! Their web site is very dense and complex-www.campanas.com.br

Building knowledge

This week we will have the final projects from the furniture class. The projects are being "mocked up" at full scale in cardboard for a final exhibition.
The text that we used for the class is the very lovely
Chairs; a History by Florence de Dampierre. In it we have found many different words for the the form of a Love seat:
bergere, canape a jous, canape a confident, recaimier, settee.
See if you can find some more...

More Word building

I am just getting the lay of the land here as far as the design community but I had heard and seen a lot of beautiful print work designed by Mark Wise from the architecture department that was a collaboration with printmaker Amos Kennedy. It turns out that all the Rural Studio work is done in his studio and the CAAD lecture series poster this year. So straight from Gordo, Alabama-some very beautiful clear graphic arts. Take that Calarts. Also see the up coming documentary about Kennedy by Laura Zinger.

We must go...

Okay, I am going to clear the decks with work this next week in order to arrange a trip down to New Orleans and see the New Orleans Biennial-Prospect.1. Read this very clear review of the event by New Yorker writer Peter Schjeldahl. Made me want to make the trip even more....
This image is from a piece by Nari Ward