Building a weaving community

I am hoping to get to see the work of fiber artist Anne Wilson on my trip to Knoxville next week. The exhibition is entitled Wind Rewind Weaveand appears to be a rather deep exploration of Wilson's work, installation work with community weavers and other outward ways of expression.


I did my best to get the links right-but Blogger is not helping me sorry.....

Building a new history

For those of you in Brooklyn on this January day I would advise a trip to the Brooklyn Museum to see this new exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
Entitled Healing The Wounds of War:The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864. The exhibition will showcase a brilliant of example of female stitchery, the extensive doll clothes trousseau of Eliza Lefferts; for sale to aid the sanitary conditions in the wars hospitals.

Smart building

The new work of French designer Inga Sempe has popped up on the design radar this morning. I really love this love seat. It tells the story of the function, quite well. Check out this Designboom interview with Sempe.

Building adventures

Last fall I did a lot of NYC-Mississippi back and forth so I did not post that much about travel-Well get ready because this spring I will feel like I am part of a bad bar band-Knoxville, Mobile, Atlanta, New Orleans and Birmingham...for a variety of reasons-One thing that is getting me excited are the beautiful photographs of E.L.Malvaney(a pen name!) on his/her Flickr page. And the crazy blog from Mississippi Preservation......I love this place.

Building Invention

I have been fascinated by the work of Maggie Orth ever since I toured the building at the Media Lab at MIT. Her work was the most interesting mostly because she thought like a designer and wanted the technology to be hidden. Now she heads the company International Fashion Machines, Inc. She has developed a series of affordable electronic textiles that are a sign of the future. She says in this great video that "artists want programmable materials"....yes they do! Is this the ultimate in technology and craft?

Building form

One of the best things about teaching is the bag of tricks that you get to put together to build a project. Next up for my furniture students is a simple stool, using the structural knowledge embedded in these drawings by 19th century scientist Ernst Haeckel. A contemporary of Darwin, Haeckel out drew the great man but maybe did not get as much "right". But for now it will be a tremendous design challenge to understand the potential of these drawings.

Map Building

I am getting ready to start the spring project of Mapping and more work with Mr. Grant. I came across this artist this morning when I was reading the Times. Alighiero Boetti, Italian Arte Povera artist devised maps that discussed the geopolitical climate and had them made by artisans in Afghanistan,Kabel and Pakistan...he started in 1971 and worked on them for another 20 years.....I need to see these.

Building an idea

Caleb sent me this great image the other day. no credit sorry, I did some research and came up short. I feel like its a piece that I would make....."goofball tech". But it does sort of explain an idea that I am working on; that technology and handcraft are not opposites but 'the means to an end". Craft is the midwife to technology?

Perfect Building

I will be forever devoted to each issue of World Of Interiors because I learn about someone or something in each issue. I can completely shift gears to the work of James Lee Byars an American performance artists who practiced in the 60's and 70's, he searched for the definition of perfection. This is his piece The Golden Divan. Very perfect.

Building adorable white.......

This work made me smile......ceramic work by Jorine Oosterhoff from the Netherlands. The idea of white shines through.

Building WHITE

There is something very comforting in this image from Isle Crawford's newly completed Kettners in London. The linen table cloth and the old plate candelabras? This was spotted on Yatzer last week. In her discussions about her work Crawford says that emotion is a prime concern-frankly I did not buy it until I saw this image....a story ready to take place?

Building beautiful function

I rarely have the "Iwants" but this is very lovely. A very beautiful ceramic water filter....it feels Roman in character. I spotted it on the way hip site Core 77. In honor of our elemental week, aquatic libraries, sound tabernacles,roman water vessels, shining cities made by children.......I could go on.

Building Collective

I am not sure if I have a new found love of all projects in White or projects that have terrific names- This one by artist Olafur Eliasson is called The Collectivity Project. Eliasson donates 3 tone of white Lego to a community and just tells them (mostly children) to build... the potential is high.

Community Building

Ghislaine Vinas did a lovely piece about Little Building Cafe on the Interior Design Blog. Its so nice when people get it.
I want to announce that Ted and I will be holding a benefit for Re-building Haiti on February 21st. We want to have a "works on paper" sale to highlight the mega creative capital that is in our orbit. Please contact me if you would like to contribute a drawing, photograph, print,etc. It does not need to be framed we show work inside Little Building on a series of clothes lines so we will work in that format for this show. All proceeds will go to Architecture for Humanity

Building Perfect

The most fitting building to follow an aquatic library is certainly an "acoustically perfect tabernacle and energy machine". I found this on the very interesting Commune website. This building is called the Integratron was build by George Van Tassel who was a discipline of Nickola Testla a scientist that Mark Twain was fascinated by and shadowed for many years.
If you are ever in Joshua tree than this is worth a pilgrimage.

Building a fresh start

I was feeling a little blue about design what I was interested in and how to put it forward in this lecture. Until I found some great work by the amazing Ilse Crawford. She curated an exhibition about water and this is an aquatic library that she devised. What a beautiful idea!

Building Invention

I am thinking a lot about invention, re-invention and the times we are in. Reading this book Glimmer by Warren Berger has been interesting but all the designers he discusses still rely upon the magic client to make a designers world happen. I wonder, isn't it time for designers to think though the entire problem- the financing down to the beauty....Will that effect real change when the designer is truly responsible for the manifestation of any idea. Mark Twain is a hero of mine and he invented the first blog.....he also was terribly frustrated by how publishers paid authors so spent many years working on a printing press to solve this problem...he never succeeded but we can learn from his work. Solve the problems of economics first hand then you have the power to change great things.

World Building

Caleb is spending the day framing drawings for a show at the Architecture School at the University of Arkansas next month. His ever evolving body of work seems to answer the world's call for deep decent into the imagination.

Building Wild

I am really in a strange space with the Haiti crisis-hard to be upbeat about furniture and shiny new buildings when there is so much to be done. I did see this article about the production designer for Where the Wild Things Are and the creative process for making Max's fort.....A metaphor for going deep and recognizing the need for epic ideas.....

A plea for re-building

The devastation in Haiti is horrific and heart wrenching. There are many immediate ways to help but consider the work of Architecture for Humanity who were already on the ground in Haiti for future housing efforts. Contributing to their work will insure the re-building of this country.

Building Superuse....

Caleb has been doing research on the work in the Netherlands that embraces the tenants of Architecture 2012. This is designer Jan Korbes who has some great work. This is a wall made out disused refrigerators and used as signage for a recycling plant. Smart because it has a real purpose......

Building good work

My SCI-Arc classmate Tami Wedekind is making some great things! Site specific architectural fabric can be devised for a variety of uses. I really love this partition in a commercial space, it really makes you think about how to make space with giant orange flowing shapes at your disposal....rather than just drywall.......

building in unexpected places

I am intrigued by Polly Apfelbaum's work. This image of a bedspread lead me to her work that includes many works on the floor, wall as canvas and some general inversion of what is art product and decorative art. Really great.

Building a Falling Garden

I love this image from the Venice Biennial in 2003 by swiss artists Steiner and Lenzlinger. A light, delicate rain of objects and possibilities......The piece is called a Fallen Garden. Lots of meanings......

New Making

It was announce over the holidays that Sebastian Brajkovic's Lathe Chair was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Collection. This is exciting news because his work really is the most innovative of 2009. I particularly like the embroidery work that pops up in certain pieces. I really want to know how he gets this work done?

Building with beautiful materials

In the Glimmer book it speaks about the thrill of being a producer rather than consumer. I think that it something we all are looking for in the coming year. But let me point out that I would be thrilled to consume this beautiful child's chair by Toronto designers at Bookhou. And it makes me want to produce! This is one of the rare recently designed products that understand what the nature of the materials being used are up against. Note the scale- a child's chair, this means that felt a particularly strong material in small expanses can be used....so smart.

Building designers

I started this book by Warren Berger today to get myself going on a number of talks that I am making this spring. And because in one of the press descriptions- I swear it said that Bruce Mau designed his way into weight loss. So far I haven't found that part but it does have some sweet insights into the design process some nice success stories about failures and some overall optimism that we need right now.....

Building Grace

One of the holidays earliest happy moments was touring The Burn in Natchez and coming face to face with a Leon Marcotte love seat. I talk about Marcotte a lot in history class, he was a renowned cabinet/furniture maker but unlike Belter and Mallard he is mentioned as an interior designer. To my knowledge this is the first sighting of an American upholsterer/designer-a type very common in France in the mid-19th century. While more research is done just enjoy the delicate styling of his work and think how great it looks in a Greek revival number. This particular piece can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

BUILDING VOTES!

Our good friends at Remodelista just wrote and issued an urgent request to vote for your favorite Home Design Blog of the Year. I am a faithful follower of these ladies. They are smart, grown up and looking at the world with very clear eyes. What more could you want.

VOTE REMODELISTA!!!!!!!! VIVA LA CHIC! 'Below are instructions....

Remodelista, just reached the finals of a Home Design Blog of the Year contest run by Apartment Therapy. We beat out 642 websites to get to this point. Now we are facing five other great sites in the finals. Winning would be a terrific PR boost for us. If you can spare 2 minutes to register and vote for Remodelista it would be greatly appreciated (if you already have - thank you!).

Voting runs from now until Wednesday -- and with over 2200 votes cast, we are in a dead heat right now for the lead.

measurement building

Clearly I could have a very fine collection of love seats in my possession if money and space allowed. I really adore the form. There is much to learn from the love seat -mostly in studying the proportion in relation to the measurements. This D.R. Dimes Windsor Three Bow Love seat is 72" and 16" deep. This very interesting since most chairs are 18" to 24" deep. So its carefully, by a matter of inches. designed for a passage way in a home rather than a piece in a conversation area. I love stuff like that. I spied this piece via the current issue of The World of Interiors.

Building places for friends

I am changing the structure of Furniture Design this semester and starting with the "love seat" project. The love seat is a interesting Type in furniture design first of all because during its evolution in the 18th century French courts it had possibly 20 names attached to the typology. This contemporary example is the famous Jurgen Bey Tree Bench. I actually got to see it in person and its quiet special. The "Louis-ques" backs are grafted on to a quite beautiful tree trunk....

Building community seats

This has been all over the European blogs-but I just saw it. Devised by young German designers Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peir. It is a very powerful statement on how we want to interact this year; communally,with care and craft and with humour.

"Artists make problems"

A friend once said "artist make problems, designers solve them." Hum, something to ponder this new year with the work of Netherland's design studio Rens. Their work is from the dear pragmatism of the dutch design school but are they helping????? If not we all are having a fine time. Can not wait to see more.

Building good problems

Yes, The first chair that I show of the year might not be that functional. Upstate New York Artist/furniture maker Christopher Kurtz made this chair that was discreetly put into a Martha Stewart Living spread with no web equivalent to be found. A chair that is not quite functional yet full of spirit.....new ways to look at the world.

Building anew......

Good Morning! As you can see I am cleaning house in Blog world as well as my desk at 305 Greensboro. I am generally excited about the work ahead this winter and spring. On the To Do list is a talk establishing the future of interior design, finish Julia Grant's furniture that I am designing along with a chaise that maps General Grants military movements, a triangular bathroom across from the BQE, two talks about Little Building Cafe and entrepreneurial activism, a love seat for Madam X, teach three classes, some dance recitals and middle school version of Into the Woods for Mad and a book? And this little project; a little building in Belfast Maine, you saw it this summer and its come along way, we are on schedule and it got closed up before xmas-now some designing on the inside. Let's get going.