building space

Just in time to start reading again for the springs history course I saw the Bauhaus show at MOMA. Its exhaustive and I will post some things that I spied and am so happy to have seen in person-nothing like that!
At the end is prominently displayed is the Bauhaus Staircase by Oskar Schlemmer. Painted three years after his departure from the school is a cleaver comment on the dawn of modernism and its future. I think this is the painting that made me want to be a designer rather than a painter....I was so much more interested in the space than the painting.

Model Building

I thought I would share with you some of the images I am gathering for the first days of studio this summer. In an effort discuss a conceptual model please review-a still life by Hella Jongerius, a guitar by Picasso and a maquette by Anthony Caro

Building function

I am in between ideas right now. End of the year stuff plus working on two papers. I did come across a designer I knew nothing about and thought I would share. Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky was the first female Austrian architect and is credited with designing what we now term a "built-in"kitchen. Named the "Frankfurt Kitchen" it was one of the first spaces to connect functionality with design and was declared the Housewife's Laboratory.

Crafting worlds

Another artist that people might might be looking is the director Julie Taymor. The auteur of the Disney production of the Lion King her less commercial endeavors are some of my favorite film experiences, Titus and Frida. What I look at with her work is the total control that she can master out of a project, the costumes, the characters and total visual manipulation of the characters and all packaged in a beautifully crafted concert.

Read First

I am starting in on this book Thinking Through Craft by Glenn Abramson today and it really might be the road for me as far as some questions that I have had about the "craft" movement in general and what is going on in art and design schools and with young artist. This week I will show some work that dovetails with the things I am reading. The notion that jumps out at me is that Adamson frames the work of craft in terms of the larger art world. One reviewer found that problematic but I think it is the right question to ask.

Building Drapery

I have been researching the life and work of Candace Wheeler. She is probably the first (we must check our dates) professional interior designer. She was a renowned expert on textiles and embroidery when Louis Tiffany started Associated Artists and enrolled her in the enterprise. She was responsible for the textiles and embroidered work for the Armory Library and the Mark Twain House. Her wallpaper work is still available through the Burrows Studio.

Room Making

I am using this image to finish a lecture on the Industrial Revolution in History class tomorrow. It is the Moorish Smoking Room from John Rockefeller's 54th Street mansion. For the lectures purposes it illustrates the seriousness of the Victorian interior. But it seems that this room, a room that I loved to visit at the Museum of the City of New York is now happily at the Brooklyn Museum. It will join other parts of the house there and tell a full story of New York in the Gilded Age.

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 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...

Chairness

I found this very good article in The History section of designboom. It has a great collection of images that that discuss the meaning of Chairs in modern artist's work. He discusses-visually- Joseph Bueys, Duchamp, Raushenburg and the great Doris Salcedo image that I have discussed before. This is a Christo's Wrapped Chair.

The very powerful Decorative Arts

I am about to curl up with a book I happened upon at the very wonderful
E. Shavers, bookseller in Savannah. It is Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard story of the powerful place quilts had in the infastructure of the underground railroad movement. It is called Hidden in Plain View, A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. I love the idea of something handmade having the power to lead a people to safety.

Building Longevity

I think I am seeing a trend, blogs like designboom and cribcandy are showing more like 40% eye candy for the " I wants" and 60% projects, objects and design work that comes from an "Economy of Means" mentality. This image is a giant curtain made every kind of plastic bottle put up in the bays of the Seoul Korea Olympic stadium. It was fabricated for the Designboom Mart. Very cool.

Armoire

Tomorrow I set the program for the next three weeks for the furniture class. The task is an Armoire-a piece of furniture that has many definitions. This piece by Takeshi Miyakawa in Brooklyn is entitled affordable housing...only someone who lived in NYC might recognize that the form of this cabinet is the same as the housing projects along the river.....Form and narrative,form and narrative.

Building Virtue

Teaching is interesting when it surprises you. I designed the new furniture assignment to appeal to my "all girl band + art boy" class demographic while assigning a jewelry box..... When I put together a slide show that discussed the use of re-used materials in architecture-well I had no idea there would be such a huge connection. I showed them the work of the Rural Studio and they were off finding a series of bulk materials that can be used for their work....I am excited about class tomorrow.

building furniture/furniture building

Some visual food for thought as the furniture class starts on cabinets and armoirs.....Respectively, A medieval chair, a Fornasetti secretary and a cupboard by Piet Hiek.

Building relationships

These are all the Love Seats. Respectively, A Love Seat for Vita and Virginia, A Love Seat for Leonard and Virginia, A Love seat for Vanessa and Virginia, and A Love Seat for Lytton and Virginia. These were exhibited at A D/B Project Space in Brooklyn New York in 2002.

Building words

In an effort to get myself to write this paper about the furniture work. ; I will post this image of the Love seat for Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf; A Love Seat for Reading Poetry. This is the built version of the love seat and was exhibited in 2001 in Brooklyn. So here is my opening paragraph:


For the past 15 years rather than an alternative practice I have had a parallel practice in which I have been investigating the built form of biography. At first the subject manner has mirrored my life as a creative woman but gradually as I matured I looked to others for kinship in the act of making. These pieces are a deeper exploration of the typical design practice. I have reached for a more spiritually and intrinsic understanding of the person's life by designing a piece of furniture for people I admire.

Other peoples chairs, other peoples ideas

I came across this beautiful chair "idea" on the blog Grijs. It is a piece from a larger project by two Swiss designers- kueng-caputo who explore the nature of the design copy and if you can make a piece from the original idea. Its very interesting since I am teaching furniture design and my method is to tell the student to go look at a particular design and see how its formed or put together or conceived. This is not plagiarism, this is looking at who and what you are derived from as a young designer. I would the say that this Copy project falls short only because the "copies" are more often than not better than the design icon they are paying homage to.

Image Building

I set the task for my students today to draw a conceptual sketch of the their project. Not a rendering, not presentation drawing but the first flash that they have of the image of the space. Here are some examples. Two are by the great american designer Ray Eames and two are by ME! I like to do a perspective drawing EARLY in the project to draw out all my preconceived notions. I do not draw a perfect perspective but a very loose idea of the room. It always showed the client that I did have an image in mind and there was no need for any more magazine pictures yet let the project stay loose and continued the creative process.

Interior Ideas

Its not often that my blog reading and my academic ideas merge but this week Irene at Bloesem(my favorite) was discussing Li Edelkoort's prediction that the "house" will be a personel "museum". From my research this is not a new idea, it perhaps started in the 17th century with the "Wonder Room". It was a room in an estate or castle that was reserved for the display of the objects and wonders of the world that the court explorer would bring back. I like to call this a "Collected Space" and anyone from Sir John Sloan-the 18th century British architect to Ray Eames have made spaces like this.