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DesigNYC (3)
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OBSERVED
Does anyone love movies more than Martin Scorsese? In case you missed it, the Scorsese montage from the Golden Globes; his speech afterwards was graceful and passionate. (Thanks to Jim Biber.) [MB]"Ice House Detroit is an architectural installation and social change project currently taking place in Detroit. Photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune will use one of 20,000 abandoned houses and freeze it in solid ice to reference the contemporary urban conditions in the city and beyond." [MB]
Design Observer's Job Board has new jobs in Chicago, DC, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, NYC, Portland, SF, Vienna and Austin. Companies hiring include Lowe's, Whirlpool, Stella & Dot, Kakai, Sheridan & Co, Department of the Treasury and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Post your job today. [JSC]
38 years of Super Bowl commercials. [MB]
When Armin Hoffman meets Charlie's Angels: Albert Exergian's modernist TV posters. (Via VSL.) [MB]
Great summary by Paul Soulellis of last night's heated debate, sponsored by AIGANY, over the signage system and map designed by Unimark in the 60s and 70s for the New York City subway. 40 years later, and tensions are still running high. [MB]
It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. Tickets for the 99% Conference are now on sale. The conference takes place April 15-16, 2010 in NYC at the Times Center. Guest speakers include: Stefan Sagmeister, John Maeda, Jack Dorsey, Eve Blossom, Jay O'Callahan, Fred Wilson and others. See our very own Michael Bierut's presentation at last year's conference here.
[JSC]
Design Observer's Job Board has new jobs in Portland, LA, Vienna, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, NYC, Chicago and Milan. Companies hiring include Barnes and Noble, Cinco Design Office, Gymboree, Digitas, Kolar Design, Joby Inc. and Missouri School of Journalism. Post your job today. [JSC]
Through July 12, The New Typography in the Architecture and Design Galleries at MoMA. [MB]
Do you need shots of people doing things? We got that B roll! [MB]
Yamasaki Associates, designers of the World Trade Center complex, has closed, leaving behind "a welter of lawsuits and unpaid claims." [MB]
Project M is accepting applications for its next session, in Hilo, Hawaii. [JL]
"Most designers cannot write. I don't mean they can't write like Faulkner. I don't mean they don't have a discernable prose style. I mean they cannot WRITE. They do not know where to put a subject and a verb and a capital and a period. They are functionally illiterate." [MB]
Since it reopened last year, the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, has been the venue of a series of intimate conversations. They've been moderated by, among others, Roger Mandle, Laurie Beckelman, Maurice Cox, and John Maeda; the themes have included Breaking the Rules, Transparency, and Design and Civic Leadership. [MB]
Unhappy Hipsters! (Thanks to Melissa Davis.) [JH]
Given its recent problems, maybe Toyota needs a different tagline than "Moving Forward." [MB]
Design Observer is pleased to announce that one of our favorite writers and editors, Mark Lamster, author of Master of Shadows and fellow blogger, will be joining our regular stable of contributing writers. Welcome Mark, we very much look forward to more of your essays. [WD]
The US National Endowment for the Arts, seeking a new "Art Works" logo, confuses an RFP (Request for Proposals) with an RFFW (Request for Free Work), with only one lucky winner promised a $25,000 payoff. As Chairman Rocco Landesman tells us, "'Art works' is a reminder that arts workers are real workers with real jobs" — who work on spec, evidently. Sigh. [MB]
Design Observer's Job Board has new jobs in Savannah, SF, Prague, St. Louis, Chicago, NYC, Pittsburgh, Madison and Boston. Companies hiring include Gap Inc., Wunderbar, Martha Stewart Living, Ann Taylor, Goddard Claussen, SK+G and Columbia College. Post your job today. [JSC]
Priceless 1994 video of the late Muriel Cooper demonstrating experiments in dynamic, interactive, computer-based typography by her students from MIT Media Lab's Visible Language Workshop. [JL]
From Elliott Malkin, Mother's History of Birds, a 7-minute documentary about his artist mother and her long and storied history with pet birds. And don't miss Everything I Know About Hyman Victor and other home movies. [JSC]
"This is a blog documenting a project that will span exactly one year, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. On each of those 365 days, I will photograph or draw (and occasionally paint) one collection." Lisa Congdon presents A Collection a Day, 2010. (Thanks to Dean Morris.) [MB]
Documentary editor Karen Schmeer, who helped shape, among many other films, Errol Morris's The Fog of War, dies at 39, the victim of a hit-and-run accident. A tragedy.
[MB]
Over 650 Philip K. Dick book covers. [MB]
The light blue Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter on which Cormac McCarthy wrote 5 million words in over 45 years, has been auctioned off for $254,500. Previously on DO, Rick Poynor eulogizes his own manual typewriter. [MB]
The book (cover) that changed my life. Rest in peace, J. D. Salinger. [MB]
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Observatory
Hungarian Rhapsody
Ars Libri LtdThis collection is a record of the immensely productive life of György Kepes, it includes crates of notes and manuscripts from his books — many of them lavishly illustrated with original drawings and diagrams; heavily annotated sketchbooks crammed with compositions for paintings and stained glass; photographs, as well as pictures acquired for publication purposes and incidental examples of his own drawings, watercolors and other works of art.
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Change Observer
DesigNYC
By Julie Lasky A star-powered matchmaking organization pairs New York designers with social causes. According to co-founder Wendy Goodman, DesigNYC focuses “on one simple idea: Good design, effective design, makes people feel better.”
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Places
Architect, Park Thyself
By Ian BaldwinIn the 20th century the United States became a nation of drivers, and for decades now our cities have been adapting to the automobile, with notably mixed results. "The auto-urban relationship — fumbling, overheated, unsatisfying for both parties — never stands still long enough to be rationally inspected," writes architect Ian Baldwin. "But there is one place where city and car merge into stasis: the parking garage." Baldwin reviews House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage, now at the National Building Museum. The exhibition takes a long look of the evolution of a building type that, as Baldwin notes, "makes the modern city possible." Baldwin also reviews The Architecture of Parking, by British architect Simon Henley, which offers an overview of international garage design.
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Observatory
Left Me Speechless
By Andy ChenI don't know what to make of this image. Clearly, it's an over-Photoshopped portrait of Cindy McCain that looks like something straight out of the X-Files. Then again, the notion that Mrs. Maverick is openly championing gay rights is a bit alien after all.
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Change Observer
The Cotton Club
By Ernest BeckYour T-shirt label may say "organic," but what really does that mean? Combing through the tangle of sustainable standards for the world's most popular fiber.
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Places
A View of Haiti from Liberty City
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By Hector Fernando BurgaLast week on Change Observer, in "Prepared for Haiti," the product designer Tony Whitfield reflected on the limited ability of design to respond in the immediate aftermath of catastrophic destruction. Here Miami-based architect Hector Fernando Burga suggests a similar challenge for urban design — that the field has yet to devise the techniques by which practitioners might apply their expertise with speed and agility. Tony Whitfield provoked an animated debate, which isn't surprising. As designers we are, says Hector Burga, "trained to find solutions," to pursue "positive transformation." And yet our methods tend to assume "a high degree of stability and linearity." Can we devise more improvisatory techniques, more supple and adaptable frameworks for response?
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Observatory
Big Book, Small Reward
By Mark LamsterAmong the trends I’d like to see disappear in this new decade, right up there with urban taxidermy and use of the term “foodie,” is the mania among design professionals for obscenely fat monographs.
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Observatory
Who Owns Student Work?
By Meredith DavisThe prevailing opinion at many design and art schools is that the faculty and university have some “ownership rights” in the output of any class. (Hence, the free art that graces of the pages of so many college recruiting brochures.) But what happens when the student enters into a client relationship within the context of curriculum or university activities? In other words, when does a student own their own work?
READ MORE | COMMENTS (10)
By Eric BakerOther Recent Posts
PLACES: Phoenix – Barcelona: Cities in Transformation
PLACES: Chicago Self-Park
PLACES: "Think Tall"
CHANGE OBSERVER: GlobalTap
OBSERVATORY: Howling at the Moon: The Poetics of Amateur Product Reviews
PLACES: ink
OBSERVATORY: Moshe Safdie
PLACES: Dams Across America
OBSERVATORY: Today, 01.23.10
PLACES: Visualizing the Future of
Environmental Design
RECENT HIGHLIGHTS
Hector Fernando Burga
A View of Haiti from Liberty City
Ernest Beck
The Cotton Club
Mark Lamster
Big Book, Small Reward
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Audio: Design Matters Archive
Michael HodgsonAll music show with DJ and designer Michael Hodgson, co-founder of the design firm Ph.D.
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Observatory Archive
Books + Store: Books Received
Unimark International: The Design of Business and the Business of DesignJan Conradi
For Love and Money: New Illustration
Liz Farrelly & Olivia Triggs
Architectural Graphics
Francis D. Ching
This Is Not a Book
Keri Smith
Provisional: Emerging Modes of Architectural Practice USA
Elite Kedan
Iapsis Forum on Design and Critical Practice: The Reader
Martin Frostner & Magnus Ericson
Unsung Heroes of Anonymous Design
George Tscherny & Nadia Tscherny
Windfall Light: The Visual Language of ECM
Lars Müller, editor
Limited Language: Rewriting Design
Colin Davies & Monika Parrinder
Andrea Cochran: Landscapes
Mary Myers
More Books Received >>
Recommended Books
Exquisite Corpse: Writing on Buildings
Michael Sorkin
Whenever I feel that contemporary architecture criticism has gotten too dull, I flip through this collection of Sorkin’s Village Voice reviews from the 1980s, pick one, and feel instantly refreshed. Sorkin can be mean (to Paul Goldberger) and paranoid (about the Ford Foundation), but his proto-snark is thoroughly backed up with architectural analysis that is both pointed and full of feeling. [AL]
Buy This Book >>
More Recommended Books >>
Michael Sorkin
Whenever I feel that contemporary architecture criticism has gotten too dull, I flip through this collection of Sorkin’s Village Voice reviews from the 1980s, pick one, and feel instantly refreshed. Sorkin can be mean (to Paul Goldberger) and paranoid (about the Ford Foundation), but his proto-snark is thoroughly backed up with architectural analysis that is both pointed and full of feeling. [AL]
Buy This Book >>
More Recommended Books >>
Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archive of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
Hilar Stadler & Martino Stierli, editors
A collection of images from slides, photos, and films from the original field research of 1966-1968 that would form the visual core of Venturi, Brown, and Izenour's seminal analysis, Learning from Las Vegas (1972). Like the sun-bleached image of its cover, this book captures a fugitive moment in American culture with images that parallel and in some cases presage the deadpan aesthetic of artists such as Ed Ruscha and Dan Graham or the subjects of the new color photography as practiced by artists such as Stephen Shore. [AB]
Buy This Book >>
More Recommended Books >>
Hilar Stadler & Martino Stierli, editors
A collection of images from slides, photos, and films from the original field research of 1966-1968 that would form the visual core of Venturi, Brown, and Izenour's seminal analysis, Learning from Las Vegas (1972). Like the sun-bleached image of its cover, this book captures a fugitive moment in American culture with images that parallel and in some cases presage the deadpan aesthetic of artists such as Ed Ruscha and Dan Graham or the subjects of the new color photography as practiced by artists such as Stephen Shore. [AB]
Buy This Book >>
More Recommended Books >>
Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism
Bryan Bell & Katie Wakeford, editors
This upbeat compendium is a cross-section of public-interest design polemics and projects. The projects have low budgets and large ambitions, and include remediated riverways in Taiwan, microcredit-financed housing in Mexico, lightweight shelter for Kosovo refugees, and affordable prefab in Virginia. [NL]
Buy This Book >>
More Recommended Books >>
Bryan Bell & Katie Wakeford, editors
This upbeat compendium is a cross-section of public-interest design polemics and projects. The projects have low budgets and large ambitions, and include remediated riverways in Taiwan, microcredit-financed housing in Mexico, lightweight shelter for Kosovo refugees, and affordable prefab in Virginia. [NL]
Buy This Book >>
More Recommended Books >>
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