The 1970s was an exciting time in the world of design. Architects and engineers were competing to build the tallest building in the world. Buckminster Fuller perfected “Spaceship Earth.” Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers “turned the architecture world upside down” with the inside-out Centre George Pompidou in Paris. And as we discovered via our favorite passport to another time, Retronaut, Graystone Press published a massive, eighteen volume anthology known as The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement. Arranged alphabetically by topic, the books cover everything from “how to select chairs that are comfortable and durable” to “how to arrange collections to create focus and visual rhythms” to “why the ancients used color.”
We were so inspired by the quirky range of entries that we had to make our own abridged version of our new favorite design reference. Let us know in the comments what has you wanting to invest in some avocado green accent pieces or give couching a whirl.
A quick perusal of the latest Tumblr to poke fun at the lifestyles of those for whom design is within reach — F*** Your Noguchi Coffee Table — has us wondering, when exactly does a trend become a cliché? When does something that we once deemed original and inspiring become tired and absurd? Is mainstream appeal the death of design?
Salvador Dalí offers a few thoughts on the subject in the preface to Pierre Cabanne’s Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. Dalí says, “the first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.” It’s a statement that speaks as much to originality and authorship as it does to poetic license and a knock-off’s taboo.
We might not know all of the answers to our existential musings, but we do know that we love the guilty indulgence of quietly judging the interiors and objects dominating our Pinterest page. Click through to see our own collection of design to uninspire, along with a few favorites from the Tumblr that started it all. Leave your own nominations in the comments.
Wikipedia says that succulents are water-retaining plants adapted to arid climates or soil conditions. We say they’re the greatest eye candy since Ryan Gosling. OK, that’s pushing it. But, really, could there be an easier way to add a touch of graphic, quirky charm to any space?
Succulents and their most notable family member, the cactus, have been a fixture on the design circuit for as long as the Eames Eiffel Chair has been around. Winning hearts and minds of designers the world over, the succulent embodies the Modernist movement’s overarching belief that form follows function. A timeless testament to the lasting value of the organic form stripped of all unnecessary ornament, here’s our guide to living with the best looking, utilitarian plants in the world.
Let us know in the comments what has you Yelping your friendly neighborhood garden center.
Immortalizing Elaine Benes’ full-bodied dry heave set to music, the Time Warp, and other signature moves from pop culture, Niege Borges Alves’ posters are amusing graphical breakdowns of famous dances. We first spotted our favorite ways to cut a rug on film and television over at Design You Trust. Alves’ Dancing Plague of 1518 series is named after the strange, real-life case of dancing mania that broke out in 16th century France. Some people fervently shook it for several weeks, and a few even died. Don’t let that bring you down, though. Put a smile back on your face by heading after the jump and looking at pop culture’s signature moves.
We’re up to our ears in modern, accessible design. No offense CB2, West Elm, or IKEA. Really, you’re great. You helped us furnish our first apartments, and we love you for that. But, we’re a little older, a little wiser, and we want more. More substance. More soul. Which is why we’re migrating en masse to intermittent flea markets, scouring Craigslist and enrolling in classes to learn everything from upholstery to blacksmithing to the lathe.
It’s not the first time we’ve resolved to roll up our sleeves and make more of our world. The last time, a New Age was upon us and the Western saga that produced the hipster’s predecessor was embracing simple living and imaginative expression. Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro, two builders living in Northern California, the movement’s epicenter, set out to explore what was happening in the woods and valleys around them. Boericke writes that it was a time that saw houses with “tiles that have never been in a store because the tilemaker’s kiln is just beyond her kitchen door.” Now out of print, The Craftsmen Builder and Handmade Houses, A Guide to the Woodbutcher’s Art document what they found.
We’ve rounded up the best of what these two tomes have to offer thanks to Mr. Chum’s comprehensive scans. Now, put on some Vashti Bunyan, grab a kilim pillow and click through to revisit these inspiring collections of handmade houses.
With Amazon slowly taking over the publishing world and bookstores closing left and right, things can sometimes seem a little grim for the brick and mortar booksellers of the world. After all, why would anyone leave the comfort of their couch to buy a book when with just a click of a button, they could have it delivered to their door? Well, here’s why: bookstores so beautiful they’re worth getting out of the house (or the country) to visit whether you need a new hardcover or not. We can’t overestimate the importance of bookstores — they’re community centers, places to browse and discover, and monuments to literature all at once — so we’ve put together a list of the most beautiful bookstores in the world, from Belgium to Japan to Slovakia. Just so you know now, all you bookstore fiends: neither the Strand nor Powell’s is on this list. They’re both great bookstores, of course, but not particularly pretty (at least in our minds), and thus disqualified. Click through to see our picks for the most beautiful bookstores in the world, and as always, if we’ve left off your favorite, be sure to add to the collection in the comments!
We love the Pritzker Prize-winning architectural team of SANAA because they gave us the New Museum, a whimsical steel stack of a building that sits at the intersection of Bowery and Prince Street in New York’s Lower East Side shouting out a rainbow colored “HELL, YES” to everyone who walks by. We love them even more for their minimal houses filled with light, quirky furniture, and lots and lots of plants.
SANAA is Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa. Based in Tokyo, their architecture has been described as metaphysical, dreamlike, and ethereal. A reaction to the chaos and cluttered complexity of the modern world, says Kristine Guzmán, architect and curator at MUSAC, “SANAA’s houses are capable of transforming a person’s way of life.”
Taking cues from our favorite houseplant loving design icons, here’s our guide to bringing a little SANAA into your world. Click through to check it out and let us know what inspired you the most in the comments!
Here are two names we didn’t expect to see in the same headline: arena-rock stars Kings of Leon and lo-fi LA punks No Age. We imagine they have somewhere around zero fans in common, but as Marc Hogan at Spin points out, they do kind of share a T-shirt design. In a blog post last night, No Age posted a few photos of a Kings of Leon tee with the caption, “t shirt designs by the kings of originality… looking good.” Indeed, the shirt bears some resemblance to No Age’s signature design, which seems to pre-date KoL’s by a few years: Both feature big, bright, all-caps, multicolored text on a plain, white background. Then again, the T-shirts are also pretty simple, and, as much as we hate to defend Kings of Leon, it’s just as believable to us that their designer came up with the look independently as that he spotted a No Age tee and decided to rip it off. See larger version of both shirts after the jump, and let us know whether you think it’s a copy in the comments.
As we may have mentioned, we are pretty excited to see Absolutely Fabulous back on TV. We missed Patsy and Edina, we missed Saffy, we missed Gran, and we especially missed Bubble, Eddy’s walking acid trip of an assistant. But it wasn’t until we read Tom & Lorenzo’s great blog post about the show’s return that we realized we had been longing for more than just the characters. As they note, Eddy has one hell of a kitchen, and it feels great to watch the cast sip coffee and chug champagne in it again. The Monsoon kitchen and 14 others that we wouldn’t minding owning are after the jump.
Not sure how to get from Penny Lane to Itchycoo Park? Curious where Highway to Hell intersects with 8th Avenue Heartache? Never fear — just consult this amazing song map from creative collective Dorothy, which is, you guessed it, a “road map of song titles.” Some references are universal and some are for true music nerds only, and as the creators say, “just like places in our own neighbourhood, some are really good and some are best avoided – remember ‘Love House’ by Sam Fox?” Yikes. Click through to check out the map, and head over to Dorothy to buy a print for your own House of Fun. Read More »
