Dinosaurs and Robots

McLean Modern

2009-11-21T18:34:00.001-08:00

There's something really pleasant about the logos for the Central Park in McLean, Virginia, which I pass when I have to go to the horrible, sprawling mall complex in Tyson's Corner.

Maybe it's their unassuming simplicity which stands out in a town known for significant wealth. Maybe it's the unexpected appearance of modernism [albeit of a peculiar, early 80's retro-rustic variety] in a sea of faux-lonial Williamsburg. Either way, they're a treat. I'm sure that even as I type, a committee of upscale citizens has convened to plan their replacement.

Muji Paperclips

2009-11-21T11:46:00.000-08:00

The launch of Japanese retailer Muji's Xmas 2009 gift collection has sent shockwaves through the novelty paperclip industry. Or at least the sector which caters to companies whose logos are snowmen, stockings, and the Statue of Liberty.

Muji Xmas 2009 campaign, JP shipping only [muji.net]
Previously: Hubble Paperclip

Reference Library x South Willard Pop-Up

2009-11-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

Our man Andy of the always compelling Reference Library and Stork Bites Man blogs is opening a pop-up shop at our pal Ryan's South Willard. Rather than actual prawns, the store will sell the finest selections for children. My retail store, Coco's Variety, has contributed a minuscule Motobecane 10-speed from the 1970's as part of the commercial offerings.

The Shrimp Shop opens Saturday, November 21

Damn Vegetation, Get Off My Lawn!

2009-11-20T11:25:00.000-08:00

I know space is filled with a network of wormholes as well as the next guy, and I'm stoked to see that Faulders Studio found one in their recent landscaping job in some San Francisco backyard.

But the cognitive dissonance of this sentence singing the praises of their paving job cracks me up:

This asserts the valued presence of the carbon-absorbing tree and its green canopy overhead, while allowing for a maximum of usable surface area below free of other vegetation.

In other news, France'd be great, if it weren't for the French.

Deformscape [via boingboing]

It's My Bed In A Box, Baby

2009-11-19T17:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am constitutionally incapable of not referencing Justin Timberlake whenever I use the phrase "in a box" in a blog post. Now that that's out of the way...

The previous Mobile Totale post reminded D+R reader Michael of the slick, multi-functional built-in Barcelona architects Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores made for their own small apartment. Called Bed-in-a-Box [after Duchamp, not Timberlake], it features a kitchen/dining table on one side, and a slide-away bed and storage on the other.

ReadyMade Magazine #43 actually has a set of instructions for building your own, baby. d'oh!

ReadyMade #43 | Projects | Bed in a Box, by Prats Flores [readymade.com]

Louis XV Style x Louis Vuitton Style

2009-11-17T06:09:00.000-08:00

Oh, New Jersey.

Your Turnpike provides me endless hours of entertaining conveyance--and cheap, full-service diesel.

And your more upscale estate auction houses provide me with equally entertaining views onto the sometimes questionable decorating choices of the most recently departed of your leading citizens.

And for that, I thank you.

Lot 358: Louis XV style giltwood bench with Vuitton upholstery, 19/20th century, est. $1,000-1,500. Millea Bros. auction, Nov. 21, Morristown Armory. [liveauctioneers.com]

Doris Duke's Shooting Gallery

2009-11-17T05:40:00.000-08:00

In a move they will surely come to regret, the mandarins at The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation decided that an environmental center based on a 2,700 acre New Jersey estate does not, in fact, need a turn-of-the-last-century, mechanized shooting gallery in the basement. Last May, the shooting gallery, which was apparently quite a popular feature at the free-spirited heiress's parties at Duke Farms, was sold at auction for $43,200, deinstallation and Duke gun collection not included.

It was designed by William F. Mangels, a pioneer of the amusements industry, whose Coney Island company invented, among other things, the mechanism for making carousel horses go up and down and The Whip.

Grid Beam

2009-11-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

Mentioning Ken Isaacs always flushes some interesting tips out of the Internet brush.

Take D+R reader Stephen's suggestion of the Grid Beamers, for example, next-generation Isaacians "united to build a better world through logical thinking and reuseable parts." Rectilinear, modular parts with lots of carefully drilled holes.

Here are some things the Grid Beamers love: open source, prototyping, square stock, modular lengths, 1:1 ratios between stock width and hole spacing, tri-joints.

Here are some things they don't: curves, user-centered design, the metric system.

Here's the web page for Phil Jergensen, the Linus Torvalds of Grid Beam [gridbeamers.com]
Almost exactly a year ago, Make linked to The Citizen Scientist's review of Jergensen's ersatz Grid Beam Bible, How To Build With Grid Beam, then some Makers discussed specifics of getting started with Grid Beam. [makezine]
Connors934 is the go-to flickr user for Grid Beam, mostly from this years Bay Area Maker Faire. [flickr]

Interesting Items from the Sotheby's 20th Century Decorative Arts & Design Auction

2009-11-12T16:31:00.000-08:00

A PAIR OF CARVED BEECHWOOD ARMCHAIRS BY LUCIEN LEVY-DHURMER AND EDOUARD COLLET, CIRCA 1910-1912.

'GIRAFE, LE COU TENDU', A PATINATED BRONZE SCULPTURE BY REMBRANDT BUGATTI, CIRCA 1907

AN ASH VENEERED AND ALUMINUM BOOKCASE BY CHARLOTTE PERRIAND, CIRCA 1960. UNIQUE PIECE.

Sotheby's 20th Century Decorative Arts & Design Auction

Two More Gramophones for Ipods

2009-11-11T17:46:00.000-08:00

Hendekagram by Alexander Rybol and Michael Neubauer.

Phonofone II from Charles and Marie.

Gramophone-style Acoustic Amplifier for iPhone

2009-11-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

Using no electricity, the Aircurve uses a gramophone-style acoustic chamber to amplifier an iPhone. Will it work on Greg's iPod and allow his child to listen to Yo Yo Ma? Don't know, but it sure is looks better than Greg's iPod in the cereal bowl.

Too low tech for you? Check out Ross' homebrew chip amplifier.

Griffin Aircurve (Thanks, Darren and Ross!)

Is There A Gramophone For The iPod?

2009-11-10T10:06:00.001-08:00

After being so helpful in finding the right tropical vinyl tablecloth [Coco's Variety, of course!], I wonder if the D+R community knows if/where I can find a well-designed gramophone-like object which will, solely by virtue of its optimal geometry, amplify the sound from my iPod Touch, so that the soothing sounds of Yo Yo Ma can fill the kid's room and lull her to sleep--and I can have my laptop back?

Until then, I'll just be using this bowl. The sound's louder if you point it face down.

20th Century Space Invasion Exhibit

2009-11-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

Our man at Telstar Logistics has a report on a space toy exhibit that is hiding in the San Francisco United Airlines terminal.

The Joy of Space Travel at SFO

Gramophone Speakers

2009-11-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

From Aesthesis:

Gramophone is a highly exclusive Hi-Fi loudspeaker, 1.2 metres high and handmade in Sweden of carbon fibre and stainless steel. Gramophone has been developed by many of the companies behind the swedish supersportscar manufacturer Koenigseggs’ cars like Ergonomidesign, Eker Design and Carbocomp on commission by us. The attention to detail has been immaculate - from the overall sound quality right down to each and every component. We are very proud of our achievements!

The Gramophone by Aesthesis (via Wallpaper)

Mobile Totale by Titina Ammanati & Giampiero Vitelli

2009-11-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

I had an article remaining before my NY Times archive 10-pack expired, so I just threw in a name I liked to see what the paper of record had to say about...Ken Isaacs, evangelist for the modular design movement and author of the awesome, How To Build Your Own Living Structures [OOP, but free PDF download here.]

Wow, just five hits for a legend? The best one was a 1968 article on the still more glorious dawn that awaited the overthrow of the furniture hegemony: "It's a Bed, It's a Kitchen, It's an 'Environment'"!

But Isaacs' scruffy lumber Living Structure was overshadowed by a chrome version by Verner Panton [still researching], and this stunner, a gigantic, slot-together, all-in-one Italian masterpiece from the husband-and-wife architecture team Titina Ammanati and Giampiero Vitell.

Dubbed Mobile Totale/Total Furniture, the 1965 design featured a convertible sofa bed and trundle [keep your guests close!], built-in storage shelves, and a fold-out kitchen and dining table on the back. It's like the early Living Unit sculptures of one of my favorite artists, Andrea Zittel--only earlier.

Mobile Totale was totally new to me. Just about the only Internet reference at all was one I should have spotted but didn't: a Phillips de Pury auction in London last September. It had a very high estimate for something so little-known, and sure enough, it didn't sell. The Furniture Industrial Complex's day of reckoning may still come, but not yet.

Lot 93: Mobile Totale, 1965, Ammanati & Vitelli, est. £15,000-20,000, didn't sell [phillipsdepury.com]

Recycling

2009-11-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Click image to enlarge

By Bai Yiluo, 2008.

Physics Flipbook

2009-11-07T18:34:00.000-08:00

I know giant mylar balloon projects have sort of a credibility problem right now, so rather than saying I want to re-create Project Echo by launching a 100-foot diameter spherical satelloon into orbit [after exhibiting it at the Pantheon in Rome or the Grand Palais in Paris, that is], let's just say I'm researching what was one of NASA's first missions.

Which is why I keep hauling home every 1950s and 1960s space and physics book I can find, including The Restless Universe, a primer on advanced physics for the general interest reader by Nobel Laureate Max Born, which was first published in 1936 and revised in 1951.

The stark cover design won me over the second I saw it on the library sale shelf [J. Lloyd Dixon, btw.] Only after thumbing through did I see the nice line drawn illustrations--hey-o! they're moving!

The Restless Universe has seven flipbook style animations in the margins to explain various physical phenomena: gas pressure, electron orbits, Hertzian oscillation, &c. Born actually even refers to them as "films," which I thought was very sweet.

I pressed upon my astrophysicist wife to help me shoot these little films, and it's only after I uploaded the video that I realized the first three are running backwards. Also, I stripped out the audio because the helpful sound of pages flipping was drowned out by the kids' screaming battle over a hairband. Maybe I'll put it back on the DVD.

1969 Bedford CA Dormobile 4-Berth Camper Van

2009-11-06T08:30:00.001-08:00

Awkward from every angle, it is difficult to resist this little charmer. Do you think the driver's door window opens or are you just left in there to bake like you were in a terrarium?

1969 Bedford CA Dormobile 4-Berth Camper Van at Bonhams

Giant Guns at Yard Dog

2009-11-04T14:39:00.000-08:00

While hanging this weekend's show Over and Under at Yard Dog here in Austin, I had to stop and play with this fantastic gun carved from wood (the barrel spins too!) by Camp Bosworth. There are also giant bullets, giant machine guns and giant piles of money.

Link

Ausgezeichnet, Gasstationhaus!

2009-11-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

One of the things that pulled me into fanboi orbit around Mister Jalopy was his deep, abiding love of gas stations. See, I want to live in a modernist gas station some day, preferably one with some connection--one, two or three degrees of separation, it doesn't matter--to Mies van der Rohe. And since Mister J. had claimed to know the whereabouts of at least one disused International Style service station, I figured I could do worse than follow him around and pick up the porcelained steel scraps.

Anyway, Juerg Judin, an art dealer in Berlin, has beat us both to the punch. While we were just blogging about it, Judin bought, decontaminated, renovated, added onto, and moved into his service station in Berlin. AND he got a writeup and a big, fat slideshow about the project in the NY Times, too, from whence this sweet photo was just ganked.

In Berlin, A Renovated Gas Station [nyt]

The Poetry Of The College Art Association

2009-11-04T07:11:00.001-08:00

I've actually been to a few, so I know most of it will be tedious minutiae, poorly read in haste by nervous art historians whose real concern is securing one of the dozen or so tenure track positions--and eventually, health care!--hidden somewhere in the sprawling, frenzied job fair, but damn, do I love me some College Art Association Conference!

Now I'm content to linger over the sheer fantasie that is the sessions list of the 2010 conference, and to dream. About discoursing with Jeff Werner, Goteborg Museum of Art at the Design and the Rhetoric of Democratization session on the Gold Level, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago about "IKEA’s Genealogy of Democratic Design."

Maybe head over to Acapulco [sounds warm!] to hear Melissa Ragona, Carnegie Mellon University's take on "Andy Warhol’s Proto-TV Production." Definitely stay for Margot Bouman, Parsons the New School for Design's "Televisual Spaces and the Paradox of Anamorphosis" show, too.

But mostly it's comfort enough to realize that our society somehow manages to find a gatheringplace for the thousands of people whose intense, lifelong interests range from "Remixing the Phenomenology of Technology: An Analysis of Unplugged Performance-Installations" [Robrecht Vanderbeeken, Ghent University] to "Repetition, Reflection, and Intergenerational Storytelling on Attic Grave Stelai of the Fourth Century BCE" [Elizabeth P. McGowan, Williams College]. Even if that place is the icy shore of Lake Michigan in the dead of winter. They should put the whole thing on YouTube next time.

Sessions list - CAA 98th Annual Conference, Feb 10-13, 2010, Chicago [collegeart.org]

Pour One Out For Johannes Hevelius's Telescopes

2009-11-02T05:11:00.000-08:00

Maybe you're different, but I don't expect to be struck by sudden pangs of sadness when I browse the US Naval Oceanography Portal's small rare book selection.

Johannes Hevelius was a 17th century Polish master brewer and astronomer. He built a giant viewing platform across the roofs of his three adjoining houses in Gdansk to hold his awesome array of astronomical instruments, including a giant 45m focal length Keplerian telescope and massive sextants of his own design and fabrication. It was considered the best-equipped observatory in the world, and Hevelius and his wife/collaborator Elisabeth received successive kings and queens of Poland, as well as international colleagues like Edward Halley.

Anyway, here is LSM's catalogue description of Helevius's Machinae coelestis pars prior [published in 1673] and pars posterior [1679]:

The first volume, lavishly illustrated, describes his instruments. Some plates show his wife, assisting him with the observations. The second volume, which gives his observations from 1630 to 1679, had just been returned to him by the printer, when a fire burned down Hevelius' house, destroying his instruments, library, and almost the whole edition of this work. Only a few copies survived, which had previously been sent to personal friends.

Wikipedia uses the phrase "maliciously destroyed," but offers no details. Perhaps someday a novelist will tell us what happened.

Hevelius later named the equatorial constellation Sextans after his lost instruments.

The Naval Oceanography Portal has several large images of Hevelius's set-up. [usno.navy.mil, via a bibliodyssey tangent]
A full scan of Machinae coelestis pars prior at Carnegie-Mellon's Posner Center looks like the 1969 facsimile edition. [cmu.edu]
Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, New York, lists a 1st. ed. of Machinae coelestis pars prior on Abebooks for $85,000 [jonathanahill.com]

The Pepsi Pavilion, Expo 70, Osaka

2009-10-31T04:42:00.000-07:00

Giant, mirrored spheres of unusual artistic significance turn up in the most unlikely places, but a World Expo in the 70's is as good a place as any to look. Oh, there's one, the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka!

Truth be told, the Pepsi Pavilion was a failure, a cobbled-together colabo of artists, engineers, and marketing executives who had only the vaguest notion of what they were creating. In that borrowed origami dome, on the other side of the world, for a couple hundred thousand dollars, with those lasers, synthesizers, and smoke machines. And that 90-ft, inflated mylar balloon ceiling. They thought they were inventing The Future, but all they ended up with was the planetarium laser light show.

Life Magazine's Larry Burrows tried to capture the spirit of the Pepsi Pavilion in his photograph above, but you really had to feel it, man.

Cmielow Porcelain Dogs

2009-10-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

Whippet

I'd love to have every one of these figural dogs created in the '50s and '60s at the Cmielow Porcelain Factory in Poland.

Scottie

Collie

Inspired by Picasso and Henry Moore, the Cmielow animals are simplified down to basic shapes and forms, but still retain the personality of the real deal.

Fox Terrier

Pekinese

Cmielow Porcelain Animals at Blue Poppy Art, England

Emile Gallé - Pottery Dog in a Harlequin Costume

2009-10-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

A pottery figure of a Dog, circa 1900 painted in a Harlequin costume in red, yellow, green and black - 31cm high, signed 'E. Galle, Nancy' (nicks) - Estimate: £1,500 - 2,000

Harlequin Dog at Bonhams Auction