on this date in Design…
Arne Jacobsen, Danish
architect & designer, birthday 11 February 1902
The French Chef, American
cooking show, premiere 11 February 1963
The Armory Show, 1st
avant-garde art show in the US, opening 17 February 1863
Luckily for us, Arne Jacobsen listened to his father and
opted for a more stable career of architecture than painting. The wonderful aspect about Arne’s design was he
was able to take Functionalism and translate it into products & spaces that
were anything but sterile and unwelcoming putting him at the forefront of the
Scandinavian design movement. Inspired
by Charles & Ray Eames, he worked with carpenter Fritz Hansen to develop the
Ant Chair: a simple bent plywood piece with three legs. This made it light weight, compact and
stackable, very similar to the concept of Alvar Aalto’s three-legged Stool 60.
Arne was commissioned for what could be
considered the world’s first “designer” hotel, the SAS Royal Hotel in
Copenhagen, designing everything from the furniture to the ashtrays. It was for this project that the Swan and Egg
Chairs were developed. The gentle curves
of the Swan Chair welcome the curves of the body and the envelope of the Egg
Chair creates a cozier wingchair for the new age. Both of these designs in addition to numerous
others are perfectly adapt to contemporary spaces.
It may seem out of place to have the premier of a televised
cooking show on the list. However, Julia
Child had a broad impact not just on the psyche of the American housewife. This and subsequent cooking shows have had an
enormous impact on the design of the American home. With Julia’s easy-going and effervescent
attitude she made expert gastronomy look easy by showing us at home it was OK
to make a few mistakes in the pursuit of perfection.
With “The French Chef”, PBS allowed Julia to
take intimidating recipes such as the meticulous 20 page recipe for French
bread and demonstrated how accessible delicious food could be. This lead to more and more equipment and
gadgets to be collected by the at-home-cook until the kitchen became the
enormous gourmet extravagance and center of the home it is today. No longer was the suburban kitchen a lonely
closed off room tucked away from formal spaces.
Now guest are encouraged to share the kitchen, indulge in a world of
flavors as their waistlines expanded as well.
Home design has come full circle to meet the needs of the modern family
lifestyle. Formal spaces have been
abandoned in favor of open floor plans which, good and bad, invite guests into
the bosom of the home.
100 years ago, America was
introduced to modern art at the Armory Show of 1913 in New York City. It may seem counter intuitive to call
something “modern” that is over a century old but it was the new way of thinking
that truly defines where we as a society are headed. In terms of social consciousness, identity,
global connectivity, we are still on the cusp of understanding of how we, as
humans, fit into a drastically different world than centuries past and thusly
how we communicate and express ourselves.
The debate “What is art?” still rages
today as Marcel Duchamp begged the question with his signed urinals hanging on
the wall. Abstraction and Expressionism
attempted to communicate the artist’s thoughts in non-traditional medium. No longer was Realism in the traditional
sense necessary, there was the photograph for that. However, how the photograph and realistic
painted imagery were used to communicate social and political ideas and thrust forward
to the viewer that same nagging question.
Americans were for the first time exposed to European masters such as
Manet, Munch, Rodin, Picasso and many, many more. At the same time, they discovered their own
home-grown modern artists such as Stella and Whistler that would pick up the
baton and make New York City a new hub of the artist community.
Links:
Arne Jacobsen at Design Within Reach
Arne Jacobsen & Fritz Hansen
Arne Jacobsen flatware at the MoMA Store, NYC
Arne Jacobsen at Knoll
Arne Jacobsen at the Danish Design Store
Radison Blue (S.A.S.) Royal Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark
The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy & the Culinary Arts, Santa Barbara, CA
Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C.
LATimes article about Julia Child & commercialism
The Armory Foundation, New York City, NY
"The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show" Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
"The Armory Show at 100" New York Historical Society Museum & Library, New York City, NY
on this date in Design…
National Institute of
Arts & Letters, honor society, Act of Congress passed 4 February 1913
Nathaniel Owings,
American architect, birthday 5 February 1903
Fire Extinguisher,
invented by Alanson Crane, patented 9 February 1863
The National Institute of Arts & Letters has a confusing
and unnecessarily complicated history of inception. Without going into much detail as to how, the
organization is now known as the American Academy of Arts & Letters. The original “Institute” was founded in 1902
but was recognized by an act of Congress in 1913. This does not mean it is a government funded or
controlled organization, simply that it is recognized and is essentially an honorary
title. Other organizations with this
honor include the Girl/Boy Scouts and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Essentially, the purpose of the AAA&L is “to
foster and sustain excellence in Literature, Music and the Fine Arts by
identifying and encouraging individual artists.” It does this by awarding prizes (money),
exhibiting work and funding performances & literature of up-and-coming
artist & authors. To be elected to
the 250 council is not only an honor by being recognized by your peers but is
also a life-long membership. The Academy
has also identified and fostered some of the country’s most influential and
important artists. Despite a black period
when modernism was shunned, today the AAA&L is more akin to the original progressive
intention. Members include Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, Maya Lin, Richard Meier, I. M. Pei and Robert Venturi
to name just a few.
As one of the founding members of the Chicago-based
architectural firm Skidmore Owings & Merril (SOM), Nathaniel Owings’
business & organizational acumen lead the firm to become known worldwide
for reliability for large-scale developments.
Despite a cantankerous relationship with Louis Skimore, SOM became and
still is the quintessential “go-to” firm for record making skyscrapers. The two were so independently strong willed that a satellite
office had to be opened in New York so they didn’t have to be in the same city
together. But, with the even-tempered engineer
John O. Merril in the middle, the business partnership was an enormous
success. SOM has the most buildings on
the “World’s Tallest Buildings” list with 10.
That’s 6 more than any other firm on the list and they are about to add
11th with One World Trade Center holding fast to spots 1 and 2. Owings retired from the firm in 1975 but remained
an active advocate for open public spaces in American cities including acting
as President Johnson’s design advisor for the National Mall in Washington,
D.C. Additionally, the California
Architectural Council of the AIA continues his legacy by awarding an
architectural prize in his honor each year to projects that reconcile the
potential adverse needs between nature and the built environment. The 2012 winner, the California Academy of
Sciences is truly inspiring as it serves two purposes as a building and a
science experiment simultaneously. Think
of it as one giant terrarium.
In the wake of yet another deadly night club fire last week
(this time in Brazil) it is appropriate that we look at a fire prevention
device. Before there were fire
extinguishers, there were fire grenades.
It seems counter-intuitive to throw a grenade at a fire. However, these small orb-shaped glass bottles
filled with fire suppression liquid would be hurled at an ensuing fire with
moderate success. With the advent of the
fire extinguisher, a person would have a bit more control over where the liquid
landed and thereby a better chance of actually containing the fire. The basic principle is to contain the liquid
within a pressurized canister when opened the liquid will shoot out; much like
a “Super-Soaker” water gun works. Thankfully,
there have been many devices created over the past few centuries but Alanson
Crane’s was the first in the US.
With
each new technology, buildings and the public at large are safer provided municipal
codes are in place, followed and enforced.
The US today has some of the strictest Life Safety codes in existence. These are not hurdles that hinder the design
process. These are essential the functionality
of a building and legitimize our job as design professionals. The next time you enter a public building,
take a moment to locate some of the devices put there by the designer for your
safety: lighted exit signs, overhead sprinklers, fire alarms, emergency back-up
lighting (thank you Super Dome) and attached to the wall--a fire
extinguisher.
Links:
American Academy of Arts & Letters
Biography of Nathaniel A. Owings on the SOM website
Willis Tower, Chicago, IL
John Hancock Center, Chicago, IL
Nathaniel A. Owings Award
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA
National Fire Protection Association
NFPA artidle on Brazilian nightclub fire, 27 January 2013
NFPA article on fire extinguishers
ESPN article on the Super Dome Super Bowl power outage, 3 February 2013
on this date in Design…
Jackson Pollock, American
abstract expressionist painter, birthday 28 January 1912
Lego, Danish
construction toy, patented 28 January 1958
Computer Virus, first
written by Richard Skrenta, 30 January 1982
It can be argued that Jackson Pollock’s rhythmic, almost
ritualistic drip painting style can be linked to Native American sand painting
from the Southwest. As a child, he
accompanied his father on government surveying expeditions where he would have been
first introduced to the art. Later,
after moving to New York with his brother, Pollock became involved in the
expressionist movement and eventually it’s most famous and successful.
After completing a commission for Peggy
Guggenheim in 1943, Pollock’s groundbreaking style was introduced to the art
community and then developed further at the East Hampton home he shared with
wife Lee Krasner. Krasner was an
enormously talented expressionist herself but was overshadowed by her husband’s
work. With the canvas lying on the
floor, Pollock would use stiffened brushes, sticks and even basting syringes to
pile paint. It was an immediate means of
creating art and added a new dimension to the experience as it could be viewed
from all directions. This would come in handy
years later as the thickly coated canvases will shift much as antique window
glass. This requires the pieces to be routinely
rotated. As groundbreaking as Pollock’s
new style was, he abruptly halted all drip painting after the 1949 Life magazine article was printed in pursuit
of new expressions but sadly never found equal success.
"Leg godt” means to “play well” in Danish and to carpenter
Ole Kirk Christiansen it meant to make the highest quality toys so children can
fully express their imaginations. To
this day, Lego brand toys and their trademark LEGO brick continue to inspire
future architects and engineers (or really any kids who like to play).
In 1958, thanks to injection molded plastic,
Christiansen’s son lead the company to patent the original brick based on an
improvement to an existing British patent.
Lego’s brick easily snapped together securely while still separating
without much effort. Today, these
original bricks are still compatible with those manufactured today leading the
way for generations of fans to pass down their highly prized collections. That is, those that haven’t fallen victim to
vacuum cleaners, mouths of curious pets or the notorious Lego gnomes who steel
the single most essential piece from your construction set in the middle of the
night.
In high school, Richard Skrenta was a notorious
prankster. So much so that his friends
began to refuse to barrow computer games and disks because he would alter them
to display onscreen joking messages. But
in 1982, while on winter break in the ninth grade, Skrenta harmlessly created
the first large-scale, self-spreading personal computer virus called “Elk
Cloner”…and it was for the Apple II.
That’s right; the first computer virus was designed for Macs, not
Microsoft platforms. The truly harmless
program would copy itself onto a computer’s hard drive and subsequently copy
itself onto any disk inserted. This
simple code is nothing like the multi-dimensional complicated programs that
plague computers worldwide today.
However, Skrenta’s joke ushered in an awareness of the potential for
terrorist and thieves to inflict damage thereby creating the entire industry of
malware protection. Later, Skrenta
ventured into less malicious ventures including helping to launch Netscape,
creating the online news source Topix and more recently, the search engine
Blekko which is set out to rival Google without all the spam.
Links:
Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center, East Hampton, New York
Jackson Pollock website
Pollock work at MoMA, New York City, USA
Krasner work at MoMA, New York City, USA
Pollock work at the Tate, London, UK
Krasner work at the Tate, London, UK
Pollock movie trailer
Lego website
Legoland parks website
Felix Baumgartner's skydive from space in Legos
The Elk Cloner Poem
The Skrentablog
Blekko search engine
on this date in Design…
Edouard Manet, French
impressionist painter, birthday 23 January 1832
Bernard Tschumi, Swiss-born
French deconstructivist architect, birthday 26 January 1965
Lightbulb, patent
granted to Thomas Edison, 27 January 1880
Of all the brilliance that emerged from France in the latter
part of the 19th century during the impressionism movement, perhaps
the most influential to modern art would be Edouard Manet. The manipulation and engagement of the viewer
with his paintings was revolutionary. This
action figuratively “broke through the fourth wall” and forced the viewer to
participate with the scene in front of him/her.
One of Manet’s first pieces to challenge the modern convention was Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe. Here he took classic poses in a pastoral
setting from the works of masters of Raphael and Titian and inserted the common
university student and shockingly nude and nearly nude prostitutes. Today, similarly the work of Kehinde Wiley is
heavily influenced by this juxtaposition by placing contemporary figures in
classic heroic poses.
Manet’s next step
to shock and engage was with his version of Olympia
who defiantly stares strait back out of the canvas. His Olympia is not a goddess but another
prostitute welcoming her next client, presumably the viewer. Needless to say, this painting made Parisian
society even more uncomfortable.
Manet
expanded on this with Un Bar aux Folies
Bergère where in the reflection behind the barmaid you see the customer not
visible in the front. This leads one to
assume it is a reflection of the viewer and the forlorn look in her eyes a testament
to her dissatisfaction with her occupation as she hides her cleavage by a
corsage; out of the ordinary for the bar maids at the Folies. This mix of playing with the viewer and
social commentary are familiar themes today but in Manet’s time, never before
had such challenges been posed.
When Bernard Tschumi won the commission for the design of
Parc de la Villette in Paris, France yet again sat on the forefront of a
revolutionary movement in design. This time,
it was deconstructivism and the Swiss-born Tschumi was the movement’s most preeminent
practitioners. The site was over 150
acres of slaughterhouses established by Napoléon III and thereby had an unpleasant
history. The desire to remove that image
was a perfect setting for the deconstructivist theories whereby the shape of a
building is not permanently fixed to the current activity currently housed
within. Rather, the activity within
constantly forces the reevaluation of the shape of the building. Therefore, it is a living structure and the
history of neither the building nor the historical context has no bearing on
it. A testament to the success of the
theory is that several of the follies have been renovated and repurposed to
restaurants and visitor centers, et cetera.
These programmatic pieces were not in the original plan but as the needs
of the park evolve there is no need to build new structures or compromise Tschumi’s
original concept for the follies to be reference points on a grid. With the success of the la Villette he gained
a foothold in the global architectural landscape which has led to such commissions
as the architecture school at F.I.U and the controversial Acropolis Museum in
Athens, Greece. Critics argue that this
complete disregard for the historic context for which Greece is renowned, this
new museum is harming the building itself and the surrounding contextual context
of the city. It is hard to disagree with
the critics but it is sure that in a few years’ time it will revered for its
forward thinking as the Pompidou Center.
As with most of Edison’s inventions, he did not originate the
idea, merely improve upon an existing idea and beat his competitors to the
patent office. In the case of the
lightbulb, Edison purchased the rights to an earlier version and then began
experimenting with materials and amperage.
In October of 1879 he was able to improve the vacuum tube, carbon
filament and lower electrical current to develop a bulb which lasted for an
astonishing (for that time) 13 ½ hours.
After applying for the patent, he demonstrated his achievement at his
Menlo Park laboratory by lighting it up on New Year’s Eve.
Two years later, Edison created a market for
his lightbulb when he switched on the power at the Pearl Street Power Station
in lower Manhattan. This was the first investor
funded commercially successful electrical grid.
These achievements made his work more economically practical to bring to
the mass market thereby increasing his notoriety. And it is for his business acumen in addition
to his innovations that Thomas Edison name is more prolific than Tesla,
Westinghouse and others of equal creative caliber.
Links:
Luckily for us, Arne Jacobsen listened to his father and
opted for a more stable career of architecture than painting. The wonderful aspect about Arne’s design was he
was able to take Functionalism and translate it into products & spaces that
were anything but sterile and unwelcoming putting him at the forefront of the
Scandinavian design movement. Inspired
by Charles & Ray Eames, he worked with carpenter Fritz Hansen to develop the
Ant Chair: a simple bent plywood piece with three legs. This made it light weight, compact and
stackable, very similar to the concept of Alvar Aalto’s three-legged Stool 60. 
Arne was commissioned for what could be
considered the world’s first “designer” hotel, the SAS Royal Hotel in
Copenhagen, designing everything from the furniture to the ashtrays. It was for this project that the Swan and Egg
Chairs were developed. The gentle curves
of the Swan Chair welcome the curves of the body and the envelope of the Egg
Chair creates a cozier wingchair for the new age. Both of these designs in addition to numerous
others are perfectly adapt to contemporary spaces. 
It may seem out of place to have the premier of a televised
cooking show on the list. However, Julia
Child had a broad impact not just on the psyche of the American housewife. This and subsequent cooking shows have had an
enormous impact on the design of the American home. With Julia’s easy-going and effervescent
attitude she made expert gastronomy look easy by showing us at home it was OK
to make a few mistakes in the pursuit of perfection. 
With “The French Chef”, PBS allowed Julia to
take intimidating recipes such as the meticulous 20 page recipe for French
bread and demonstrated how accessible delicious food could be. This lead to more and more equipment and
gadgets to be collected by the at-home-cook until the kitchen became the
enormous gourmet extravagance and center of the home it is today. No longer was the suburban kitchen a lonely
closed off room tucked away from formal spaces.
Now guest are encouraged to share the kitchen, indulge in a world of
flavors as their waistlines expanded as well.
Home design has come full circle to meet the needs of the modern family
lifestyle. Formal spaces have been
abandoned in favor of open floor plans which, good and bad, invite guests into
the bosom of the home. 
100 years ago, America was
introduced to modern art at the Armory Show of 1913 in New York City. It may seem counter intuitive to call
something “modern” that is over a century old but it was the new way of thinking
that truly defines where we as a society are headed. In terms of social consciousness, identity,
global connectivity, we are still on the cusp of understanding of how we, as
humans, fit into a drastically different world than centuries past and thusly
how we communicate and express ourselves.
