Last night, JessyG and I had the pleasure of attending a private tour of the new exhibit, “From the Spoon to the City”: Objects by Architects from LACMA’s Collection. Thanks to Oliver Furth, Chairman of the Decorative Arts & Design Council (DADC), for the special invitation.

“From the Spoon to the City”: Objects by Architects from LACMA’s Collection (August 6, 2009–January 24, 2010)
When Italian architect Ernesto Rogers famously declared that he wanted to design everything from “a spoon to a city,” he articulated the desire of many architects to design both buildings and their contents. In some cases, this meant design for specific commissions, such as Rudolf Schindler’s furniture for the Shep family. In others, objects allowed the realization of ideas on a smaller, more viable scale, or were a part of a multifaceted career that spanned all realms of design, as in the case of Frank Gehry. The products of such efforts can function as miniature buildings, conveying the architect’s ideals in a compact form. Or as Charles Eames put it when asked why he made furniture, “so [I] can design a piece of architecture that you can hold in your hand.”

These new acquisitions were purchased with funds from the DADC. The Decorative Arts and Design Department has no endowment, and relies solely on donations, and membership dues to expand its collection. Curators have been spending wisely, and lately, they’ve been focusing on 20th Century pieces inpreparation for a big exhibition on California Modernism, which opens in the fall of 2011.

-S

PS to all you design enthusiast in L.A.- consider DADC!
The purpose of the DADC is twofold – to promote scholarship and interest in design, through an engaging series of lectures and events, and to raise acquisition funds for the museum’s collection. Members enjoy a stellar series of lectures, tours, trips, and parties, scheduled throughout the year. This fall, DADC will tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, The Hollyhock House. The Decorative Arts curators have 7 lectures planned, October through April, including “A Case for Wine: From King Tut to Today”, and “British and Continental Gold and Silver in the Ashmolean Museum”.

This beautiful sculpture just happens to also be a perfume bottle.

Now available in selected Kenzo boutiques, Industrial Designer Ron Arad has designed his first perfume flask for the French fragrance makers – and once again unconventionally toyed with shapes and technology. The bottle has an ergonomic form, twisting in the shape of a figure of eight, something emphasized by fine lines. It is made of a Zamac alloy and polished by hand. The unidentifiable and nameless fragrance, akin to the scent of skin, was created by French parfumeur Aurélien Guichard. The fragrance will be produced as a limited edition of 2,000.

Ron Arad’s constant experimentation with the use of possibilities of materials such as steel, aluminium or polyamide and his radical re-conception of form and structure has put him at the forefront of contemporary design. Alongside his limited edition studio work, Arad designs for many leading international companies including Kartell, Vitra, Moroso, Fiam, Driade, Alessi, Cappellini, Cassina and Magis among others.

I picked up an amazing book over the weekend called “Power In Buildings”, and it got me interested in the author, Hugh Ferriss. The book is Ferriss’s personal odyssey through the modern architecture of America from 1929 to 1953…Dams, bridge anchorages, grain elevators, skyscraper projects, and viaducts are delineated in Ferriss’s rich work, and it’s all pretty inspiring when you realize how influential his drawings have been on architecture, movies, and pop culture in general.

Hugh Ferriss (1889 – 1962) was an American delineator (one who creates perspective drawings of buildings) and architect. According to Daniel Okrent, Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said he ‘influenced my generation of architects’ more than any other man. Ferriss also influenced popular culture, for example Gotham City (the setting for Batman) and Kerry Conran’s “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”. “Just Imagine” (movie from 1930), strongly influenced by Hugh Ferriss’s book, Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929), takes the archetype vision of the future city as defined by a Manhattan-like skyline, and portrays it in all its beauty and majesty.

Hugh Ferriss Flickr Page

Luis Barragán (1902-1988) was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. His professional training was in engineering, resulting in a degree at the age of twenty-three. His architectural skills were self-taught. In the 1920s, he traveled extensively in France and Spain and, in 1931, lived in Paris for a time, attending Le Corbusier’s lectures. His time in Europe, and subsequently in Morroco, stimulated an interest in the native architecture of North Africa and the Mediterranean, which he related to construction in his own country. His work has been called minimalist, but it is nonetheless sumptuous in color and texture. Pure planes, be they walls of stucco, adobe, timber, or even water, are his compositional elements, all interacting with nature.

Barragán called himself a landscape architect, writing in the book, Contemporary Architects, (Muriel Emanuel (ed.) published by St. Martins Press, 1980), “I believe that architects should design gardens to be used, as much as the houses they build, to develop a sense of beauty and the taste and inclination toward the fine arts and other spiritual values.” And further, “Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake.”

Thanks to George for introducing me to Barragán’s work! More people need to share their inspirations… it is the greatest gift you can give, in my opinion.

-S

Wabi-Sabi – for Artists, Designers, Poets, & Philosophers – By, Leonard Koren

It has come to my attention that the design world is silently and subconsciously preparing a drastic shift in popular theme.

Since the middle of the last century and onward, much of the design world has been defined by a concentration on modernism as a departure from 19th century classicism. A fascination on universal prototypical solutions and concepts that imply a logical and rational worldview have been concerns of the current design administration… that is, until now.

At the moment, what we are experiencing is a move toward personal, idiosyncratic solutions in design… a new appreciation for all things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete… a worldview that is self-referential, intuitive, ambiguous, and based in a metaphysical understanding that all things are devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness. What is being discussed here is the Japanese concept of “imperfect beauty”, Wabi-Sabi.

Wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty. It occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West.

Wabi-sabi is the undeclared beauty that waits to be discovered. It is the beauty of things as they are…an embrace of the imperfections, pared down to its barest essence, at the border of nothingness.

Unlike Modernism which solicits the reduction of sensory information, this view solicits the expansion of sensory information. In Modernism, people are adapting to machines. In Wabi-Sabi, people are adapting to nature. Beyond the hype of all that is packaged as “eco” these days, is this new understanding of the relationship between design and nature.

Author Leonard Koren is a trained architect, but never built anything—except an eccentric Japanese tea house—because he found large, permanent objects too philosophically vexing to design. Instead he created WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, one of the premier avant-garde magazines of the 1970s. Subsequently Koren has produced unusual books about design- and aesthetics-related subjects. Koren resides in both America and Japan. For more information, visit www.leonardkoren.com.

This book is an updated version of the enduring classic that first introduced the concept of “imperfect beauty” to the West. Text, images, and book design seamlessly meld into a wabi-sabi-like experience.

-S

Arts & Architecture: The seminal architecture journal resurrected in facsimile.

From the end of World War II until the mid-1960s, exciting things were happening in American architecture: emerging talents were focusing on innovative projects that integrated low-cost materials and modern design. This trend was most notably embodied in the famous Case Study House Program, which was championed by the era’s leading American journal, Arts & Architecture. Focusing not only on architecture but also design, art, music, politics, and social issues, A&A was an ambitious and groundbreaking publication, largely thanks to the inspiration of John Entenza, who ran the magazine for over two decades until David Travers became publisher in 1962. The era’s greatest architects were featured in A&A, including Neutra, Schindler, Saarinen, Ellwood, Lautner, Eames, and Koenig; and two of today’s most wildly successful architects, Frank Gehry and Richard Meier, had their debuts in its pages. A&A was instrumental in putting American architecture—and in particular California Modernism—on the map. Other key contributors to the magazine include photographers Julius Shulman and Ezra Stoller, writers Esther McCoy and Peter Yates, and cover designers Herbert Matter and Alvin Lustig, among many luminaries of modernism.

This collection comes with ten boxes, each containing a complete year’s worth of Arts & Architecture magazines from 1945–1954. That’s 6,076 pages in 118 issues reproduced in their entirety—beginning with Entenza’s January 1945 announcement of the Case Study House Program. Also included is a supplement booklet with an original essay by former A&A publisher David Travers, available in English, German, French, and Spanish; plus a master index and tables of contents for the magazine from 1945-1967. Arts & Architecture 1945–1954 will be followed in autumn 2009 by a second set, 1955–1967, bringing together all the existing issues of the modern era.

This new TASCHEN publication, limited to 5,000 numbered copies, provides a comprehensive record of mid-century American architecture and brings the legendary Arts & Architecture back to life after forty years. – Taschen.com

Thanks to LA Times Magazine – Design & Culture Editor, Mayer Rus, for covering the Arts & Architecture reproductions.

“Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois.” – Le Corbusier

Here’s an idea for the perfect little Sunday plan…

Yesterday, I made it out to The Getty Villa in Malibu, and I had such an amazing time.

The Getty Villa is the “Getty’s collection of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present against a backdrop of dramatic architecture, tranquil gardens, and breathtaking views.”

The admission is free, and parking costs $10 bucks.

They have a cute cafe with nice outdoor space and beautiful views of the pacific ocean.

The whole experience was very peaceful and relaxing, and that’s what I’d like to share with you.

-S

Contemporary classical Islamic design achieved so exquisitely by El-Wakil.

One of Lautner’s grandest designs rose above Acapulco Bay in Mexico, where in 1973 the architect built a 25,000-square-foot home that seemed to float above the water. The Arango residence, also called Marbrisa, included an expansive open-air terrace with bedrooms on the level below. – I.D. Magazine

“Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner” will be on show at L.A.’s Hammer Museum through October 12.

Anybody wanna go w/ me?

hammer.ucla.edu