April 2012
1 post
Information Design at Essential's healthcare...
See my original post at Design Museum Boston’s website.
At last night’s Essential Threads: Linking Healthcare, Technology, and Design, DMB co-founder Sam and I listened to a few presentations by some entrepreneurs and businessmen involved in healthcare experience design. What struck me was the importance of information design in all four men’s projects. Much of the focus of companies...
September 2011
2 posts
Rehabilitating Cambridge's Fresh Pond: A...
See my original post at Design Museum Boston’s website.
When most people hear the words “landscape architecture,” an image of a team of men with rakes and leaf blowers comes to mind. Few outside the design community may be familiar with the rich theoretical underpinnings of the architectural discipline of landscape design, which are still being formed in architecture schools across the...
Understanding the Arabic world through typography
See my original post at Design Museum Boston’s blog.
A page from Rana Abou Rjeily’s Cultural Connectives, a book comparing the Arabic and English languages.
The Arabic language is a formidable goal for any language learner, particularly because of its script. The cursive script used throughout the Arab world for all types of written communication bears little resemblance to the...
August 2011
2 posts
“I haven’t changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did...”
– Paul Rand
Field Trip: Philip Johnson's Glass House
See my original post at Design Museum Boston’s website.
The Glass House from behind.
Though the state may not be thought of as a cultural epicenter, Connecticut is home to a number of architectural masterpieces. In western Connecticut in particular, the architectural tourist can find dozens of modernist homes, both experimental and functional. The most famous of them all may be Philip...
July 2011
1 post
Letterpress at Target
(cross-posted from my posts on the Design Museum Boston blog)
Letterpress is moving deeper into the mainstream. The makers of the documentary film Typeface, about a former wood type factory and museum struggling to stay afloat, have teamed up with Target to create a line of clothing with letterpress-inspired designs. In a video, Target’s design team and the Hamilton Wood Type...
April 2011
1 post
Another modernist touchstone bites the dust
Did you miss your chance to celebrate the 39th anniversary of the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project? The St. Louis housing towers, built in the early 1950s, were demolished on March 16, 1972 (above), an event widely considered the death of modernism in architecture. (The architect behind Pruitt-Igoe, Minoru Yamasaki, designed another famously short-lived structure: the World Trade...
March 2011
2 posts
“Our current e-books, he writes, are fine at the basic function of letting us...”
– James Bridle, via Sam Anderson, in the New York Times
Design and the written word
If there’s one thing designers love to do when they’re not creating graphics and drawing up plans, it’s expressing themselves in written form. It stands to reason that your favorite architects and graphic designers might have something to say about the written works of others. Launched early last month, Designers & Books lists the favorite books of a number of...
February 2011
1 post
“He definitely presents an image of the literary life as something fun and...”
– Wendy Lesser, the editor of the Threepenny Review, a literary journal, on Lorin Stein, editor of the Paris Review.
January 2011
1 post
USPS unveils "Pioneers of American Industrial...
The United States Postal Service’s recent announcement of this year’s slate of commemorative stamps is making waves beyond the hardcore philately community. This year, in addition to Ronald Reagan and Tito Puente, the “Pioneers of American Industrial Design,” including Norman Bell Geddes and Raymond Loewy, will be celebrated with images of the household objects they...
November 2010
2 posts
I. M. Pei's Terminal 6 at JFK to be demolished
A recent news item in Preservation Magazine brought to my attention this planned demolition at JFK airport in New York City. I. M. Pei’s Terminal 6, built in 1970 for National Airlines and used in the past few years by JetBlue, sits next to Eero Saarinen’s Terminal 5, another architectural landmark. According to Port Authority, the space could be converted into a parking lot or...
Boston City Hall: The ideology behind the infamous...
This is a post I wrote for the blog at Design Museum Boston. It’s part of a series on Boston City Hall.
“Architecture is not about self-expression,” said Gerhard Kallmann, the architect who, along with partner Michael McKinnell, designed Boston City Hall. Unlike painting and sculpture, architecture rarely wears its message on its sleeve. Though architectural movements are fraught with ...
October 2010
5 posts
Boston City Hall: How did we end up with such a...
This is a post I wrote for the blog at Design Museum Boston. It’s part of a series on Boston City Hall.
It’s a perennial topic of conversation in architectural circles: what to do about City Hall? Both the building and the surrounding plaza draw ire from government officials, citizens, and design aficionados alike. On the occasion of the opening of Design Museum Boston’s exhibit...
Architecture panel at the Boston Book Festival...
Moshe Safdie and Erik Kuhne will be speaking on a panel entitled Architecture: Writing on the Walls at the Boston Book Festival this Saturday at 3pm.
One of Safdie’s several Boston-area projects: the Class of 1959 Chapel at Harvard
Full, searchable 1990s-era issues of Spin... →
Searching Google Books for a German textbook, I found this scan of Spin Magazine, on page 38 of which I found a comparison chart, describing two unknown blond teen singers—Britney Spears and Shelby Starner (who I had never heard of). It turns out this girl recorded an album with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (which was never released), then died of bulimia in 2003. I wonder how future historians...
“an unpretentious Giverny of the California interstate”
– on Sacramento. from a New York Times article on Wayne Thiebaud
August 2010
9 posts
Design Research Building, Cambridge, MA
This past week, Anthropologie opened a new location in Harvard Square, on Brattle St., in the Design Research Building. (The space, on the first floor, was previously a Crate and Barrel.)
The building, above, was designed in 1969 by Ben Thompson, an architect and member of The Architects Collaborative, a Cambridge-based architecture firm notable for including Walter Gropius, who is in turn...
“Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, this was truly the era when even macho rock gods were...”
– Interview with Rob Sheffield on Fluxblog
A TV Commercial from 1995 starring Tina Fey →
“Hey baby I hear the blues are calling, tossed salad and scrambled eggs”
Sol Lewitt
I like this Sol Lewitt mural in the lobby of 100 Cambridge St. in Boston (near City Hall Plaza).
There are a few other places in the northeast where Sol Lewitt’s murals can be seen (besides, of course, the warehouse full of his works at MASS MoCA). Here’s a mural at the Wadsworth Athenaeum (in Lewitt’s hometown of Hartford, CT):
And here’s one in New York City (at...
City Hall Plaza to become year-round food truck... →
Reviving Caslon [from ilovetypography.com] →
An article about typography and authenticity.
Retrospective: Pentagram and Yale School of... →
Look at these black and white things.
July 2010
1 post
June 2010
5 posts
An explanation of the genesis of Comic Sans. →
The Idea Factory: A Guided IDEO Tour →
a slideshow in Newsweek
“Genuine multitasking, too, has been exposed as a myth, not just by laboratory...”
– Steven Pinker
Brothers Bouroullec Spruce Up Le Corbusier's... →
“Haven’t we all secretly sort of come to an agreement, in the last year or two or...”
– http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/books/review/Franzen-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema1
May 2010
1 post
Gen X Has a Midlife Crisis - NYTimes.com →
April 2010
5 posts
Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War -... →
“Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
Fluxblog » Joanna Newsom » Love’s Neverdoneing... →
This sounds more like Court and Spark than Court and Spark does.
The Vacuum of Enthusiasm: Design Observer →
Some ideas about how design writing on the internet could be better.
March 2010
6 posts
Link by Link - Advising Recovery Board on Offering... →
Edward Tufte, an expert on infographics, is part of a committee to improve the display of data on federal government websites.
“On the “@” symbol: “The French and Italians have nicknamed it...”
– Design - Why @ Is Held in Such High Design Esteem - NYTimes.com
'What is reality,' day 2. →
‘The New Rove-Cheney Assault on Reality,’ by Frank Rich - NYTimes.com
Another person takes a stab at the question, "What... →
NY Times book review: ‘Reality Hunger - A Manifesto,’ by David Shields
In Los Angeles, Michael Maltzan Is Designing for... →
Modern architects are often criticized for ignoring “social justice” issues like these—it’s interesting to see someone from Frank Gehry’s office who isn’t.
Design Museum Boston →
I didn’t know that this existed until just now.
February 2010
7 posts
When modern architecture goes too far. →
“Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork,...”
– Verlyn Klinkenborg, “Our Vanishing Night,” National Geographic magazine, November 2008. http://www.darksky.org.
See this New Yorker article on the same topic
MIT School of Architecture and Planning -...
This could be cool, but early in the morning
http://sap.mit.edu/news_events/maki/
