Design Public

Just a few links to get you through the weekend:

1. Synagogue turned studio above and below as seen in New York Home:

2. Fun interview with Domino Editor-in-Cheif Deborah Needleman over at All Things Bright and Beautiful

3. A thorough guide to design blogs from Down Under, over at decor8.

4. Sumptuous Art Deco costumes and sets from the movie The Aviator, over at designsmack. It’s hard to choose a favorite, but my lord, when was the last time you saw a public restroom this gorgeous (note Leo in the mirror):

5. Design book releases we are anxiously anticipating, from one of my favorite bibliophiles, The Peak of Chic.

photo credits:

1 & 2 from New York Home by Jason Schmidt

3 via All Things Bright and Beautiful

4. via designsmack

5. via The Peak of Chic

I’ve been meaning to tell you about this great book my Mom brought me as a hostess gift about a year ago. It’s a monograph of the work of Samuel ‘Sambo’ Mockbee, appropriately titled Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency. I kept putting it off, because frankly, scanning stuff is a boring chore, plus, it’s really hard to pick just a few projects from this book. I doubt I can summarize it better than the book jacket:

For almost ten years, Samuel Mockbee, a recent MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, and his architecture students at Auburn University have been designing and building striking houses and community buildings for impoverished residents of Alabama’s Hale County. Using salvaged lumber and bricks, discarded tires, hay and waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, and old license plates, they create inexpensive buildings in a style Mockbee describes as ‘contemporary modernism grounded in Southern culture.’”

This is the first project from Sambo I remember seeing back in architecture school. It’s The Cardboard Pod and is made from baled sheets of corrugated wax-impregnated boards:This is the incredible Yancey Chapel, built around an existing rusted trough and constructed from 1000 dirt-filled used tires:This property near The Yancey Chapel is called The Goat House, a former shed for animals that Rural Studio originally planned as part of an artists’ colony. The colony never, um, colonized, and the building is now a residence. You see the Chapel aesthetic influence on the structure: (more…)

For a lot of designers, writing is a lost art. People have become lost in archispeak and are unable to describe a room or tell a story. This week I’ve been thoroughly enjoying a delicious memoir written by one of the best known decorators of this century: Billy Baldwin Remembers. I’m kind of kicking myself right now because it starts on amazon for about $10, and I paid $45 at that unfriendly Savannah book store, but it was worth it. You are a fool if you don’t hop over there (the title’s the link) and scoop this one up right now.

The book starts with some of Baldwin’s early inspirations and experiences. He describes the “stars in his crown;” iconic ladies of style like Nan Kempner, Babe Paley, Diana Vreeland, Jackie O. and even Garbo. Even better, he dishes the dirt about clients from hell, their peculiar habits, bad taste, lack of manners, bizarre requests and overinflated self importance. (more…)

I was just flipping through the stack of books I leave in my guest room and reacquainted myself with Home Swell Home: Designing Your Dream Pad by Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig. Before there was Anti-Depressive Living, there was Swell Living. Now that the weather is warming up, here’s a fun tip from the book:

I imagined including one of the beautiful photos of outdoor chandeliers I’ve seen around lately, but I can’t seem to find any today! If you have any outdoor chandelier photos to share, please leave a comment and a link!

Also, if you don’t have a copy of Home Swell Home, they start at under $5 at amazon right now - click here to order a copy!

To continue the previous post, I found a few more examples of indigo and lime, including this Tricia Guild table arrangement from her book Flower Sense…

…and fashions from Aprils issue of Bazaar…

I was thinking about how famous Ken Smith has become in the years since I heard him speak at my school. I think I missed his visiting professorship with the fashion and landscape studio by about a year or two, which will always haunt me. However, my class was lucky enough to visit his office and take a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge with him in 1999. I remember the walls of his office were covered in bubble wrap and there was this strange gong music playing. We were drinking beers while Ken presented some of his work to us when my hilarious friend Lucia leaned over and whispered “this is my favorite song” to me and I about died trying not to bust out laughing. Anyway, I pulled out my Ken Smith book yesterday and his P.S. 19 dumpster planters brought a smile to my face. He is always coming up with creative ways to think about gardens, whether they are vertical, blooming from the pubic area (no, I am not kidding), involve chandeliers hanging over famous avenues, made out of light cones, providing specific aural and other sensory experiences, or are blooming from unexpected receptacles.

P.S. If anyone can find Ken Smith’s website, let me know so that I can provide a link. I can’t seem to find one anywhere, not even over on ASLA’s website. Thanks.

Photoshop by the offices of Ken Smith, Landscape Architect.

Photographs by Albert Vecerka. Both are from the book Ken Smith Landscape Architect Urban Projects.

I took my own advice this week and started to pull down and enjoy the books that had been trapped at the bottom of my stacks.  Today it was Andy Goldsworthy: Wall.    The relationship between his work and its surroundings is transformed by the seasons, the weather, and environmental changes like succession.

The temporary installation created from sumac leaves in the fall:

Sketch and the resulting built work:

The Storm King’s serpentine wall in the winter:

Andy Goldsworthy sketch

Andy Goldsworthy pictures by Andy Goldsworthy and Jerry L. Thompson

Last Thursday I was out at one of my favorite shops, Armour and Co., and my parents very generously bought me Albert Hadley: The Story of America’s Preeminent Designer by Adam Lewis.  This book is pricey (though you can pick it up at amazon for about $40 right now), but it is one every interior design book collection must have.  The sketches, prints, and photographs are absolutely amazing, and the stories told by Hadley to Lewis are charming.  One of the most amazing things about Hadley’s work is that it is so classic and timeless.  The only giveaways that date the photos of the older rooms are a grainy quality of print or an outdated television set.   The man does love to throw in a zebra rug wherever possible, but he makes it work!

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I have a ridiculous amount of beautiful design books, and I realize that I don’t pull them down often enough. I’m making a conscious effort to keep the coffee table real estate in rotation, so that I can pick up a different book every few days and enjoy it all over again. I was enjoying my favorite Barragan book so much that I decided I had to share some images with you (the subtitle is Armando Salas Portugal Photographs of the Architecture of Luis Barragan)*.     The collaboration between architect and photographer featured in this book is as good as it gets. Luis and Armando worked together for forty years.

As I studied the images, I immediately thought of Donald Judd, Martha Schwartz, and Ed Bye, just to name a few. Barragan’s mastery of use of materials whether for commentary, contrast, practicality or as ruled by site remains unrivaled by anyone practicing today (IMHO!). As someone with training in landscape architecture, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone with such astute mastery of outdoor spaces - the way he responds to the context and immediate site, frames views, considers scale and contrasts with color continues to blow my mind. Anyway, here are is a smattering of some of my favorite photographs of Barragan’s work, taken by Armando Salas Portugal:

I should also add, well, you know on design shows how they will put a stencil of a leaf on something or hang a bay leaf wreath and then say “yeah, we’re really CONNECTING THE INDOORS TO THE OUTDOORS!”? It’s become an embarrassing bad cliche. However, Barragan is one of the best examples of a designer who understands architecture, interiors and landscape, and how to balance and maximize these relationships in his site planning. If you want to see true connection among these elements, look to Barragan’s work.

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I was just perusing Palm Springs Weekend last night and came across the charming drawings from the offices of Donald A. Wexler Associates Architecture and wanted to share. I hope it presents clearly on the screen. I love the composition with the top of the palm trees dominating the bottom left corner, and the way the cul-de-sac is literally the center of the page, with the hint of the mountains in the background. I like the way most of the roofs are flat, but occasionally they have a few peaks that mimic the mountainous backdrop. The architect here also understands the play between the tall vertical trees and the low horizontal structures. It was staying in an Alexander house in Palm Springs 12 years ago that sparked my interest in going to Architecture School - I wish I still had the connections to go back and stay again, knowing what I know now!