Design Public

So I started to tell you about the Modern Atlanta Home Tour yesterday but I didn’t get very far! I wanted to show you more from my favorite home that I saw on the tour (stairs described yesterday are pictured above). By the way, I only made it to five. I’d say five to six is the maximum you can really see when driving from place to place in a five hour time limit. It’s exhilarating but also exhausting. Also, once in Decatur my car automatically drove me to Victory Vintage, and I stopped by my house for a snack before visiting the house down the street. That’s how I roll.

O.K. So first, the architects who live in the house with a soul also designed this house around the corner (photos immediately above and below). It’s absolutely gorgeous, and the inhabitants have a smart mix of high end items and art and IKEA. I just found myself wondering if all the stuff they usually keep out was smushed in the “not part of the tour” closed door rooms, or if they are really this strictly minimal. That’s cool if they are, I just know that I could not accomplish such discipline in a million years:

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So Saturday I went on the Modern Atlanta Homes Tour. I’ll tell you more about it after I edit my pictures (I’m SUCH and idiot; I forgot my camera so all my pictures are from my iPhone and thus they suck worse than usual). There was one house that stood out as not only being thoughtful and beautiful and modern, but it really, truly had a soul. For now, I want to share their dining room chandelier. It’s a bunch of twigs hanging from a wire. It’s a crap camera shot, but hopefully you’ll get the idea:

What was so great about this was also the thought of just “what the hell? Let’s give hanging some twigs from the ceiling a whirl! Who cares? If it looks stupid, we’ll take it down.” That was the attitude I got from this house with soul. Similarly, the stairs had a quote from the bride’s grandmother written on them on Sharpie, all the way up two stories. Apparently, they scribbled the quote there for a party before the stairs were finished, but when the time came, they could not bear to lose the quote, so it’s still there.

Lesson: Experiment with your home. Don’t be afraid to try things out.  Don’t even let that evil, soul-crushing word, “resale” enter your mind when you are planning out your home or decorating. That word is for dorks and greedy house flippers with no taste who watch too much HGTV and say things like “sizzle factors” about “custom kitchens” and think that means something special.   Just go for it. If something doesn’t work, you can eliminate it and move on, if it does work, it will probably be one of the best features of your home.

Just a quick note to let modern architecture fans in Atanta that the Modern Atlanta Home Tour is this weekend. I am told that most of the homes are within 6 miles of Midtown (except for the Serenbe houses in Palmetto, GA). This is good news for those of us who don’t like to use up gas going O.T.P.* I am really excited that the house pictured above is down my street.** I pass by it all the time and I’ve always wanted to check out the interior.

The tours will take place tomorrow and Sunday, from 11a.m.-4 p.m.. Tickets are $10 for students, $30 for a one-day pass and $50 for a two-day pass. You can purchase your tickets online, at the DWR store, and a few other places; click here for more information. Do note that if you purchase online, you still need to pick up your wristband and map beforehand, which is a bit of a pain for those of us who are spoiled by getting everything we want online all the time! However, just based on the three homes shown in this post, it seems worth the trip.

P.S. Buying a ticket also enters you to win this amazing Nais Chair by Alfredo Häberli, courtesy of Domus. Alright, I have to go buy my ticket and then use “The Secret” for the rest of the afternoon to make sure I win.

*O.T.P. - “Outside the Perimeter”: Those of us who live in the city fear going beyond the perimeter created by I-285, due to fear of traffic, endless stoplights, gated communities, and the proliferation of big box stores, among other things. I also fear going to Buckhead to get my ticket for fear of the extreme road rage that takes over my soul somewhere around the intersection of Piedmont and Sidney Marcus.

**Now if we could only get that Mockbee house two streets over on the tour next year, all of my nosy neighbor curiosities would be fully satisfied!

All photos from Modern Atlanta

If you are in the SF area over the next week, check out the “Untitled” exhibition by Joe Gebbia for CITIZEN:Citizen.

The when and where:

Launch Party: May 2nd; 6-8pm Chronicle Books 680 Second St, San Francisco. (Design Public staff will be there to check it out!)

Exhibition: May 3rd-May 10; 10am-5pm Chronicle Books 680 Second St, San Francisco

Thanks to Rhea for leaving the following information in the comments section of the post about Samuel Mockbee:

There is an exhibition called Southern Exposure: Contemporary Regional Architecture which features the work of the Rural Studio at the Virginia Center for Architecture through June 8. It features the Yancey Chapel as well as several other projects. The exhibition also highlights the work of other contemporary architects practicing in the Regional style, including Marlon Blackwell, Frank Harmon, W.G. Clark, and the firms of Lake|Flato and Mack Scogin Merril Elam Architects

On Thursday, May 1, 2008, Jason Coomes, a faculty member of the Rural Studio, discusses the ongoing work of the studio.

The Virginia Center for Architecture is located in Richmond, Virginia. If you’d like more information, please visit www.virginiaarchitecture.org.

Also, I found that Rural Studio has fantastic blogs that feature current projects.  Check them out here.

photos are from the Rural Studio blogs 

We were all called to the conference room today for an “office discussion.” Untitled and spontaneous meetings normally produce a jolt in nervousness, mass amounts of nail biting, and can send imaginations flying. Instead, Matt announced that he wanted to have an ice cream party. He scurried to a stash hidden amongst Fatboy boxes and produced a cooler full of brownies, three different toppings, whipped cream, granola and of course…ice cream. We all looked at each other with wild eyes like “What’s the catch?” No catch…just a totally unexpected ice cream social. Shizam!We ate with absolute glee.

I just read about this project in Good Magazine. It’s called Re:Construction, and it’s a public art project spearheaded by the Alliance for Downtown NY in collaboration with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Here is the idea:

“Re:Construction channels the energy of Downtown’s rebuilding process by recasting construction sites as ‘canvases’ for innovative public art and architecture. This initiative comes at a time when Lower Manhattan is experiencing one of the largest public and private construction undertakings in the nation’s history. In response, Re:Construction bridges the efforts of multiple public partners and the creative community to both highlight and enliven the process of rebuilding while improving the quality of life in Lower Manhattan through the creation of places of attraction, curiosity and anticipation.”

Some of the pilot projects include Best Pedestrian Route by GRO Architects:

photo by Adam Kleinman

Tattfoo Tan’s Concrete Jungle, where the orange construction safety paint on jersey barriers has gone Dior:

(before)

(after)

photo by Tattfoo Tan

It’s interesting, obviously lots of graffiti and guerrilla artists have been taking advantage of these types of sites for a long time, and doing a great job. It will be interesting to see if the organized version can compete. Any time there is a chance to create art, I say go for it, whether through a bunch of red tape or illegally.

http://www.downtownny.com/news?nid=98

http://www.reconstructionnyc.org/

I received this notice from Flavorpill today and first of all I just LOVE Shana’s writing. What an clever paragraph. It’s so much better than the standard event announcement:

Steve Martin famously said that talking about music is like dancing about architecture; tonight at the Hammer, audiences finally get to see that idea (almost) in action, as unpredictable architect Frank Gehry has it out with Bard College president and renowned classical-music scholar/conductor Leon Botstein, who commissioned Gehry to design Bard’s performing-arts center in 1996. Expect an entertaining chat about the progressive relationship between architects and cultural institutions, how to deal with large-room acoustics, and what they really think of the new LACMA down the street. - Shana Nys Dambrot

This will be a free lecture this Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at The Hammer Museum in L.A and it should be fantastic. While in hot demand all over the world now, Frank Gehry has had his longest and most significant design relationship with L.A. over any other city. Furthermore, he has been crafting relationships between music and architecture for many years. He redesigned The Hollywood Bowl shell in 1970 and again in 1980, The Walt Disney Concert Hall in 1989, and The Experience Music Project in 1999. I’d love to know what he was listening to while designing each project. (more…)

I hate downtown Atlanta, and Jane Jacobs would have hated it too. There is no real mixed use, unless you count homeless people’s residences as the “live” part of “live/work.” There are skywalks all over the place so the people who do work there can avoid the streets altogether. It’s dead after 5 p.m., there’s always a detour for whichever street you really need to be on, there is no on-street parking, I could go on, but I’ll spare you. The Eero Saarinen furniture exhibit was a rare enticement that lured me downtown last Friday. I mean it is only about two miles from my house, but I literally never go there.

The exhibit is being held at The Museum of Design Atlanta. Ironically, I found out about it not in any local rags, but in The New York Times (I’m in a love time in my love/hate relationship with The Times right now). The exhibit is rather small but has some amazing original pieces, and this was one of the few times I stood and read every descriptive line on the wall regarding the exhibit. They had an amazing timeline of Eero’s life and beneath it a timeline of world, design, Saarinen and Knoll events. I had not realize that Francis Knoll and the Saarinens had met way back in the Cranbrook era, and the history of the relationship between the families is interesting. The exhibit was really well done, and it was all I could do to keep myself from plopping down in each chair and giving it a test drive. (more…)

Well folks, we are nearing the end of the Sunset Hose tour. This weekend and next are your last chances to visit the space. Aye carumba! As if seeing the home isn’t enough, we are selling all the sample pieces from the show online. While you look at the house and view all the incredible ways they have made an urban space as green as possible, why not do a little shopping? The challenge this week: try and get to the Blu Dot Modulicious queen bed or Strut Table in dark olive before I do. Ha! I just can’t decide which one I need more.

Check out all the remaining Sample Sale items before they’re gone.

The Sunset Idea House is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. General admission is $20; $15 for seniors on Fridays. No children younger than 10. The house is located at 3029 25th St, San Francisco, CA 94110. Parking is extremely limited. Free shuttles will be offered from the San Francisco General Hospital parking lot. For information, call (800) 786-7375 or visit the Sunset Web site: www.sunset.com. Please be courteous to Sunset House neighbors when viewing the home (i.e. do not block driveways, leave a mess, cause a raucous, etc.).