New England Modernism

I'll let the architect talk about the details when he can find the time. For now, just enjoy the pictures from last weekend's day trip to Lincoln, MA to tour the Gropius House.

Adventures in (Dangerous) Mind-Molding

A few weeks ago I had this nightmare that I showed up to my first graduate typography class with my clever little sewing project and was suddenly transformed to Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds wrangling inner-city LA high schoolers into learning about type. I won't go into the details but it involved some of the students being gang members, a few stairwell pot-smokers and a rowdy hip-hop choir across the hall lead by Dwight from The Office. Thankfully, that is not how Wednesday's class went. The students did come in together (very gang-like) but my fears were quickly calmed when they told me that most of them have class together right before mine.

To introduce the scope of this new (less-than-traditional) type class, I had the students cross stitch a lowercase letter a into plastic stitching mesh with black yarn, considering fundamental typographic issues such as height, width, proportion, form and negative space. Although this class is about designing with type, it is crucial to be intimately familiar with the anatomical workings of letters. Subtle nuances that define the individual design of letters can be studied and expounded upon to better understand the subtleties and details of designing with type on any scale - be it letter, word, line or body.

The charrette far exceeded my expectations (especially considering that after that nightmare, my only real hope was that the needles not be used as weapons). I really think the students understood the point of the exercise and had a lot of fun doing it. I'm officially excited about the rest of the semester.

Here's a taste of what cross stitched type can look like:



I'll be documenting all charrettes (1-class projects) and class pin-ups here on Flickr.

Irony & Life

*girl has been learning to cross stitch over the last week. Her first foray into the world of cross stitching is a little sign, complete with pink bunnies, that reads "IRONY IS NOT DEAD" -for the past week it read "IS" then "IS NOT" and finally last night the completed phrase.

How appropriate that we, after expressing our disdain and disgust for the act of legally binding oneself to another person and doing so in a pageant of bad taste and excess, have come to the conclusion that we're never going to find anyone else who shares those same feelings, so let's do it. What may be even more ironic is that it took our office "prom" and a few dirty martinis for either of us to admit to the other that we wanted to make it official. We will do our best to avoid the pageantry and excess, beginning with a more modest version of the rock.

We're pretty sure we are crazy, and that everyone else will agree, but I haven't been this sure about anything in a long time and I know *girl is who I want to spend my life with doing ironic and ridiculous things.

White Space

As someone who grew up wearing short sleeves on Christmas Day, I am eternally fascinated by the snow. Its nature's white space - blanketing our cluttered world and revealing unexpected, beautiful silhouettes.

Modern for Two

I was looking at two of my favorite lounge chairs recently and had an idea that would allow *girl and I to enjoy them together. My first concept turned out to be a design that was produced but very rare.

Eero Saarinen Womb chair (1948)

the love seat version: the Womb Sette


The second concept is based on the LC4 by Le Corbusier (1928) and something that if I believe would be a very simple hack to produce a beautiful double chaise that would allow you to face each other or one direction as the seat and base are separate pieces.

LC4 by Le Corbusier (1928)
My concept