Drawing a Blank

I helped *girl design a sleeve for sketchbooks before Christmas that had little pop-up trees to go along with the theme of the all new sustainable and recycled sketchbooks that she put together for our office. I wish we had seen this work when we came up with it.

The artist...

http://www.petercallesen.com/

Man vs. Wild

When I first saw the renderings of this building I immediately thought about blowing bubbles in chocolate milk as a kid. As a designer I guess inspiration can come from anywhere and sometimes the most unexpected things yield fantastic results. I’ll let the engineer and architects describe it as it may seem like a simple concept but the execution required some serious thought….

Its structural design is based on the most effective sub-division of three-dimensional space – the fundamental arrangement of organic cells and the natural formation of soap bubbles. This naturally-occurring arrangement contributed to this seeming random generation of structure, but it is in fact a solution that is extremely repetitive and highly buildable - removing the usual architectural inspiration that defines extreme geometry in building design, thus nature beats technology.

The design of the Water Cube is derived from theoretical physics, and the steel frame that encompasses this aquatic centre is based on what is known as the Weaire-Phelan structure, which describes the most efficient way to divide space. This is in fact the same way that bubbles form in foam. Whereas soap bubbles can be divided into two shapes - three quarters of the cells have 14 sides and the remainder have twelve - the engineering solution to make the Water Cube a reality requires over a hundred different ones. However, in spite of their seeming randomness, bubbles always touch each other with a regular geometry and it is this simple fact that makes the design feasible.




This abstraction of a natural phenomenon into a geometric form gives the building a direct relationship to nature while satisfying the rationality of human thought and order. It is this thin line that some of the most exciting and groundbreaking architecture seems to be located. It is only with a scientific and analytical abstraction that we can harness the wealth of knowledge hidden in nature to create more sustainable and interesting world.

National Swimming Centre2008 OlympicsBeijing, China
By PTW CCDI and Arup

more images here

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