Tag Archives: Design

Podcast Profiles: Irish Architect And Designer Eileen Gray (1878 – 1976)

Monocle 24 On Design LogoUnderappreciated in her lifetime, the career of late Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray is the subject of a timely new exhibition at The Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York. Jennifer Goff, curator of the Eileen Gray collection at the National Museum of Ireland, tells us more.

Eileen Gray (born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith; 9 August 1878 – 31 October 1976) was an Irish architect and furniture designer and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. Over her career, she was associated with many notable European artists of her era, including Kathleen Scott, Adrienne Gorska, Le Corbusier, and Jean Badovici, with whom she was romantically involved. Her most famous work is the house known as E-1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.

Eileen Gray website

From 1922/1923 to 1926 Gray created an informal architectural apprenticeship for herself as she never received any formal training as an architect. She studied theoretical and technical books, took drafting lessons, and arranged to have Adrienne Gorska take her along to building sites. She also traveled with Badovici to study key buildings and learned by reworking architectural designs.

E-1027 table by Eileen Gray

In 1926, she started work on a new holiday home near Monaco to share with Badovici. Because a foreigner in France couldn’t wholly own property, Gray bought the land and put it in Badovici’s name, making him her client on paper. Construction of the house took three years and Gray remained on site while Badovici visited occasionally.

Renewed interest in Gray’s work began in 1967 when historian Joseph Rykwert published an essay about her in the Italian design magazine Domus. After the publishing of the article many “students began to ring at her door” as eager to learn from the now famous designer.

At a Paris auction of 1972, Yves Saint Laurent bought ‘Le Destin’ and revived interest in Gray’s career.

The first retrospective exhibition of her work, titled ‘Eileen Gray: Pioneer of Design’, was held in London in 1972. A Dublin exhibition followed the next year. At the Dublin exhibit, the 95 year old Gray was given an honorary fellowship by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.

In 1973 Gray signed a contract to reproduce the Bibendum chair and many of her pieces for the first time. They remain in production.

Eileen Gray died on Halloween 1976. She is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but because her family omitted to pay the licence fee her grave is not identifiable.

From Wikipedia

Design Books: “Architizer – The World’s Best Architecture” (Phaidon)

Architizer The World's Best Architecture Phaidon April 2020The Architizer A+Awards represent 2019’s best architecture and products, celebrated by a diverse group of influencers within and outside the architectural community. Entries are judged by more than 400 luminaries from fields as diverse as fashion, publishing, product design, real-estate development, and technology, and voted on by the public, culminating in a collection of the world’s finest buildings.

Each year, winners are honored in this fully illustrated compendium, and on Architizer.com, the largest online architecture community on the planet. Featuring select A+Award winners, this is the definitive guide to the year’s best buildings and spaces.

Architizer is the leading online resource for architecture. Through its vast building database, daily content, ‘Source’ marketplace, and A+Awards, it is revolutionizing the way architects connect with building-product manufacturers and the world beyond.

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Top New Home Designs: “Laurel Hills Residence” By Assembledge+ Architects

Composed of three pavilions connected by a series of glass hallways, the single-story residence seeks to create a residential oasis in the heart of Los Angeles.

Laurel Hills Residence Assembledge+ ArchitectsThe Western Red Cedar lined guest house/garage pavilion establishes a datum line that carves and connects the two larger volumes of the living and sleeping pavilions, comprised of oversized charcoal-colored board, batten extira and cement board siding. A deep overhang mitigates solar heat gain and shields from the sun exposure.

A walkway of concrete pavers, lined by wild grasses leads to the front door, passing a tranquil courtyard with olive trees. The entry to the house is located within a glass hallway connecting the living pavilion to the west and the sleeping pavilion to the east, establishing a sense of intimate scale before engaging with the other parts of the house.

Assembledge+ Architects logo

The fluidity between the kitchen, breakfast room and family room, designed for uninterrupted entertainment, creates a harmony of transparency and lightness.

Website

Tributes: French Planner, Architect Yona Friedman Dies At 96 – Founder Of “Mobile Architecture”

Yona Friedman dies at 96 photo from 1974 on Instagram Feb 21 2020
Yona Friedman (Photo Paul Almasy, 1974)

“After 96 years on this earth, Yona has moved up to build a Spatial City and install some Space Chains in the sky. The Fonds de Dotation Denise and Yona Friedman, which he founded last year, will continue his work.” 

From an Instagram post (02/21/20)

Yona Friedman (5 June 1923 – 21 February 2020) was a Hungarian-born French architect, urban planner and designer. He was influential in the late 1950s and early 1960s, best known for his theory of mobile architecture.

In 1958, Yona Friedman published his first manifesto : “Mobile architecture”. It described a new kind of mobility not of the buildings, but for the inhabitants, who are given a new freedom.

Mobile architecture is the “dwelling decided on by the occupant” by way of “infrastructures that are neither determined nor determining”. Mobile architecture embodies an architecture available for a “mobile society”. To deal with it, the classical architect invented “the Average Man”. The projects of architects in the 1950s were undertaken, according to Friedman, to meet the needs of this make-believe entity, and not as an attempt to meet the needs of the actual members of this mobile society.

Yona Friedman Drawings

The teaching of architecture was largely responsible for the “classical” architect’s under-estimation of the role of the user. Furthermore, this teaching did not embrace any real theory of architecture. Friedman proposed then teaching manuals for the fundamentals of architecture for the general public.

The spatial city, which is a materialization of this theory, makes it possible for everyone to develop his or her own hypothesis. This is why, in the mobile city, buildings should :

  1. touch the ground over a minimum area
  2. be capable of being dismantled and moved
  3. and be alterable as required by the individual occupant.

The Spatial City is the most significant application of “mobile architecture”. It is raised up on piles which contains inhabited volumes, fitted inside some of the “voids”, alternating with other unused volumes, making it look aesthetically pleasant. The basis of its design is that of trihedral elements which operate as “neighbourhoods” where dwellings are distributed without a price.

This structure introduces a kind of merger between countryside and city (compare to Paolo Soleri’s Arcology concept) and may span:

  • certain unavailable sites,
  • areas where building is not possible or permitted (expanses of water, marshland),
  • areas that have already been built upon (an existing city),
  • above farmland.

This spanning technique which includes container structures ushers in a new development in town-planning. Raised plans increase the original area of the city becoming three-dimensional. The tiering of the spatial city on several independent levels, one on top of the other, determines “spatial town-planning” both from the functional and from the aesthetic viewpoint. The lower level may be earmarked for public life and for premises designed for community services as well as pedestrian areas. The piles contain the vertical means of transport (lifts, staircases). The superposition of levels should make it possible to build a whole industrial city, or a residential or commercial city, on the same site. In this way, the Spatial City forms what Yona Friedman would call an “artificial topography”. This grid suspended in space outlines a new cartography of the terrain with the help of a continuous and indeterminate homogeneous network with a major positive outcome: this modular grid would authorize the limitless growth of the city.

The spaces in this grid are rectangular and habitable modular “voids”, with an average area of 25–35 square meters. Conversely, the form of the volumes included within the grid depends solely on the occupant, and their configuration set with a “Flatwriter” in the grid is completely free. Only one half of the spatial city would be occupied. The “fillings” which correspond to the dwellings only actually take up 50% of the three-dimensional lattice, permitting the light to spread freely in the spatial city. This introduction of elements on a three-dimensional grid with several levels on piles permits a changeable occupancy of the space by means of the convertibility of the forms and their adaptation to multiple uses.

In Yona Friedman’s own words “The city, as a mechanism, is thus nothing other than a labyrinth : a configuration of points of departure, and terminal points, separated by obstacles”.

From Wikipedia

Video Profiles: 60-Year Old Canadian Designer Bruce Mau – “Beauty Of Books”

Meet the influential Canadian “design guru”, Bruce Mau, in this short video. Mau, who is the author of quintessential publications on architecture and design, shares his thoughts on how we can bring the book into the technological environment without losing its beauty and richness.

“I think it’s such a brilliant technology that if it didn’t exist today – if somehow we got to the present through technology and computers before the book – we would have to invent the book,” Maus says of the discussion surrounding the alleged ‘death of the book’. The book, he continues, is such a brilliant technology, that no computer can match: “It never crashes, it sequences narrative, which is one of the most important things we need to do to understand the world.”

Massive Change Bruce Mau

Mau shares how he is working on a technology platform for books because he realized that “when we moved the book from the physical book to the digital book, we left behind the beauty of the book. We left behind the culture of the book and the experience of the book. We just took the text.” The true experience of the book, he feels, should be better incorporated into the technological environment, while adding the capacity and reach that technology offers.

Bruce Mau website

Bruce Mau (b. 1959) is a Canadian designer. Mau began as a graphic designer but has later extended his creative talent to the world of architecture, art, films, conceptual philosophy and eco-environmental design. From 1985-2010, Mau was the creative director of Bruce Mau Design (BMD), and in 2003 he founded the Institute Without Boundaries in collaboration with the School of Design. In 2010, he went on to co-found The Massive Change Network in Chicago. Mau is the recipient of prestigious awards including the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation in 1998, the American Institute of Graphic Arts Gold Medal in 2007, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Collab Design Excellence Award in 2015, and the Cooper Hewitt 2016 National Design Award for Design Mind – for his impact on design theory, design practice and public awareness. In 1998, Mau designed a widely circulated 43 point manifest called ‘The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth’, which assists its users in forming and assessing their design process. Mau is also the author of iconic books such as ‘S, M, L, XL’ (1995) with Rem Koolhaas: an architecture compendium that quickly became a requisite addition to the shelves of creatives. In June 2020, he will publish ‘MC24’, which features essays, observations, project documentation, and design work by Mau and other high-profile architects, designers, artists, scientists, environmentalists, and thinkers of our time.

Bruce Mau was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in connection with The World Around conference (https://theworldaround.com/) in New York City in January 2020.

Website

Fusion Of Design & Film: The “Making Of Mercedes-Benz Vision AVTR” (Video)

Mercedes-Benz and the upcoming “Avatar” films – what at first seemed to be an unexpected global partnership, turned into a unique interdisciplinary experience.

Jon Landau Producer Lightstorm Entertainment Making Of Mercedes-Benz Vision AVTR concept Car February 10 2020 video

Inspired by the world of “Avatar”, the two partners created the astonishing VISION AVTR. In this exclusive behind-the-scenes feature, key team members from both parties share their thoughts on the cooperation process and provide fascinating insights into the concept vehicle itself.

Credits: ™ & © 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

Website

Home Design: Flexible, Eco-Friendly Modular Homes In Costa Rica By ÚBÁLI TROPICAL LIVING

The proposal is inspired by the experiences lived in the mountains of Costa Rica. The intimate nest form comes into communication with nature so that guests have privacy and dialogue with the space around them. Its flexible structure allows it to adapt to sloping terrain, dense forests and humid tropical climates.

Ubali Costa Rica Modular Home Model 1.0 Kabek
Ubali Costa Rica Modular Home Model 1.0 Kabek

The cabin includes all the electro-mechanical installations, the septic tank and the facilities necessary for its operation. The modulation of the cabins allows to make certain adjustments to shorten or enlarge the cab according to changing needs. The structure is lightweight in metal construction with an external lining in industrial zinc and internal walls in gypsum and densglass.

Website

Design: The History Behind “Two-Up, Two-Down” London Row Houses

From a CityLab online article:

From the outside, London’s row houses have an eclectic variety of ornament, and they range in scale from palatial to boxy. But inside, they are pretty much all configured the same way. That’s because from the late 17th century up until the First World War, most residential buildings here cleaved very close to a model found across English cities: the terraced house, known in its most condensed, emblematic form as the “two-up, two-down.”

Two-Up Two Down London Row Houses CityLab Josh Kramer 2020

For a city that’s long been the repository of vast commercial, imperial, and industrial wealth, this might seem a very modest template. However, it is one that can be easily scaled up, points out Edward Denison, associate professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture and author of The Life of the British Home: An Architectural History.

“What’s extraordinary, in London in particular, is that you can find very grand houses in places such as Carlton House Terrace, with vast rooms and very high ceilings, that are still essentially two-up, two-downs with extra floors added,” says Denison. “Then you go to working-class terraced housing in places like Greenwich, and find a very different scale and quality of fittings, but essentially the same configuration.

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Health: New Stanford Hospital Features “Patient-Centric” Design (Video)

Precision Health puts the patient at the center of the health care paradigm, and at the newly-opened Stanford Hospital, the patient was the focus throughout the design process.

Learn more about how the building’s design combines with the latest medical and communications technology to put patient wellness first: http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2019fall/…

Classics: Famed Italian Car Designer “Pininfarina” Turns 90 (1930 – 2020)

Pininfarina Logo

On May 22nd (1930), Battista “Pinin” Farina founded Carrozzeria Pinin Farina in Turin. The company was designed to build special car bodies for individual customers or in small production runs. The Corso Trapani plant had 150 employees on a covered area of 9250 square meters. In June, the following news appeared on an automobile periodical: “And now the popular nickname “Pinin” used by the whole of the Turin motoring world when talking about Battista Farina, was officially about to become used throughout the country, as a result of the recent Company changes which led to the founding of S.A. Carrozzeria Pinin Farina“. At the Paris Motor Show Pinin Farina exhibited Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Isotta-Fraschini and Fiat cars. The Lancia Dilambda, the first official Pinin Farina special, appeared at the 1931 Concours d’Elegance at Villa d’Este. His first accomplishments in the 1930’s included the Hispano Suiza Coupé and the Fiat 518 Ardita.

Heritage-1939-AlfaRomeo-8C-2900-CabAero

In the Thirties the car was a good that was reserved for a minor élite, almost a plaything for a narrow circle of bold, blasé youngsters. Yet Pinin felt sure that these unlikely, noisy jalopies, which also happened to be expensive, would change quickly to become outstanding and entirely respectable tools of individual mobility. One of the early ads says: “Luxury and grand luxury cars”.  Cars were destined to ruling houses, diplomats, maharajahs and even some Middle East sheiks who were beginning to collect some of the first oil royalties, for actors and actresses, more foreigners than Italians. Pinin wrote: “In September I sold a Dilambda spider cabriolet to the Queen of Romania, I began to have some of the nobility amongst my customers”.

pininfarina-design-90-years.jpg

 

Pinin immediately embraced the cause of modernity and aerodynamics. In his view, it was the most natural way (in so far as it was the most respondent to the “nature” of the object) of solving the problem of the autonomous and original formal identity of cars. Aerodynamics, he was to write in his memoirs, was the “form of speed”. At the 1935 Milan Motor Show Pinin exhibited the Alfa Romeo 6C Pescara Coupé aerodinamico. One year later, the Lancia Astura Cabriolet tipo Bocca: elegance and craftsmanship for a small series of streamlined, richly finished cabriolets which introduced the unprecedented notion of the legitimacy of making a certain number of replicas of a custom-built model. Then the Lancia Aprilia Aerodinamica was built, a revolutionary berlinetta where an astonishing Cx of 0.40 was intuitively and empirically achieved. Aerodynamics was no longer a symbolic element, a metaphor of speed; it had now become a real standard of efficiency.

Pininfarina Design  90 Years.jpg

Pininfarina website