Critical Cities

The High Line

2011-07-19T02:16:00.014-04:00

Since the opening of its first section in June 2009, the High Line has received considerable acclaim in both mainstream and specialist design media. If Frank Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim museum spawned the “Bilbao effect” in which cities around the world sought to replicate Bilbao’s tourist and development boom by commissioning their own iconic cultural destinations, so the “High Line effect” may be

IKEA vs MUJI

2011-05-24T21:48:00.021-04:00

Two heavyweights of contemporary lifestyle design, IKEA and MUJI, are slugging it out for control of domestic life worldwide. The objects with which they do battle are remarkably similar – functional, simple, honest, and ornament-free tools for living. However, the marketing and consumption of the two brands emphasize their essential differences through reference to widely held stereotypes of

Philip Johnson: Glass House and New Canaan Estate

2011-02-20T17:33:00.035-05:00

Last summer, along with more Manitoga research and a visit to James Rose’s New Jersey house, I finally made the pilgrimage to Philip Johnson’s Glass House and estate in New Canaan, Connecticut. As with my Fallingwater pilgrimage a few years ago, I paid extra for the longer tour that allows more time for photos and videos, so please enjoy them. Reflecting on the two pilgrimages, I think both

James Rose House

2011-01-18T20:48:00.019-05:00

As part of my ongoing Manitoga project, I visited landscape architect James Rose’s home back in July last year. Completed in 1953, the Rose house is an unusual and little known gem of mid-century modernist design, integrating architecture, interiors, furniture design, and landscape design into a harmonious experience of serenity and tranquillity in the somewhat unlikely setting of suburban New

Brooklyn: Retro Authenticity

2010-11-30T23:27:00.011-05:00

While staying in Park Slope for a few weeks last summer, I became intrigued by Brooklyn’s retro culture. It started with the furnished apartment we rented. A veritable retro shrine, the apartment housed everything from grandma’s furniture to 1960s crockery, kitsch 1950s movie posters to a huge collection of vinyl records. Aside from a computer and television, there was scarcely anything new in

Why Design Now?

2010-10-22T07:13:00.010-04:00

In a 2007 blog entry, I compared the last National Design Triennial, Design Life Now, with another exhibition, Design for the Other 90%, also at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum:“While Design Life Now: The National Design Triennial takes up the former Carnegie mansion's interiors, curator Cynthia Smith's Design for the Other 90% is, fittingly perhaps, situated outside in the garden. Coming out

Two Hotels in St Augustine

2010-09-16T06:54:00.020-04:00

At the beginning of the 1888-89 winter season, Henry Flagler opened two opulent hotels in St Augustine, Florida: the Ponce de Leon, and the Alcazar. These hotels represented the beginning of the “Flagler System”, comprising railroad links and resort hotels that would eventually stretch the length of Florida’s East Coast. Rivaled only by Henry Plant’s similar Plant System (based in Tampa and

Vizcaya

2010-08-25T08:40:00.017-04:00

After a few days in Miami Beach and a brief Atlantis drive by, we continued around Biscayne Bay to Vizcaya, the former estate of James Deering. Originally comprising an opulent mansion (constructed 1914-16), formal garden, and a working farm on 180 acres, Vizcaya remains today as a unique expression of Gilded Age America. While there were more ostentatious, and more expensive mansions

Miami Beach

2010-07-30T07:11:00.016-04:00

My image of Miami was already tainted, mostly by episodes of CSI Miami’s mythical paradise of material opulence: a world of private yachts, pristine condo towers and sculpted bodies barely clothed in designer fashion, all rendered in impossibly saturated colors. Given the series is filmed almost entirely in a Los Angeles studio, I was bound to be disappointed when finally encountering the real

William Lescaze: Modernism at what price today?

2010-06-10T07:28:00.009-04:00

With all my Lescaze research over the last couple of months, I've only just registered that William Lescaze's house at 32 E74th St, aka the Kramer House, is currently for sale for $14 million (the NY Observer asked "Is it worth it?"). Similar to his own midtown townhouse, the Kramer House was built by Lescaze in 1934-35, for friends, Raymond and Mildred Kramer, and is approximately 6,800 square

William Lescaze: Early Interiors

2010-05-28T09:31:00.019-04:00

Continuing my research on the career of William Lescaze, I thought it worth returning to Lescaze’s New York projects of the late 1920s, which comprise almost entirely interiors. Lanmon notes that in 1928, Lescaze wrote to Le Corbusier complaining that all he ever got commissioned to design was interiors – restaurants, private apartments, retail interiors and exhibition rooms – and Corbu replied

Whatever Happened to William Lescaze?

2010-04-29T19:55:00.020-04:00

Of all the entries on this blog over the past three years, the one that has sparked the most interest in terms of emails and queries is this one on architect William Lescaze’s 1934 New York townhouse. Curiously, I have received a few emails over the past couple of years that have addressed me as some kind of expert on Lescaze’s work. While I am, in fact, far from an expert, a basic Google search

Manitoga and Japan

2010-03-25T08:04:00.009-04:00

Following my last entry on Manitoga and the picturesque tradition, this entry analyzes links between Wright’s project and Japanese design traditions, particularly the parallels between Wright’s landscape design and the Edo Period “Tour Garden”. There are several dimensions to the Japanese influence on Wright’s design of Manitoga worth considering: firstly, Wright hired architect David Leavitt to

Manitoga and the 20th Century Picturesque

2010-02-28T17:30:00.018-05:00

Following last month’s introduction to Russel Wright’s Manitoga, this month’s blog entry is a brief consideration of Manitoga in the context of the picturesque tradition in architecture and landscape architecture. While Wright’s project is certainly modern, this entry is an outline of a possible historic precedent for the relationship between nature and culture that Wright developed at Manitoga.

Russel Wright: Manitoga

2010-01-18T06:55:00.025-05:00

Constructed during the 1950s, Russel Wright’s Manitoga, a seventy-five-acre estate in the Hudson River Valley, was the culmination of a design practice that extended like a Moebius strip from the household objects of the house’s interior to the regeneration of the surrounding landscape. Manitoga’s significance was officially recognized in 2006 when it was designated a National Historic Landmark,

The 21st Century Interior

2009-12-23T20:55:00.004-05:00

In order to finish off my 21st Century Interior project for the year, I have put all of the posts for 2009 together in a single document, edited them lightly and added a short conclusion. Please download here as a PDF for your reading pleasure. Note that if you want to print it out, this document is 65 pages long and contains colored pictures, as well as a full bibliography at the end.Any

Tadao Ando: Morimoto Restaurant

2009-10-23T07:36:00.025-04:00

In my recent blog entries on the 21st century interior, the issue of theatricality has recurred several times. The intersection between the virtual spaces of the theater or cinema, and the actual spaces of physical interiors, seems both a vital and under-theorized connection with a long and somewhat marginalized history. In the United States, for example, the earliest professional designer, Elsie

Karim Rashid: Nooch, Kurve

2009-09-30T19:54:00.020-04:00