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A furniture-design competition in San Diego creates more than a prototype.
By Susan S. Szenasy
Editor In Chief
January 2003
If you're a reader of this column you may remember me describing the river
stone washed through the ages into egglike perfection that sits next to
my computer. Now there is also a small machined-metal cube with a slit notched
into it and a red dot etched onto its surface. It's the story of the cube
I'd like to tell you about. This is the 3-D logo of an ambitious furniture-design
competition called Linedotbox, announced last January. Aiming to test creative
muscles and build a community of San Diego architects, it also called attention
to the promise of a new generation.
Early on, project coordinator Laurie Fisher's enthusiasm engaged me as she
explained that designs would be submitted anonymously and that prototypes
would be made of 15 to 20 of them--and then asked me to serve as a juror.
But having gone through the production process for a competition Metropolis
ran some ten years ago, I sent up a warning signal: Are you sure you want
to commit to making all those pieces?
At that point I had not yet met Paul Basile, local gallery owner, furniture
maker, mini-cab advocate, entrepreneur--a young man of seemingly unrestrained
energy and imagination. But even had I known him, my advice would have been
the same: work with a reasonable number of designs so that you don't exhaust
yourself and your all-volunteer organization.
Eventually each judge was sent a book of 48 drawings of varying skill and
sophistication; Basile ended up making eight of the highest scorers. Then
in late October, on the day when the big party was to be held at the Reincarnation--a
smartly reused dairy that is now a live-work-gallery space located next
to Antoine Predock's rising baseball stadium--the judges gathered to pick
a single winner. Now we were judging objects. We could handle them, sit
on them, move them around and determine how close or far from the original
idea they were. The award went to Matthew Ellis of Blue Motif for his storage
piece. Although the judges remarked that the scale was somewhat off (it
should have been smaller so that the top drawer could be easily reached),
we thought its form was the most innovative.
Everyone who cared to learn about the nature of objects, as opposed to pure
design, had an opportunity to do so that night. And it seemed that Laurie's
dream of building community was also set on a positive course. As for me,
I came away with a hopeful feeling about San Diego and the next generation
of architects who will build and rebuild this potentially amazing American
city. The little cube reminds me of the positive energy I witnessed there,
just as the stone makes me realize that perfection takes time.
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