Reference Page: January 2006

Swing Space
Lower Manhattan can use all the help it can get these days. So it’s nice to see the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council not only bringing artists and art to the financial district and beyond, but also collaborating with Design Workshop students at the awkwardly rechristened Parsons The New School for Design, www.parsons.edu, to retrofit their ad-hoc performance space with innovative mobile units. To see more images of the space as enhanced by the students’ creation go to www.lmcc.net. Also worth noting on the site is a project to use portable units to measure Lower Manhattan’s famously untenable air quality.

TV Frame
Peter Saville, who contributed ambient art to Colorcalm’s “By Design” DVD, www.colorcalm.com, built his reputation on cover designs for Manchester’s Factory Records starting in the late 1970s. His bold, arresting LP jackets—such as the mountainous wave-graph cover of Joy Division’s 1979 album Unknown Pleasures—are instantly recognizable and spawned a generation of acolytes and imitators. Designed by Peter Saville (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003) collects work from 1978 through 2003 alongside essays and a lengthy interview: www.papress.com/bookpage.tpl?isbn=1568984227&cart=113158189870063. Metropolis contributor Alice Twemlow’s interview with Saville for I.D. magazine—reprinted at www.aigany.org/ideas/features/saville.html—has him chain-smoking in a silk bathrobe and bemoaning the state of graphic design.

Knit with Peril
Artist Liz Collins, whose knitwear is on display this month at the Knoxville Museum of Art, www.knoxart.org, has tapped into a current vogue for needles and yarn, but Collins may also be setting the next trend for the kniteratti: knitting machines. Delve into the history of these labor-saving devices on two Web sites devoted to the cottage industry of knitting: the “Knitting Together” virtual museum, www.knittingtogether.org.uk; and the online home of the Ruddington Framework Knitters’ Museum, www.rfkm.org, located in a preserved former hosiery factory saved by the local community from destruction in the early 1970s. If all this gets you in the mood to try machine knitting yourself, www.yarns-and.com/knitting.htm is a helpful guide to different models and their use.

Raw Material
There’s always a lot of talk in the design community about using design to do good, but most of the time there are few signs of actual good things getting done. Taz Tagore and Adam Bucko set an example with their program, which helps homeless young people use their talents to move toward stability. Go to their site, www.reciprocityfoundation.org, to donate or volunteer, or visit www.appreciate.org to purchase holiday gifts that will help fledgling designers on their way.

Pliny Fisk III and Gail Vittori
The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems’ quirky Web site, www.cmpbs.org, leads the way through past projects and puts the nonprofit’s work in a global perspective. Ecotone, which is publishing Sam Martin’s biography of Fisk later this year as part of a series called Lessons from a Green Master, www.ecotonedesign.com, prints its books on recycled paper and donates at least ten percent of its profits to environmental causes.

Majora Carter
Joyce Rosenthal, a researcher at Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development, www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/csud, who worked on the Sustainable South Bronx’s green roof, was interviewed by WNYC for a story on the project: listen to the audio at www.wnyc.org/news/articles/52448. Last summer SSB director Majora Carter’s community and environmental activism won her a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation: www.macfound.org/programs/fel/fellows/carter_majora.htm. Biomedical engineer and 2003 MacArthur fellow Jim Collins offered advice to grant recipients in a New York Times op-ed reprinted in the Deccan Herald, www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/sep212005/panorama164162005920.asp, and revealed the heavy expectations the award can bring: “After my daughter recently beat me at Candyland, she looked at me, disenchanted, and said, ‘Dad, I thought you were supposed to be a genius.’”

Ismaïl Serageldin
All of Ismaïl Serageldin’s work over the years has been laudable, but his efforts to promote reform in the Middle East are truly indispensable. To explore ways of spreading democracy in this part of the world sans 20-megaton bombs, go to www.arabreformforum.com ; the Alexandria Declaration, which can be read there, has thoughtful analysis of affairs in the Middle East and proposes solid goals for progress. Muhammad Yunus, who wrote the introduction to Serageldin’s book The Architecture of Empowerment (available at www.amazon.com), made so much money when he lent small amounts of cash to Bangladesh’s poorest citizens that he expanded his services; now his enlightened mini empire, www.grameen-info.org, includes nonprofit power and IT companies, educational programs, and an initiative to supply 100 million rural dwellers with mobile phone service. His site is living proof that lots of small change can add up to a near-revolution.

Vivian Loftness
Data from Vivian Loftness’s workplace research at Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics is available through the research project eBIDS . On the site Loftness and her fellow researchers make the case that natural lighting, fresh air, ergonomic workstations, and other “amenities” actually boost productivity while lowering health-care and energy costs—and back up their argument with voluminous, readable statistics. It may not be enough to convince your boss to install a window next to your cubicle, but it’s a good start.

The Art of Dining
Before New York Times columnist Frank Rich was writing weekly philippics aimed at the Bush administration, he penned The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson (Knopf, 1987) with the widow of the famed Kiev-born set designer whose Chagall-esque set for the original Fiddler on the Roof inspired the Rockwell Group’s entrance to Nobu 57. The site of the PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical has links to some of Aronson’s many productions and a clip from the film discussing his work: www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/aronson_b.html. I know what you’re thinking: “I saw the Fiddler, too, but it didn’t inspire me to design an $8 million restaurant.” Gentle reader, that’s the difference between you and David Rockwell. With his company, the Rockwell Group—check out their kaleidoscopic Web site at www.rockwellgroup.com—this architect-of-dreams (see the mission statement under “About Us”) is imposing his theatrical vision on everything from shops to casinos to actual theaters. The full scope of his ever-expanding oeuvre can also be leafed through in the Rockwell Group three-and-a-half-pound tome Pleasure (Universe, 2002). It offers more of the same, but with additional bon mots from the likes of Kurt Andersen. Best, by far, of the projects listed is the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore . Here Rockwell’s theatricality brings flair where it’s needed most.

No Laughing Matter
Agoraphobes, rejoice! A flash-enhanced version of MoMA’s Safe exhibition is online at www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/safe, a handy option for experiencing the cocooning whimsy of the design world without leaving your home—or, for that matter, paying the $20 admission fee. Objects are grouped in dirt mounds according to function; Gerber’s soft-bite safety spoons, www.gerber.com/prodcat?catid=572 , for example, share space with a panda-shaped door-pinch guard by Mommy’s Helper: www.mommyshelperinc.com/doorpinchguard.htm. Some of the most interesting items have no apparent function at all, such as Bill Burns’s Safety Gear for Small Animals, a collection whose roundabout social commentary involves a squirrel accoutred in a reflective vest and a prairie dog with a visor dangling from its head: www.safetygearmuseum.com.