Reference Page: May 2007

Family Dynamic
Your house may not harbor the eco-domestic bliss of Canuck couple Janna Levitt and Dean Goodman’s, www.levittgoodmanarchitects.com, but there are many ways to reduce the amount of waste your home produces; www.lowimpactliving.com has a nifty little feature called an “impact calculator” that tallies up your resource consumption, then gives suggestions on where to cut back. Another site worth checking out is National Geographic Society’s www.thegreenguide.com; click on the “Tips & Tools” and “Green Home” tabs for a wellspring of practical information on how to conserve energy in every room and lists of healthy products to substitute for ones that can turn living areas into the domestic equivalent of a brownfield.

Transplant Recipient
The latest example of Denmark’s cutting-edge capital finding smart ways to utilize undesirable space by recruiting local architects to mastermind design-savvy residential enclaves, Sluseholmen has an all-Danish Web site at www.sluseholmen.dk. Another Euro city working with this model is Amsterdam, whose Java Island—planned by architect and engineer Sjoerd Soeters, www.soetersvaneldonk.nl—was actually the first to appropriate industrial wastelands close to the city center and convert them into real estate hotbeds. For other provocative land-use ideas, check out Urban Design Futures (Routledge, 2006), a series of essays by longtime practitioners such as Alex Krieger, Adriaan Geuze, and Ken Yeang exploring new paradigms for twenty-first-century cities.

Sonic Loom
Alyce Santoro, the RISD grad who created Sonic, www.sonicfabric.com, makes the kind of magical items that would send 12-year-olds—as well as adults with a predilection for the fanciful and quirky—into an excited tizzy. Her personal Web site, www.alycesantoro.com, has an aesthetic reminiscent of McSweeney’s with its bizarre yet interesting mix of retro fonts and modern sketches. The “Work” tab at the top of the page links to a slide show of Santoro’s recent products, including an antique clothes dryer wrapped in a Deepak Chopra quote—the “Infinite Dryer”—and a found-metal-object hat that attunes wearers to “the Harmony of the Spheres.” The “Philososhop” is her online store, where you can buy such “philosoprops” as conceptual spray-on felt and bottled water made from an interplanetary family recipe. And don’t miss Santoro’s “Musings” page, which contains a three-minute film inspired by Buck­minster Fuller on how to make a Buckyball out of ice-cream cones—to the jingling tune of an ice-cream truck.

Retail Zeitgeist
Alisa Grifo, owner and curator of Kiosk, www.kioskkiosk.com, a pocket-size design shop tucked into the second floor of a Soho street—spent five weeks crisscross-ing Germany in search of everyday objects for her retail exhibition, which runs through June. Some products from past exhibits on Mexico, Japan, and Sweden are also available, along with original screen-printed pieces by Ross Menuez, whose studio, Salvor, www.salvorprojects.com, once shared space with Kiosk and still creates posters for its shows. Grifo’s peripatetic résumé includes a stint at the Cooper-Hewitt, years as a set designer, and even a few months on the editorial staff of Metropolis in the mid-1990s. Kiosk and MoMA organized their German exhibitions independently, though MoMA Retail’s Bonnie Mackay liked what she saw at Kiosk enough to buy a pair of Kaweco pens for herself. The museum did, however, collaborate with Berlin’s Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, www.kw-berlin.de, whose founder, Klaus Biesenbach, is MoMA’s chief media curator.

Enough with It!
Aristotle famously said that the law is reason free from passion—an axiom recently popularized by Reese Witherspoon in Blonde Ambition—and this month’s Perspective author Natalia Ilyin argues for adding design to the list of passion-free disciplines. Waging semantic war on her students’ go-to phrase, “I’m passionate about X,” Ilyin reminds us that the English language can easily fall into misuse, especially among eager young freshmen. To guard against rebukes from picky professors and linguistic curmudgeons, pay a visit to www.etymonline.com, an etymological dictionary that will clue you in on the connotations of your favorite terms. Had Ilyin’s unfortunate first-year studied up, she would have known that passion derives from the “sufferings of Christ on the cross”—probably not the ideal term to use when referring to your affection for Alessi’s new teapot.

A Stitch in Time
The recently relocated Urban Outfitters headquarters has meticulously preserved the history and character of old warehouses in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, saving the site from a sterile office-block fate. You don’t have to imagine what the yard looked like in its heyday—the “Historic Navy Yard” link on the Web site, www.navyyard.org, run by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, is a time capsule of the bustling work center during its prime years. Select the “Yard-bird Life” section to view short photo-essays on topics like “Women at the Yard” and “Minorities at the Yard.” But before you run out to the nearest Urban Outfitters and stock up on ironic T-shirts, take note: a popular piece from the Philadelphia Weekly a few years ago, available at
www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=5725, profiled founder Dick Hayne’s evolution from 1960s hippie to modern-day conservative. According to the piece, Hayne and his wife donated more than $10,000 to former Pennsyl­vania Senator Rick Santorum—notorious for his anti-gay views and support of abstinence-only education. That’s all personal politics until you consider the ­hypocrisy—who does Hayne think is spending 28 bucks on men’s T-shirts that read “I’m not a gardener—I just like hos”?

Without Thought
Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa has subtly been shaping everyday objects through gigs with companies like Seiko Epson and IDEO since graduating from Tokyo’s Tama Art University in 1980. But it wasn’t until the wizardly designer went solo in 2003 that he really began pumping out the products currently taking the design world by storm. To get an idea of the scope of Fukasawa’s creativity, pick up the new Phaidon monograph, authored by the designer and featuring an essay by his colleague and friend Jasper Morrison. And if, like us, you’re dying to get your hands on an original Fukasawa, have no fear; this holiday season the Ikea of Japan, Muji, www.muji.net/eng, is scheduled to open its flagship U.Sstore in Manhattan, guaranteed to be packed with tchotch­kes designed by the master himself. While you’re there, don’t forget to check out the New York Times building, by none other than Renzo Piano.
 
The Art of “Art de Vivre”
The French have it all: they speak the language of love, hail from a land where wine and pain au chocolat are dietary staples, and can boast some of today’s hottest designers, among them the Bouroullecs, Philippe Starck, and Jean-Marie Massaud, www.massaud.com. Check out every major manufacturer’s Web site—such as Cappellini, www.cappellini.it; Porro, www.porro.com; or Cassina, www.cassina.com—and you’re sure to find Massaud under the “designers” section, accompanied by images of his products. There is plenty of hard lit about the guy too; German publisher Daab, www.daab-online.de, added a 176-page monograph about Massaud to its ongoing series on successful young designers. The book, 1,000 New Designs and Where to Find Them: A 21st-Century Sourcebook (Laurence King, 2006), by Jennifer Hudson (not to be confused with the Oscar-winning vocalist), calls out some of Massaud’s best work with detailed  descriptions and large-scale images.