Metropolis Magazine - Metropolis Magazine May 2008
Looking for a Restaurant in Downtown Chicago?
Every year Chicago stakes a new claim on America’s dining map. In repurposed architectural spaces, indoors and out, large plates and small, the Windy City just keeps getting tastier. Check out our listings online and be sure to pick up your own copy of Taste of the Town at NeoCon.
A Room on Its Own
Kithaus’s new prefab K3 makes building a backyard studio a snap.
Bent Out of Shape
A Swiss research project proposes a new way to manufacture curved wooden panels.
Poster Children
Metropolis’s art department helps raise money for California wildfire victims.
Minimal Makeover
Perhaps best known for his pop forms (think butterfly, tongue, and tulip), Pierre Paulin has a more functionalist past. In 1954 he turned out the Bauhaus-inspired CM 141 desk, which Ligne Roset will rerelease in September as Tanis. The name isn’t the only change—the original melamine surface is now Corian or laminate, and walnut has replaced ash veneer on the…
Light in the Attic
Noel Clarke, of 2C Design Studio, recently transformed the neglected attic of his Victorian house in Somerville, Massachusetts, into an immaculate modern work space. Rather than bury the room’s past under layers of Sheetrock, he integrated most of its existing features. “There are ways to make interventions that develop a dialogue between old and new so they feel like they…
Stamp of Approval
The post office issues an unusually rich offering in recognition of an unusually rich career.
Mobile Home?
The relocation of an early Frank Gehry design raises questions about the nature of architecture.
Classic Revival
This month Rosenthal, the 129-year-old china manufacturer, expands its classic repertoire with Landscape, a tableware series by Patricia Urquiola. Though the cutlery may have been modeled on a seventeenth-century marrow spoon, the collection— which debuted at Ambiente, in Frankfurt—showcases the designer’s penchant for tweaking tradition. The all-white dishes feature geometric patterns that form irregular handles and asymmetrical rims while highlighting…
Compilation Art
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University’s recent discovery of a lost 1936 oil painting by Lloyd Morgan, chief designer of Schultze & Weaver, was an odd and welcome revelation to scholars of the New York–based architecture firm. Jonathan Mogul, a curatorial research associate at the museum, believes that the 6-by-14-foot canvas, a sort of greatest-hits collection of the firm’s work, was once displayed…
Signature Style
Another season, another collaborator—and this year the Rug Company has added interior designer Kelly Wearstler to its fashionable roster. The chic Angeleno’s eight-piece collection (which debuted this spring and will be highlighted at ICFF) was inspired by a range of things—vintage clothing, seashells, op art, wood grain—with palettes as varied as their motifs. Having trouble identifying the origin of Zephyr’s…
Looking Backward
A new lighting manufacturer combines high-end design with prehistoric inspiration.
Lighting the Way
A series of stunning art installations, located in first-class and VIP lounges, enlivens the passenger experience at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Charlotte von der Lancken
One-fourth of the Swedish firm Front answers a few questions on industrial design, inspiration, and process—using her thumbs.
2008 Next Generation Runners-up: Water Works
This year’s competition looked for solutions to a global
problem that many experts are calling the next big
environmental crisis.
Trickle-down Architecture
New York’s tiny Gage/Clemenceau Architects put their fanciful competition ideas to work in built projects.
Craft on the Dial
Looking to create sustainable jobs for the skilled workers of his hometown, one Indonesian designer produces a handmade radio.
Spanish Armada
The next international design stars will come from the Iberian Peninsula.
Invited to the Table
When design competitions reach for relevance, they can lead to discussions that move our thinking forward.
Moment of Reckoning
Faced last year with severe droughts and floods, we must now embark on a new understanding of our relationship to water.
