Archive for the ‘Home’ Category
Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary
“Why do so many designs fail to pass the everyday test? Why is Normal disappearing, and when it’s gone how do we replace it? Is beauty just a question of looks, or could there be more to it than meets the eye? What makes a good object, and how come some objects get better with time?”
The designers Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa have compiled 204 everyday objects in search of ‘super normal design’: alongside examples of anonymous design like the Swiss Rex vegetable peeler or a simple plastic bag, there are design classics like Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel side table, Dieter Ram’s 606 shelving system, or Joe Colombo’s Optic alarm clock of 1970.
With products by Newson, Grcic, the Azumis, and the Bouroullec brothers, it also represents the generation to which Morrison and Fukasawa belong. The phenomenon of the Super Normal is located, as it were, beyond space and time; the past and present of product design both point to a future that has long since begun.
The Super Normal is already lying exposed before us; it exists in the here and now; it is real and available: we need only open our eyes; Fukasawa and Morrison make it visible for us.
Related:
Fukasawa, Naoto and Morrison, Japser. Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary. Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2007.
Pieters, Veerle. “Super Normal — Sensations of the Ordinary at Design Museum Ghent”. Veerle’s Blog. 8 Jul. 2010.
“Book review: Super Normal and Designing Design”. Vitsœ. 20 May 2009.
“… incredibly careful in what he selected.”
“What makes Steve’s methodology different from everyone else’s is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do — but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a minimalist. I remember going into Steve’s house and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn’t believe in having lots of things around but he was incredibly careful in what he selected.”
- John Sculley, CEO of Apple, 1983-93
“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.”
- Steve Jobs, reflecting on Diane Walker’s 1982 photo of himself in his Woodside, California home
Recommended article:
McKinley, Jesse. “With Demolition, Apple Chief Makes Way for House 2.0″. The New York Times. 15 Feb. 2011.
Bedrooms of The Fallen
“These bedrooms once belonged to men and women who died fighting in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were blown up by IEDs, RPGs, hand grenades and suicide bombers. They were shot down in ambushes and by snipers. They died in helicopters, in humvees, and in tanks. It all took place thousands of miles away from home and the countries they fought to defend.
The purpose of this project is to honor these fallen — not simply as soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen, but as sons, daughters, sisters and brothers — and to remind us that before they fought, they lived, and they slept, just like us, at home.”
-Ashley Gilbertson, photographer
The Rent Collector
Cover design: David Drummond
Rotchin, B. Glen. The Rent Collector. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2006.
Sun in an Empty Room
Sun in an Empty Room (1963)
Edward Hopper
American, 1882-1967
oil on canvas
28 3/4 x 39 1/2 in.
Funny Games (2007)
You must admit, you brought this on yourself.
In this shot-for-shot remake of the Austrian thriller, a family’s life is turned upside down when two articulate gentlemen force home entry and — after a formal introduction — hold the unit hostage under a wager each will be dead by morning. Writer/director Michael Haneke moves his 1997 original to Long Island for US consumption meticulously, going as far to replicate the home’s floor plans between both films.
Featured music:
Grieg, Edvard. “In The Hall of the Mountain King”. Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Op. 46. 1876.
