Jewellery by Dina González Mascaró, an Argentinian Vancouverite. Her shop on Main Street in Vancouver, Jeweller Bau, is itself a sculpture. Website, blog and Flickr. And this is her CV:

See a previous post for more information on this famous modernist house by Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray. There has been a lot of concern about the house’s survival, but as these recent photos by my Danish internet friend Vibeke Jakobsen show, it’s safely undergoing restoration. The house looks so much better – compare these to the photos in the previous post. The house is a major historical site and an important piece of architecture, but despite its fame in architectural circles, it’s a lot less publicly known than it should be. Is that because the architect was a woman? According to Patricia O’Reilly, who has written about the house, it’s undergoing “a €800,000 re-vamp with architect Gattier remaining close to Eileen Gray’s original concept, such as the black and white tiles; inbuilt furniture and footsteps cut out of stone staircase leading to roof terrace. But it has to be said that the focus of attention is on LeCorbusier’s murals and they seem to be the reason for this re-furbishment.” Le Corbusier was fascinated by the house, painted murals on it against Gray’s will, and died swimming just offshore from it – that’s why you see his memorial stone here, and there is a nearby promenade named after him. Thanks, Vibeke, for letting me post these photos here! The architecture nerds will be very happy.

This almost surreal Polished Steel Coffee Table by Italian architect and designer Gabriella Crespi looks like a metal crystal formation of some kind. Ca. 1970s. Very beautiful, and also multifunctional. The staggered leaves are retractable, as you can see, and it’s covered with a mirror-finish steel. It’s unfortunate that Crespi’s work never went into mass production – she did a lot of custom work – and that she eventually pulled away from design altogether. Read her bio by clicking below, via Todd Merrell Antiques. If I could have anything on his website, and I like most of it, it would probably be this.

(more…)

Ada Lovelace Day is an international blogging event instituted to draw attention to women who excel in the area of technology. Who is Ada Lovelace? From here:

Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

See also the Wikipedia entry, where we discovered Lovelace was also, oddly, the only legitimate child of the poet Byron. On Ada Lovelace Day, bloggers are asked to write about a present-day woman in technology. Since this is a design blog and not a tech blog, I’m going to arbitrarily include architecture and design under technology, since they are technical fields. As in other technical fields, woman have excelled in architecture and design but have had a very tough time gaining recognition thanks to the fact that these fields have been extremely male-dominated. When Charlotte Perriand asked Corbusier for a job, he said “We don’t embroider cushions here.” Perriand convinced him to hire her anyway, and went on to become an important figure in design whose star is now rising long after her death. (By the way there is nothing inferior about embroidering cushions, and the textile arts ought to be angry about that remark.) Recent evidence shows that women need female role models much more than men need male role models, and that is why this blog is jumping into the fray. Please also see previous posts on Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Nanna Ditzel, and many other women designers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Charlotte Perriand:

Eileen Gray:

And finally, I love this recent Annie Liebowitz photo of SANAA architect Kazuyo Sejima holding a model of her New Museum design:

The French designer and architect  Charlotte Perriand (1903 – 1999) produced some very beautiful furniture and buildings, but she is probably not as well known as she should be, even despite the comprehensive retrospective show of her work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2005. Above is a selection of pieces included in that show. Below is her most well-known piece, a bookcase co-designed with Jean Prouve, as well as many other designs. Perriand worked with Corbusier for 10 years, starting at age 24, on both furniture and architecture. How she came to work with him is a fascinating story:

A friend of hers introduced Perriand to the works of the famous French architect Le Corbusier, including L’art Decoratif d’Aujourd’hui (Today’s Decorative Arts). Inspired by his work, Perriand immediately applied for a design position at Le Corbusier’s atelier. She was dismissed with a condescending comment, “we don’t embroider cushions here.”

Undaunted, Perriand tore apart her garret-style apartment and converted one of the largest rooms into a metal and glass bar. Using her home as a canvas, she applied her ideas and continued to create metal tubular furniture out of chrome and aluminum for her “machine age interior.” By 1927, she designed enough work to be exhibited at the Salon D’Automne. Upon seeing her rooftop bar design and its furnishings, architect Le Corbusier changed his mind and decided to hire Perriand as furniture designer.

Perriand’s earlier pieces were often modular and efficient, almost futurist. Her early influences generally seem modernist while her later experiences in Japan introduced a different aesthetic, and you can see that in the red and black interior below, as well as in her use of paper and bamboo for lighting. She deserves to be better known for her buildings, which include the UN’s League of Nations in Geneva and the Les Arcs building in Switzerland, at bottom. The same goes for her furniture, though this may change now that Cassina is reissuing many of her pieces (she originally designed for Thonet).  Philippe Delahautemaison has created a really good Flickr set of photos of her furniture and decor. More on Charlotte Perriand here and you can also read about her life and design at designboom. The Centre Pompidou’s link in French is here.

Above, cabinet by Perriand in 1939

“Bambou” lounge chair, above, 1940

Above, a chalet by Perriand in Savoie, France.

Above, Japanese inspired interior

Above, ‘refuge tonneau’, futuristic chalet

Building in Les Arcs, Switzerland. This is part of a larger project Perriand worked on collaboratively with Corbusier and others.

And see this amazing swing arm lamp at referencelibrary.

In the western world, 750 sq ft apartments can seem really small, even for just two people. The excerpt below is from an interesting article by Nold Egenter, a Swiss architectural anthropologist, on the cultural influences that allow the Japanese to live comfortably in what North Americans would consider small spaces. From the traditional peasant farmer’s wooden house, above, to contemporary tiny houses and apartments in contemporary Tokyo, Japanese living spaces have often measured less than 500 or 600 square feet, and yet they easily house a whole family. How is this possible?

Several years ago a study of the European Community concluded that the Japanese live in “rabbit cages.” The study was based essentially on statistical research which showed that the average dwelling space for a family in urban agglomerations hardly amounts to 40 square meters [430 sq. ft.]. Great astonishment! “Why do two out of three Japanese affirm that they like their life and that in general they are content?” In view of the fact that in Europe today a corresponding family needs roughly 100 square meters [1000 sq. ft.] – that is to say, two and a half times as much – one could ask the counter question: Do we waste space? Why does the average urban family in Japan manage with so much less dwelling surface and still feel comfortable? In such purely quantitative comparisons, it is often overlooked that spatial needs are closely related to the constructive design, and this is determined by the specific cultural tradition. To illustrate this point there is hardly any better example than that of Japan. Its architectural heritage and its dwelling culture developed under entirely different cultural and geographical conditions from those with which we are familiar.

Environmental and economic constraints are forcing us away from the sprawling way we have lived over the past century. If Negenter is right (to read his whole article, click at the end of this post), both architecture and dwelling habits have to change in order to make city living in small spaces more workable, and that obviously won’t happen overnight (though apparently it’s happening already). North American apartment, house and condo architecture would have to change, and so would our daily tools, appliances, expectations and habits. Nearly every design magazine and design blog now constantly revisits the question of how to live in fewer square feet, but perhaps what is needed is a much less piecemeal approach, and something that goes a little deeper than the “ten tips for living small” approach.

The houses shown here are larger than many Japanese apartments. They are spacious by Japanese standards but still tiny by North American standards. All are less than 1000 square feet inside, some much less, and all make use of previously unused empty urban lots. The tiny white Tokyo house at top is by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima, whose most recent project is the New Museum in New York (great picture of her by Annie Liebowitz here). Directly above is the relatively large Bump house, (900 sq ft) and below is a tiny house by Sschemata (760 sq ft). I suspect they’re all white because it makes them seem larger. See Apartment Therapy on 300 sq. ft. houses, and see also a great post on increasing the perceived size of a house through Japanese building techniques – the videos show a number of tiny urban Japanese houses. Top ten ways Japanese live small is here. And a small article here by O.N. Gillespie, author of The Japanese House. North American example? Tumbleweed Tiny Houses.

(more…)