At their most relevant, design objects are a reflection of the moment that we live in. In leaner times, design downsizes accordingly, casting off the trappings of the baroque in favor of an austere, and even ascetic, sensibility.
The coveted objects of the past decade were born of excess and eschewed function in favor of frivolity. If I had to select one piece as a symbol of this heady time, I would single out the absurdly oversized chandelier.
The oversized chandelier is an entirely non-functional object. Unless you harbor a devious plan to incapacitate a ballroom’s worth of revelers in a very dramatic fashion, you probably don’t need one. A new asceticism, coupled with a renewed interest in ecology, is paring design back to its roots in function. The oversized chandelier has been usurped by the humble compact fluorescent bulb. The chandelier-lovers deride it, but it looks like progress to me, and its going to light the way toward a more purposeful future for design.
Must we repent, banish decoration and bathe in dumpsters? Probably no. (Although it does look roomy.) But as designers, we may want to take a hard look at the detritus around us and put our thinking caps on. I don’t want to see another bathtub carved from a single chunk of marble excised from the ground at the opposite end of the earth in a pricey apartment, pretty much ever again. There has to be a more intelligent way to make things.
Dumpster bathtub image via MAKE
The canyon-like streets between New York City’s tall towers sometimes create strange and wonderful natural lighting effects. For example, there are photos all over the web of Manhattanhenge, an evening every summer when the sun aligns perfectly with Manhattan’s east-west streets.
I catch a sliver of the Empire State Building out of my window at work, and towards sunset last night the low winter sun lit up the building like a giant pink floodlight for about five minutes.
Incredibly, all it seemed to take was a few sparks from the Lunar New Year’s celebrations to ignite a 500 foot high tower, part of Beijing’s iconic new CCTV development, designed by Rem Koolhaas of OMA. Thankfully the structure was unoccupied, so we can ponder the figurative meaning of this destruction, and not the mourn the loss of life, surprising considering how close this person got to the blaze.
If the end of the olympic games marked the technical end date of China’s great building boom, this fire has surely marked the symbolic end. This building pair was cutely dubbed the “underpants” and “boot” because of their radical shapes. From some angles, it would appear that the boot was kicking the underpants forward, almost encouraging the CCTV tower, and China by extension, to stride confidently into the future. At the time the building was conceived in 2004, the future was an endless building boom for China, fueled by a surge in US consumer spending. I think we know how that turned out.
A massive urban development, an abundance of cheap labor and financing, a star architect, an ambitious design, a worldwide event, a now vacant tower, a project over budget, a year or more behind schedule, finally a huge burnout. It’s like the program summary of an avant garde opera. Architectural critic Paul Goldberger, recognizing the building’s flair for drama, recently wrote: “a building which I had thought was going to be a pretentious piece of structural exhibitionism—turned out to be a compelling and exciting piece of structural exhibitionism.”
Below, a rendering of the CCTV development in happier times.
Photograph: PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images via Times Online
Architecture’s Ten Best of 2008 by Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker
In some ways, designing for a climate like Antarctica is like designing for another planet. That is exactly what I thought when I saw my friend Ken’s pictures of McMurdo Station, like the one above – this is what a future human settlement on Mars will look like. Not like the Jetsons house at all. Just bunkerlike, uninspiring, unsustainable, and thoroughly un-designed! And how unfortunate, because the idea of designing a building to house all those arctic researchers, ice pioneers and penguin aficionados that could be both beautiful and green is darn exciting.
That is exactly why I find this design competition for a “green” research station in Antarctica so intriguing. And not just a little bit green, but zero carbon emissions no less! I am imagining some sort of igloo, but with solar panels on it? I am really looking forward to seeing the results.
Competition via: Bustler
More Antarctica fabulousness: SpaceBit
