LOS ANGELES — Somehow, our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have become life, liberty, and happiness. Happiness — not merely its pursuit — is now something to which we are entitled. Which we deserve. Which capitalism, with its eternal seduction, has convinced us should be available with each and every purchase. And if we are not happy, something (the right product? the latest gadget?) is missing. Because we should be happy all the time.
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Designer Naoki Ono, founder of Tokyo-based YOY design studio, presented this extraordinary “Canvas” chair at Salone Satellite during last week’s Milan Design Week 2013 (aka Salone Internazionale del Mobile).
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We live in a data-driven world. Computer-driven algorithms sense and predict what the future might be like instants before it happens. Google Earth uses satellites to quantify the entire earth. Weather is pretty complicated, too. Dark Sky is a short-term weather predictor that uses real-time data to show a complex view of our current environment, visualized with radar animations. But what about a forecast anyone can instantly understand?
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Part of choosing to buy an aesthetic object, whether that’s a piece of art, a decorative sculpture, or a provocative furniture item, is committing to living with it. Sure, your Zaha Hadid desk looks amazing, but would you really want to do work on it every day? Into that conundrum comes British designer Ron Arad whose new series “No Bad Colors” is a series of pieces that can change in response to any environment.
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Patrick Cariou’s lawsuit against artist Richard Prince for wrongfully appropriating his photographs of Rastafarians into new artworks provided a benchmark for the role of copyright in contemporary art, though the case is still being debated in appeals. But how do those same issues impact the world of design, where knockoffs of iconic designs are omnipresent and it’s even more difficult to tell when inspiration becomes appropriation, and appropriation becomes infringement? Later this year, the British government plans on extending the copyright term for design, stretching the protected period from 25 years from when the creation was first marketed to 70 years after the death of the object’s creator. Could that policy impact the creative dynamism of design in the U.K.?
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If, like Woody Guthrie lamented, you’ve got no home and are just roaming around, you still need a place to shelter from the storms of spring, the scorching summer heat, the autumn winds, and the chill of winter. In the Applied Design exhibition that recently opened at the Museum of Modern Art, a giant golden cube that caught my attention turned out to be a rather creative solution to portable shelter.
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A native of Serbia, Ana Kraš is a New York-based designer best known for her handmade modernist objects, including the Bonbon lamps, which are colorful, modernist, pendant lamps that she says engross her in a form of meditation as she makes them one by one.
The winners of a city-sponsored contest to redesign New York’s payphones have been announced, and it looks like the clunky yet iconic — and these days, often broken — booths of decades past will soon be replaced by slim, digital screens offering wifi, summaries of weather conditions, a chance to pay your parking tickets, and much more.
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The private homes of mid-century creators are vanishing. As most architects, designers, and artists who worked in the modern design movements of the 1950s and ’60s are reaching their twilight years or have already passed on, the houses in which they explored their personal visions are often broken up and disappear.
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How well designed is your coffee mug? Our personal design heroine and all-time curator crush Paola Antonelli appeared on the Colbert Report last night to critique all those everyday objects we take for granted in advance of her next big show at the Museum of Modern Art.
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