Interior Design articles from March 2007

Interior Design archives from March 2007

Welcome to 1969.
March 1, 2007... by Edie Cohen That's when Alexander Girard put his upbeat modernist imprimatur on a Northern California house by Don Knorr Think modernism. California in particular. Inevitably, mental flash cards show Los Angeles projects by Pierre...

Mentor and Muse.
March 1, 2007... Edited by Karen D. Singh Paul Mathieu and Andree Putman are both self described vagabonds, a term that characterizes their design aesthetic as well as their travel schedule. They also believe that this constant mental and physical motion...

Lockdown, Furnishings-Style.
March 1, 2007... Edited by Karen D. Singh At first blush, it smacks of a reality-TV challenge. Design and architecture studios, from around the globe, have to create furniture, light fixtures, and fabrics destined for one whole-environment furnishings...

Bios.
March 1, 2007... by Staff Designers in this issue Nina Campbell ("A Grand Idea," page 462), 318-326 Wandsworth Bridge Road, London SW6 2TZ, U.K.; 44-20-7471-4270; ninacampbell.com . H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture ("Never Forget," page 452),...

Loop the Loop.
March 1, 2007... by Ruth Lopez On a design tour of Chicago, hometown talents walk, talk, and reflect Federal Center Plaza, 1975 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed two glass-box towers and placed them around a modern-day piazza--everything...

Swatches at an Exhibition.
March 1, 2007... by Mark McMenamin Licensing designs from an arts institution can be a tricky proposition. Confronted with an embarrassment of riches, where do you start? That's why, in rolling out a textile series that translates the art and architecture...

75 and Up.
March 1, 2007... by Cindy Allen So. Here we are, releasing to the printing press the issue that commemorates our 75 years of magazine publishing--a magnum opus that sometimes had me feeling year 76 could start none too soon. Revisiting seven and a half...

Magic Carpet Ride.
March 1, 2007... Edited by Karen D. Singh Two significant things happened to one New York man in September 1935: He got married and opened a rug and carpet company. Since then, the Edward Fields logo--its wavy lines reminiscent of Edward Gorey--has come to...

For the Ages.
March 1, 2007... by Sheila Kim-Jamet Designed way back when, these six modernist interiors look just as stunning today Spiegel, Hamburg, Germany DESIGN Verner Panton. STANDOUT For the canteen of this publishing company, Panton rendered...

Bios.
March 1, 2007... by Staff Designers in Family Time Monica Castiglioni ("Casa Castiglioni," page 324), 33 Via Fara, 20124 Milan, Italy; 39-02-670-0203; anthias.it . Alexa Hampton, Mark Hampton ("Hamptons Home," page 312), 654 Madison Avenue, New...

Going Gershwin.
March 1, 2007... by Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins At the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building by Howe and Lescaze, 1932 was the first year of the modern era "Russell and I just returned from a motor trip to Philadelphia and Washington and I...

Never Forget.
March 1, 2007... by Joseph Giovannini With the New York Academy of Sciences, Hugh Hardy returns to the World Trade Center, where he once renovated Windows on the World It was like a gentleman's club out of central casting. Founded in 1817, the New York...

Room Service, Please.
March 1, 2007... by Aric Chen From Atlanta to Milan, atrium to velvet rope--a personal account of hotels through the decades Motels were the scourge of my childhood. Obsessed with seeing the North American landscape, my road-trip-addicted parents...

The Great Divide?
March 1, 2007... by Craig Kellogg Recent years have seen a bridging of the void between architecture and interiors Perhaps too many of my miniature cardboard constructions from architecture school at the University of California, Berkeley, were...

Candlepower: 75.
March 1, 2007... by Mark McMenamin Ingo Maurer first saw the light of day in Germany the year after Thomas Edison died in New Jersey. But the two are forever bonded by a singular obsession, the stark beauty of the naked lightbulb: Maurer's 1966...

Motown Soul.
March 1, 2007... by John Gallagher Admirers nicknamed Detroit's Union Trust Building the Cathedral of Finance when it opened in 1929, and the sumptuous mezzanine banking hall evokes awe to this day. Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, as the 40-story skyscraper's...

Brushes With Fame.
March 1, 2007... by Julie V. Iovine Besides illustrating this magazine's covers for 15 years, Jeremiah Goodman has painted just about every celebrity interior worth knowing There's a Portuguese word that captures the secret longing one sometimes feels...

Pattern Recognition.
March 1, 2007... Edited by Karen D. Singh Lori Weitzner vividly remembers meeting Jack Lenor Larsen for the first time. Having just returned from living in Europe, she'd mustered the confidence needed to do a collection of her own, but she lacked the...

An Artist in the House.
March 1, 2007... Edited by Karen D. Singh "There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who. . . transform a yellow spot into the sun," Pablo Picasso once said. When Clarence House executive vice president of design...

Hamptons Home.
March 1, 2007... by Edie Cohen Sure, growing up as Mark Hampton's daughter opened doors. One of the first was to his New York studio, where Alexa Hampton began apprenticing at 13. Except during her years at Brown University, she's been working at Mark...

Romancing the Stone.
March 1, 2007... by Edie Cohen Hicks Stone wasn't necessarily rebellious. But he did entertain thoughts of pursuing professions other than architecture. Marine biology was one teenage enthusiasm, law another. The latter "mercifully faded," he says. "Those...

From Stoller's Perspective.
March 1, 2007... by Edie Cohen Ezra Stoller was a trained architect and a master photographer. His daughter, Erica, is neither. Yet the modern movement owes a debt to both. For six decades, starting in the 1930's in black-and-white, Ezra Stoller...

The Nakashima Mystique.
March 1, 2007... by Edie Cohen Mira Nakashima literally grew up in her father's workshop. "I was the shop pest," she says. "It was my playground." The only daughter of George Nakashima, architect and master craftsman of walnut furniture, she first...

Casa Castiglioni.
March 1, 2007... by Edie Cohen One might suppose that the daughter of Achille Castiglioni would follow in at least some of her father's footsteps. Architecture? Interiors? Industrial design? Graphics? Negative to all. Monica Castiglioni's creative passion...

The Lore of Lohan.
March 1, 2007... by Edie Cohen "I'm almost 70 years old, and people still introduce me as Mies's grandson," Dirk Lohan says. Yes, that's despite an international body of work completed during more than four decades of practice. Lohan was born in...

Out of the Shadows.
March 1, 2007... by Craig Kellogg It's been years since Larry Weinberg and Andy Lin's treasure trove of modern furniture has had a moment in the spotlight Those Santiago Calatrava curves. That hint of Vladimir Kagan Star Trek futurism. To the untrained...

A Grand Idea.
March 1, 2007... by Fred A. Bernstein When the time came to refurbish a New York institution called the Campbell Apartment, who better to choose than Nina Campbell? The Campbell Apartment may not have as much history as some of the projects Nina...

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been.
March 1, 2007... by Alastair Gordon Somewhere between 1968 and 2007, the psychedelic aesthetic morphed from mind-blowing to money-making No one was quite sure what to make of Cerebrum when it opened in New York in the summer of 1968....

Look Who Else is Celebrating a Diamond Jubilee.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose and Nicholas Tamarin 1. When Coco Chanel's diamond jewelry debuted 75 years ago, DeBeers Consolidated Mines stock jumped a shocking 20 points on the London Stock Exchange. "They represent the greatest value in the smallest...

Building on the Past.
March 1, 2007... by Alastair Gordon Renovating a house in Bridgehampton, New York, Steven Harris and Lucien Rees-Roberts stay true to the spirit of Norman Jaffe To some, Norman Jaffe is remembered for his mysterious disappearance in 1993--never...

Gone But Not Forgotten.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen "The instinct to survive has been one of man's greatest endowments," Interior Design founding editor-publisher Harry V. Anderson wrote of the atom bomb in 1960. He added that design could be a powerful survival tool....

Our Profession On Parade.
March 1, 2007... Edited by Stanley Abercrombie '30's The year is 1932. Donald Deskey's Radio City Music Hall opens in New York, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art opens in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, while the American Institute of Interior Decorators...

The Art of Play.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose Handcrafted in 1963, when he was a childlike 56, Alexander Girard's whimsical figures capture his most emblematic traits: playfulness and wonder. Now, Vitra offers exact replicas to delight even the most grown-up of adults....

A Butterfly Emerges.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose The Cocoon collection, launched in the 1960's, has reappeared in the U.S. as a tribute from Flos to Achille Castiglioni. The line boasts a pair of pendant fixtures: the Viscontea, represented in the permanent collection at...

Tales of Hoffmann.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose Stopped in her tracks by a fabric sketch in the Neue Galerie New York's "Dagobert Peche and the Wiener Werkstatte," Maharam's vice president of design, Mary Murphy, embarked on what has become a three-year exploration of...

House of Bauhaus.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose As founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius is renowned for his insistence on superior craftsmanship. When he designed the school's art and architecture facilities in Dessau, Germany, in 1925, he left no detail untouched, from...

Like Mother...
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose Maija and Kristina Isola are Marimekko's famous mother-daughter team. Maija Isola, an illustrator inspired by nature and modern art, helped shape the company ever since its founding in 1951. In 1962, when the younger Isola...

Totally Tubular.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose As Herman Miller's design director, George Nelson insisted on furniture that is easily manufactured and shipped. Legs should be metal, machine-formed, and pre-finished. Swaging--using pressure to taper and curve a metal...

Small but Mighty.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose The high-tech Minikitchen won Boffi a gold medal at the Triennale di Milano in 1964, but Joe Colombo's all-in-one kitchenette trolley hardly shows its age. In fact, while most products conceived with futuristic optimism had a...

MiMo Swings Again.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose Attendees at last year's Art Basel Miami Beach got to see the Morris Lapidus Collection in its native environment when Dennis Miller Associates launched five reissued seating pieces at the Ritz-Carlton, South Beach, known as...

Shine On.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose Poul Henningsen's first collaboration with Louis Poulsen Lighting was on fixtures for the Danish pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925--a project that sent him...

Bitossi Bellissimo.
March 1, 2007... by Jen DeRose Ceramiche Bitossi by Flavia just celebrated what would have been the 95th birthday of creative director Aldo Londi. The prolific ceramist was perhaps most renowned for his Rimini Blu collection of pottery, a love letter to...

Selling It.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen The lip shape entered the design pantheon in 1934, when Man Ray's lover, Lee Miller, left her lipstick on his collar, inspiring him to paint A l'Heure de l'Observatoire--Les Amoureux, a huge rendering of her lips...

Plumbing the Depths.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen For the Japanese, a bath has always been more than just a scrub. The ritual begins with shoe removal, payment, and entrance to the dressing area. Then it's on to cleansing and soaking. The first cleansing is a thorough...

Bedtime Story.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen On the movie screens of 1999, a group of actors took turns visiting the inside of John Malkovich's head. Now, as perhaps a sort of revenge, he shows up on the ceilings of no fewer than three rooms at Ateliers Jean...

Over and Above.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen More than any other surface in a room, the ceiling is symbolic. It's an indoor version of the sky--not quite the dome of heaven but still protective and, in the right hands, inspiring. A Pattern Language: Towns,...

Adventures in Fantasyland.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen Fantasy is to interior design what dress-up is to children: necessary. In both cases, we try on alternate realities for a time. Fantasy is a way of staying emotionally and mentally alive. Spending time in a room where...

We're Number One.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen For the longest while, we called editor-publisher Harry Anderson our International Man of Mystery. He invented this magazine, reinventing this profession, but that's all we knew. As we searched volumes of back issues, we...

The Future is Now.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen Sometimes it becomes necessary to boldly go where no man has gone before--to install a reception area where there isn't room for one or to push the envelope with technology. Because yesterday's solutions don't solve...

It's All an Illusion.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen All designs are at least a bit of an illusion. But some examples can confound perception to the point that small seems big, in might be out, two dimensions appear as three, and it's hard to know where things begin and...

Pulsing With Life.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen Long before Whole Foods opened a market, organic referred to shapes fashioned by humans to correspond to the forms of the natural world, seen by the naked eye, and of biology, seen under a microscope. The word suggested...

On The Record.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen "Elsie de Wolfe, the first American woman to make a career of interior decoration starting in 1904 or 1905 (accounts vary), frequently is credited with giving the business its name. . . . Anecdotal recollections deal...

Warning: Curves Ahead.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen To carve out two apartments from a dune in Atlantic Beach, Florida, William Morgan Architects first had to insert a steel-reinforced concrete bubble designed with the aid of a computer--and this was back in the days of...

Thank You For Smoking.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen What did we know, and when did we know it? Hard to say. On January 11, 1964, the U.S. surgeon general announced that tobacco could kill. We didn't think he was lying, but an awful lot of us chose not to believe him...

The Wow Factor.
March 1, 2007... by Judith Davidsen The fiberglass cones suspended from the ceiling were meant to shock, diverting attention from unattractive ducts and unwieldy columns. And to serve as arrows directing attention to the products at the Chicago Merchandise...