For the Lighter Side of Architecture….

Architects have a bad reputation.  They are popularly characterized as aloof, elitist and humorless, hiding behind impenetrable jargon and obsessed by issues that are irrelevant to everyone outside the profession. Think Howard Roark in the Fountainhead. This has been the case for years, and we have done everything we can to perpetuate it.

Well, at last there are some brave individuals out there who are not afraid to lampoon their peers and poke a stick into the many bombastic aspects of our profession. Pre-eminent is Jody Brown, who has used the downturn of 2009 (and the free time this has provided) to write the most amusing commentary on design since Osbert Lancaster. Check out http://www.coffeewithanarchitect.com if you are willing to waste hours laughing at the absurdities of the architectural world. And you will know who to blame if this blog starts to take a similar direction…

On the visual front, I recommend an episodic film by Mitch Magee featuring ‘Mr. Glasses’, a somewhat baffled architect resembling Le Corbusier – a painfully recognizable parody of the designer as heroic nerd and/or social misfit.  It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywo_v2YZNxA&feature=relmfu.

Enjoy!

A Play on Materials

Designers have become so tightly governed by the adage ‘Truth to Materials’ that we are surprised when a piece deliberately flouts this rule.  To illustrate the point are two tables of different styles dating from around 1920:

The first example is a typical occasional table of timber construction.  What makes the piece extraordinary are the elaborate turned leg details with four carved and applied strap features that together recall wrought ironwork.  There is no ‘logic’ as such to this feature or sense of irony about the ‘correctness’ of materials – it simply represents the whim of the cabinet maker to inject something unexpected into the design.

The second example is a far superior piece, and better documented thanks to the lot description provided in this month’s Clars auction catalog.  The table was designed by Warren McArthur (1885-1961) and made for the Arizona Biltmore, Phoenix.

At first glance this appears to have a hexagonal timber top on a thin-section, ebonized frame. However it is in fact all metal, a combination of copper sheet and wrought iron.

As a more self-consciously ‘designed’ piece this also has a clearer message: it evokes the homeliness of a family dining table (natural copper standing in for the warm patina of a hardwood top) but with a rugged metal construction suitable for heavy use in a hotel environment.

The Mid-century Modern Craftsman (2)

A new selection of unusual cabinetry pieces from Bay Area Craigslist posts:

Executive-style desk, possibly in teak, c.1960

The most striking feature of this desk is the complex design of the frame, which is similar to a wishbone car chassis: it comprises a horizontal x-frame that supports both the top and the filing/storage units, and terminates in four splayed legs. The animistic design of the frame brings to mind horns or antlers, perhaps to reflect the executive-user’s bullish ambition?

It is hard to tell from the images but the top also appears to have curved edges, reinforcing the organic undertones of the design.

Pedestal table, c.1970

An attractive design, possibly by one of the major manufacturers (Hille?). The L-shaped steel supports clustered to form a cross is an elegant solution using inexpensive off-the-shelf sections. This is the only image available and so the connection of the supports to the underside is unknown.

Dining table, 1930-50

An appealingly simple design which is a hybrid between the craftsman and modernist styles. The plank legs and cross-bar peg connections suggest this could be made by a talented amateur from found materials, but the quality and elegance of the item make it likely that it was commercially produced. Date of manufacture is hard to guess, but signs of modest wear suggest anywhere from 1940 to 1970.

The Mid-century Modern Craftsman (1)

Aside from the star names associated with mid-century modern furniture design in wood (Eames, Nakashima etc.) there are countless other obscure designer-producers whose work crops up in flea markets or the ‘for sale’ section of local classifieds here in California.

A few examples, found recently on the Bay Area Craigslist, are shown below. They have been chosen because the various pieces have unusual or particularly elegant details. The designers are unknown, at least to me, and we welcome any further information on their origins and date of production:

Drop-leaf table with an unusual reverse-folded central section – assumed Danish, c.1960.

This is an extraordinarily compact design where each element is pared down to the minimum. See for example the leg supports, using a gateleg arrangement with the two hinged sections half the depth of the main frame to give a flat profile when folded. The general appearance of the fully expanded table is also intriguing – a combination of Danish modernism and Japanese minimalism.

Glass-topped coffee table with sloping under-shelf and chevron-style legs – assumed American, c.1960.

An idiosyncratic design veering towards the Jetsons aesthetic, this is almost a parody of mid-century modern living. A particularly enjoyable feature is the shelf which seems designed for the display (rather than the actual reading) of coffee table-style books, to be glimpsed in all their glossy wonder through the glass top.

2 x 3 chest of drawers on front and back H-frame legs – possibly Danish, c.1960.

Despite the poor quality images this has the look of a classic modernist piece, with Danish-style legs and the proportions of a credenza.

Nest of tables with rosewood tops and chrome-steel legs, c.1965.

Unlike the typical nest of three tables in diminishing sizes this consists of one large table that is twice the width of the two smaller (but equally sized) tables, enabling them to be concealed almost completely.

More examples to follow as we come across them.

Learning from Eastlake

In his best-selling book ‘Hints on Household Taste’ published in 1868, Charles Eastlake promoted a reaction against the prevailing neo-Baroque design style. Ironically the enthusiasm with which his ideas were adopted in the US led to the widespread industrial production of his furniture designs, undermining the very raison d’etre of its crafts-based aesthetic.  Consequently Eastlake’s star has faded in comparison to the later arts and crafts purists such as L&G Stickley, and despite his use of very particular details that have lessons for us today.

One example is the Eastlake table, a design that comes in a variety of sizes and shapes but which share certain common characteristics.  These include the fretted leg form with little three-dimensional modeling, and the central pin or newel feature at the intersection of the leg frets that appears to tie them together. Here are some illustrative examples:

If we reinterpret the Eastlake style in its fundamentals, we can envisage forms that are essentially ‘flat-pack’ in nature, joined with a central knuckle or pin. Some examples are shown here, drawing upon simple geometry to delineate the forms and dictate the size of the central joint:

The version on the left uses a combination of aluminum and glass to define the shard-like legs, joined by a steel or aluminum plug in drum form.  The version on the right is a more lyrical design, with legs in aluminum only.  Both tables have glass tops.  The central design is more closely related to the Eastlake precedent, being a side table in oak or similar with an aluminum newel.

New CODA Projects contact number

Please note that we have a new telephone number from November 1 2011:

510-220 3210

Art and Design – in Proportion

Designers are attracted to proportional systems with fixed ratios that offer harmonic ‘certainty’.  The usual choices are very limited – the Fibonacci series, the square root of two (circle and square relationship) and the Golden Mean. There are however other geometric generators that create fixed ratios, albeit on a closed or finite progression. One of these is illustrated below.

The geometry sets the following constraints:

-  Circle B repeats six times at regular intervals around circle A, forming a hexagon.

-  Circles B and C are located tangentially to circle A and each other, determining their relative diameters.

Based on the above the ratios can be calculated as follows:

An interesting feature of this geometry is the complexity of the relative ratios, both in terms of one radius to another and as a progression of radii from the smallest (C) to the largest (A), which can be expressed as 1 : 1.732 : 3.732.

Proportional systems are only useful to the designer when they offer creative parameters to the design process rather than rigid constraints. If the ‘rules’ are too prescriptive the result is a vapid ‘design by numbers’.  For this particular system the designer could simply adopt the relative ratios of the three circles as a proportional determinant, or also make use of the underlying hexagonal geometry. The examples below use both proportion and location, but with the use of squares located within three circles as a design variant:

This simple pattern can be elaborated by including squares outside as well as within the circles:

This variant on the initial geometry doubles the range of potential proportional relationships: The diagram below shows the relative ratios of the three squares within the circles (left), outside of the circles (middle) and combined (right):

The interlacing of one geometry with another system (the circle-square relationship in the above example) provides dynamism to an otherwise static progression of ratios, and underlies much of CODA Projects’ concept generation. Whether it results in truly harmonic forms is debatable, but this approach does succeed in liberating the designer from the banality of the Cartesian grid which by definition is additive rather than harmonic.

Refashioning New Art from Old (2)

Unlike the small maquette used in the first ‘refashioning’ exercise, this sculpture (dating from 1977) is a relatively weak piece of work that failed to achieve its lofty aim – to portray a Renaissance-style madonna.

Despite its oddly masculine features and crude execution the figure does nevertheless evoke a sense of suffering that I have tried to emphasize in the new piece of work, below:

Refashioning New Art from Old (1)

A sculptural figure that I produced in 1978 prompted this brief exploration into the creation of “new” art from an earlier work.

The small wooden maquette (with a head just one inch high) is crudely carved but has a surprisingly powerful presence. I cannot remember what inspired the idea, or how it was produced. This is probably an advantage when re-fashoning existing work as the new piece can be unfettered  from any earlier objectives or agendas.

The original figure (above) and examples of the new artwork:

2011 East Bay Open Studio

Artwork by Matthew Higgins will be exhibited as part of the East Bay Open Studio annual event organized by Pro Arts.  The show, with the theme Figures and Landscapes, will present  life drawing studies  as a counterpoint to plein air landscapes by fellow exhibitor Fran Osborne (ref. www.franosborne.com).  The exhibition will be held at CODA Projects’ HQ at 2925 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, on 4-5 and 11-12 June.

Examples of the figurative work on display: