Checking out the “ingredients” of a product —whether food or object— can yield a lot of information about how the thing is made, and inspire ideas for riffs and innovation on the theme. While shopping for pair of boots online, I stumbled on a pair by designer Martin Margiela made of “waxed suede”. Waxed suede?…
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(Video link here.) Under the guidance of innovative education organization MindDrive, thirty at-risk students in a Kansas City, Missouri neighborhood once called the “killing zip code” , built an electric car that successfully converted social media into fuel for a road trip from Kansas City to Washington D.C. A tweet was 5 watts; a Facebook like, 1 watt;…
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In May 2007, a tornado two miles wide traveling 200 miles an hour destroyed nearly the entire town of Greensburg, Kansas, killing 11 people. After the tornado, the city council passed a resolution stating that all city buildings would be built to LEED – platinum standards, making it the first city in the nation to…
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Peter Beard: A Wild Life is a lovely little film of photographer Peter Beard working on a collage at his studio on Montauk, Long Island. He is widely known for his photographs both of pop stars like Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol and of the tragic destruction of elephant herds in Africa. Here at age 75,…
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Our friend Fast Forward sent us an email recently alerting us to Homedit’s 40 Creative ways of re-using old suitcases. Wrote Fast: Unfortunately there are not ’40 ways’ but some of them are ‘nice’ We like the settee iteration, above, and the especially cool storage possibilities,
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“Paint one wall in your bedroom pink”, Maria Robledo advised during the course of the Laboratory’s renovation. My generous friend with a brilliant eye for color had become my ad hoc paint color advisor. “But have it be a dirty pink, and paint it glossy” she went on, “not a bright loud pink.” Then she helped me pick…
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“Drink from your own well.” I take those words on board whenever I’m struggling to create. I believe they mean that each of us has to dig deeply into our authentic self as the wellspring for our best work. If we search outside ourselves we may neglect something that is essential to our art. Poet William Stafford‘s wrote this…
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I frequently do Skype consultations with people who need clever, inexpensive fixes for their spaces and are having difficulty envisioning possibilities. Often, they are only able to describe the change in feeling that they’d like to achieve. In the many spaces I’ve looked at, I’ve seen a common problem: there is a lot of visual…
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(Video link here.) Here’s a .47 second bit to splash on your face this morning. The women of the Baka people of Africa play the river like the drum. But the very best bit is at the end… It reminds us a bit of Hermeto Pascoal making music in a lagoon via Neatorama, where you’ll more…
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The great Retronaut‘s tagline is “See the past like you wouldn’t believe”, and it does indeed shift our view. We LOVE this version of ‘going to the office’: a motorized desk on wheels, toodling down the street en plein air…the mobile office circa 1961. Related posts: finding a clear work space + e.b. white on…
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As we wander around the city, we often come across the often-beautiful skeletons of wood or tubular chairs and wonder what we could do with them. Usually, the structure is there, but an essential part is missing, like the seat or back. This DIY spotted on Design Millk fuels our imagination and possibility-thinking. Scraps of…
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Recently, I came across a rave about Jasper Morrison’s mesh trivet on a design blog. My instant thought was: bad design (despite the fame of the designer). Set that trivet on softish-wood table and put a heavy enough pot on it and you stand a good chance of the steel denting or scratching the wood.…
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