modern

So, that cool lifestyle and entertainment site Refinery 29 put together a list of 23 of the most "inspiring interiors and drop-dead gorgeous ambiance [to enjoy] whilst noshing."

And on that list? Well, one of ours. Check it out here.

It's been called living sculpture, a giant stylized artichoke, the cousin to the aloe, new world native, and a vital component to both tequila and didgeridoos: The agave.

It thrives on neglect, needs no fertilizer, very little water, and can tolerate a variety of soils as long they're well drained. The perfect addition to the California garden.

Agave makes an excellent candidate for potting as it produces  sparse roots and tolerates crowding. It's also a good companion to the pool as it produces litter sparingly.

The agave's natural structure makes it an excellent sculptural accompaniment to soft grasses, wispy wildflowers, tufty salvias, and other fine-leafed gatherings. It not only provides the masculine element, it makes the feminine appear even more so.

It also makes for a striking emotional impact, its visual severity along with its spines and dagger-like projections can add drama to a any garden or country road.

Agaves are available in many color, sizes, and varieties including spineless.

Below, the sentries of the Sunnyland Gardens in Rancho Mirage, CA:

Beneath the pergola one agave stands like both king and jester at the terminus of this visual corridor: The general-in-arms and a floppy and spiky armed clown. If great gardens are like kaleidoscopic mixtures of beautiful contrasts then the agave, as one designer said, "is a great design opportunity."

Plastic, the word has become the very symbol of superficiality, the excess of our modern industrialism. But it wasn't always so. Once, plastic was the possibility and triumph of the Jet-age.  Even French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes couldn't help but rhapsodize on its romantic power: "[Plastic] is in essence the stuff of alchemy... more than a substance, plastic is the very idea of infinite transformation."

Another who was seduced by plastic, clear thermoplastic in this case, was Charles Hollis Jones. Jones was both a pioneer and a prodigy. Interested at an early age in the material qualities of glass, the advances in acrylic technology during World War II, especially in its use in aviation, made acrylic an industrial material worthy of designer crushes. For Jones, its transmissivity, i.e. transparency with a low reflectivity, were the qualities worthy of career long affair.

See our earlier post on acrylic.

His work with the material began at the dawn of the Rock and Roll Age in 1961 but didn't hit its full stride until the arrival of the Disco era of 70s. His work would find a roster of marquee champions including John Lautner, Raymond Loewy, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tennessee Williams, and others.

By the early seventies Jones's stools were in the Playboy Club and his vanity tables in the Mondrian Hotel. His work had risen to the archtype of evil cool appropriate enough for the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever." But this success brought imitators selling downgraded knock-offs that would scratch and cloud. The effect would be devastating on the acrylic furniture market, by no fault of Jones it'd go from swank to stank within a decade.

While plastic furniture—for better or worse—has become omnipresent, clear acrylic wouldn't make a significant comeback until many years later. Even now, at the relatively spry age of 67, Jones is still working and very much dedicated to the material.

Beyond design, Jones also pioneered techniques in manufacturing. He developed a method for joining large acrylic castings in perfectly transparent and seamless joints as well as a proprietary technique for joining acrylic to metal without screws or fasteners.

The mixing of culture and traditions can very often yield exciting new possibilities, sometimes, even radical ones. When it comes to design this mixing may include aspects of style, material, era, technology, region, language, etc, etc, and any combination of the above. It is in these intersections that the real leaps forward occur.

Above, a chair as an homage to the George Corliss, inventor of the first independent steam engine and great Rhode Islander, as created by the Providence based Studio Dunn. An aluminum back harmoniously intersects the curve of the maple seat.

Below, the Il Capo Dining Table by Creazioni: divided into ¾ minimalist and ¼ ornate sections which can be separated with different finishes.

The Recession Chair by Dutch company Tjep:

The symbolic piece begins as a stock IKEA wood chair and is then sanded down to skeletal proportions. By the end of the process the chair is too fragile to be of much use for sitting.

The Bare Bones Ghost Chair: Six pieces of driftwood and and two sheets of Acrylic. Each chair is custom made to order; from the Esty universe.

Christian Fiebig's rendition of the classic Chesterfield chair in polygonally trimmed foam and square powder coated tubing:

The Eros chair from Philippe Starck: A mash up of the Donald Knorr 132 Knoll Chair and the Lina Bo Bardi Bowl Chair with the legs of the Eames Eiffel Tower.

Look closely at the couch below—it's actually molded concrete.

The W(hole) Commode designed by Ferrucio Laviani for Fratelli Boffi: A mahogany and brass Louis XV pierced with a fuchsia hole.

The French designer Christian Astuguevieille’s Saulorme Chair has a bent chestnut wood frame and rope shag seat:

Thrown out pieces of Victorian furniture are repurposed with concrete by James Plumb, a cooperation between British designers James Russel and Hannah Plumb.

The Louis XV-cum-Age of Plastic style of Queen of Love comes in a variety of day-glo colors and is suitable for both indoors and out. Designed by Graziano Moro and Renato Pigatti, the full sized chair is spacious enough to seat two intimately. Their managed vulgarity had one blog referring to them as the "Big Pimps of lawn chairs."

Originally designed most likely as a way to extend the use of precious timber, pergolas—going back at least as long as the Egyptians, say 3000 years give or take—were in their earliest forms coverings with spaced slats. Over these slats were grown vines or fruit trees. These covered seating areas would used in the more temperate regions as a cool respite for the sedentary pursuit of watching the wildlife from your back porch, de rigueur for the noble class of 17th century England.

Here, paradise and cocktails under the logs:

If their design began as a practical matter we've so long ago grown enamored by their sheer object beauty of the things that their essential function hardly matters anymore. We just love to look at them. Most of the great gardens have at least one if not more.

A stone cold rush of rustic with a mixer of Mediterranean:

Wine and pyramids under the shady green:

Detached from the natural garden and incorporated into the paved one, pergolas are often used as a poolside shelter.

The word pergola, originally from the Latin, literally refered to a "covered eave." It is part of a tradition that traveled the world. Moroccan style, below:

It's been argued that it was the Italians during the Renaissance who first  incorporated the shelters as free standing elements in their formal gardens. In Italian pergola means "a close walk of boughs."

Here, a constructed forest featuring roses and waterlilies.

As interpreted by Andrea Cochran:

Cloth will work nicely, too.

A more finished rendition from architect Daniel J. Lieberman:

Small is also good.

The room without walls:

The entry is the first impression. It prepares the viewer and guides them into the experience that follows.

(Photo below by David Lauer:)

As an architectural experience the entry can also effect those who may only ever pass by. It's the most important opportunity for establishing a home's brand.

Below, trees behind the house establish a setting while two smaller ornamentals in front create the illusion of the home being in a deep forest.

An Eero Saarinen house:

A UCLA study of Los Angeles middle class home culture found that the only leisure time residents spent in their yards, especially the fronts, tended to be involved in yard work. Yards tend not to fulfill their intended purpose in the stressed working lives of many. (They also found that few people park their cars in their garage, instead they use the space for storage of items they most likely will never use.)

Proof of how important maintaining the illusion is to us.

Orange welcomes among the cacti, heat, and rocks of Palm Springs.

It seems the hue we think of as teal tends to be more of an umbrella term than a specific color. We know it's generally considered blue-green but it can run the gamut of light blue to greenish gray. One person's teal may be another person's turquoise.

As colors tend to have faddish runs in design culture, teal had a brief one of its own recently. Teal is also a classic hue that never goes out of fashion.

The word itself comes from the Teal duck which displays the color on its head. Also below, a tropical sea, peacock feather, satellite view of a plankton bloom, and an agate rock give further proof of nature's own predilection for the hue.

In an environment of neutrals teal bangs up nicely.

Subject to the cycles of fashion Teal is also a classic that never goes completely out of fashion. Land's End and Abercrombie & Fitch will always have space for teal in their catalogs.

Part of teal's success as a fashion color has to do with its complimentary effect on the natural pinks of light skin. As you can see above, it seems to work with skin of any tone.

More teal and neutrals interplay:

Teal pumping up the vibe of an office space.

In a more traditional, low key setting:

And the slightly more garish:

Topiary, the art of clipping and training plants into desired shapes, has origins dating back to Roman times. The first records of topiary come from the Greeks but the word itself is from the Latin (topiarius). Romans displayed topiary in tomb paintings and there may've been some Persian influences as well. It's also likely that something similar was going on contemporaneously in China. The Japanese borrowed forms from China and started a tradition of their own.

We tend to think of topiary as plants shaped into whimsical forms, like animals and such, but this occupies only a small part of a long tradition. It was a Roman, poet Cneus Matius, who is credited with bringing topiary to the attention of Caesar Augustus. (Roman emperors have a history of having their predilections make epic impressions on world culture—think Constantine and Christianity.)

Once characteristic of the grandest European gardens, interest in topiary would wane, partly by vandalism and partly religious oppression: The great Roman gardens would be destroyed by the invading barbarian hordes in their zeal to destroy the Empire. The Dark Ages would have a profound effect on garden aesthetics, as pleasure gardens were repurposed as places to consider to contemplate God's power and not human vanities. Interest in pleasure gardens would return during the Renaissance in great part due to cultivation of herbs, flowers, and shrubs in monastery gardens throughout Europe. Geometric shapes were most prevalent, simple cubes, orbs, cones, and obelisks. The Victorian era would see another resurgence.

Traditional grandeur, above and below, at the gardens of Château-de-Villandry, France:

A hedge is a simpler, functional form of topiary intended to create boundaries, walls, or screens.

Below, hedges form an extension of the manor's heroic architecture.

Or a castle hall:

And more modern treatments:

The severe serenity of the well ordered Japanese garden:

Two view of the gardens at the Trentham estate, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire:

Grasses are sensual. You can smell them and hear them and watch them move. Meadows are sexy, just like lovers they never stop changing, never ceasing to surprise.

John Greenlee

That sensuousness can be seen in the way grass moves in the breeze. How it blooms robust with color in the spring and goes dormant brown in the winter: As Greenlee might say, they're the essence of sex and death.

Grass is dynamic. It gives texture and balance, it can be sharp or fluffly. It's an ensemble player, a backgrounder, accompanist, or virtuoso soloist if need be. Its culturally polyglot: It's Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the American heartland. It's tropical, jungle, desert, lush, dry, sparse, and dense.

Below, the work of Washington D.C. based James Van Sweden:

Layers:

Meadows:

In contemporary gardens, it is the quintessential modern material.

More James Van Sweden:

It works in the meadow; it works in a pot:

Piet Oudolf's Trenthan Gardens:

The image of the transparent eyeball* has become a staple of nature mysticism: in the midst of wild Nature, the self becomes one with being... differentiation, alienation and struggle cease.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Below, hillocks in a field in Kyrgyzstan:

Hillock is a British term referring to small hills or knolls. This, along with hummock, are terms used more commonly to refer to bumpy terrain, such as the above which shows the effect of grazing animals on moist soil. These mounds can also form out of sediment collecting around decaying plants through water from rain, snow, tides wind, etc, as often seen in wetalands.

Soil covered ancient shell mounds in Palo Alto, California:

These, from Iceland:

Hillocks and hummocks have served as inspiration in design as well. Emerson's idea of the transparent eyeball was about absorbing nature, becoming its vessel and disappearing into its grandeur. Before nature we are nothing but spiritual antennas for the divine. Picking up that broadcast has taught us something about aesthetics too.

Maya Lin's Storm King Wavefield in Mountainville New York was built over a former gravel pit which covers 240,000 sq ft and peaks at 15 ft in height.

Her work is also reminiscent of grazing lines left by cattle:

Life Mounds by architectural theorist, writer, and landscape architect Charles Jencks. This work is one of the commissioned pieces featured in the sculpture garden Jupiter Artland.

Lin's Wave Field at the University of Michigan, 1995:

A Danish landscape architect known best for his urban spaces, Stig L. Andersson admits an influence of Japanese culture. He calls it an integration of substance, space, and changeability. He goes bumpy as well.

Tufts:

The Jardim Das Ondas by Joao Gomes da Silva, Lisbon Portugal:

The legendary gardens at Marqueyssac:

*Yes, the transparent eyeball concept was inspired from a recent episode of Mad Men.