Knibb Design Blog

At first glance the buildings of Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa appear severe and nearly monolithic, a kind of Brutalism meets Deco by way of Japan with a few splices of Russian Constructivism and Italian sensuousness.

Only upon closer study are the delicacy and detail of his buildings revealed. It's those meticulous watchmaker-like details that draw us in.

For his Brion Tomb the Japanese Ensō intersects the long plane of a poured stone wall: Under Scarpa's delicate hand they are like two bullet holes of zen enlightenment artfully blasted into a military bunker.

The stroke of the chisel above and the caress of the sandpaper below.

Below, a riff on the Fibonacci sequence: Curves, spirals, and triangles mingle with the quadrilinear while neutrals and colors converge with wood and stone.

What is now a dying art was once the artist's telescoped message to the observer of the designer's mysterious process: Another unfortunate artifact in the age of computers, Scarpa's drawings are as distinguishable to the master's work as were Frank Lloyd Wright's to his own.

Below, Scarpa's drawings for Olivetti Design Camp competition, 1956.

Below, studies for the Gavina store mosaic, 1961-63:

Below, drawings for a holy-water stoup (left) and constructional details for a candelabrum:

Images and quotes below taken from the book Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works by Francesco Dal Co & Guisseppe Mazzariol.

Scarpa's work is made up of fragments without being fragmentary. Vittorio Gregotti

... these fragments are both the remains of a completed construction and the uncompleted and unplaced elements of a construction yet to be built. But they are not fragments of history, nor are they splinters of the future. These fragnemts are the remains of a solitude, that of a master who had the courage not to desire pupils. Franco Purini

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.

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire:  Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Buck Henry, The Graduate, 1967

Art in the sixties, it's been said, was a Cambrian Explosion of styles. As the new materials of the industrial age exerted a heavy influence over what would become Modernism, so was plastic integral to the trajectory of art and design in the sixties. Nowhere was this more apparent than with the wave of work coming out of Southern California and its marriage of Minimalism and plastics.

Two exemplars of this California material style were Craig Kauffman (Untitled, 1968), above, and Donald Judd (Untitled, 1963), below. Judd was based in New York but his work fit in well with the Californians. In both cases, here, the artists use fabricated Plexiglass, a material developed in the early '30s.

This acrylic, which manufactured under many trade names including Plexiglass and Lucite,  is a transparent thermoplastic AKA polyacrylate and is derived from natural-gas and is essentially considered a petroleum-chemical based product.

Helen Pashgian was one of the few women—as is often the case in the art world in what was otherwise a  boy's club. Most famously, she was the creator of these jewel-like plastic domes and crystal-like balls.

As often happens, before the academic avant-garde is established, there is the authentic avant-garde of early adapters who are simply motivated for something fresh and practical. Before plastic became a rage in design it was an industrial product that found its way into in military applications during World War II. Aircraft and submarine manufacturers were exploiting its high density, durability, and resistance to UV rays.

Polish-born Helena Rubenstein, face cream magnate and richest woman in the world, commissioned some of  the earliest furniture made from this dense plastic. As best as can be told from Googling, this collection came about in the late 30s. The advent of acrylic furniture didn't begin until the late 50s. Rubenstein's furniture is now the stuff of museum collections and has gone on in design history for its prescience if not its exquisite taste. (David Hicks would designed the rooms to surround the furniture.)

Here, Katie Holmes adorns the classic chair:

And Rubenstein's equally famous sled-like bed:

Above, the Waterfall Barstool from 1963, and its predecessor the Grosfield House Corset chair from 1939:

Self-taught designer and would be "Prince of Plastic" Neal Small began manufacturing his own collection in the 60s. (Some of his history here.) Below, a table from 1968:

Two from Laverne: The Daffodil chair (above) and the Buttercup chair (below), both from a collection known as The Invisibles from 1957. Built with the idea that clear plastic furniture offers the illusion that it "doesn't take up space."

Cultural icons can always drive up the cache as well:

So much for history and precedents: Jumping to the present, Philippe Starck's Ghost chair: Introduced in 2002, the chair has since sold 1.5 million units.

Adding more plastic to his line, Starck created the Eros chair (below) and the Mr. Impossible chair (second below):

The popularity of the Ghost chair has brought a renaissance of clear plastic into furniture design. Below, Jennifer Hunt's Lucite bed.

The Oste Table from Colico Design harkens back to classic style of lathed wood legs:

Another Ghost chair, this one by Ralph Naute and Lonneke Gordijin:

A variation on the classic dining table in Plexiglass from Alexandra von Furstenburg:

In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart.
Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Built-in seating (table optional) can give a project a more formal, architectural look. It can also provide an architectural point of interest for luring guests outside. The orderliness and permanence of it contrasts nicely with plantings and other organic materials surrounding it.

Sean has designed and built seating fixtures for various Knibb Design projects over the years, some of which can be seen in this newsletters, here and here.)

Note the rough natural edge to the underside of both the table and the bench:

Constructions can offer a zen-like appearance to a garden as well, with their resolute lines, boundaries, and geometry. A built planter can also achieve this to a degree but seating adds the human component. By inviting us in it makes us another aspect of the garden of the garden itself.

For want of a garden a new view helps:

Wylie Wilson has taken over our showroom space on Abbot Kinney for the month (mid-Sept to Oct 10, 2012) and installed a pop-up store. The store will debut their new Gorgiewahwah (pronounced GORE-jee-WAH-WAH) line of women's panties. These are panties as fashion statements and may also be the final nail in the French cut coffin. Wylie Wilson is the company founded by Australian born and Los Angeles based model and actress Peta Wilson (seen at right). If you're not familiar with the fabulous knickers of Gorgiewahwah you may soon be. Some believe this company with its high concept knickers could blow up like another Juicy Couture. Wilson's creations have already enjoyed some valuable reflected glory from some young celebrities and they were also recently featured in Vogue Italia.

Get a drop on their panties at 1522 Abbot Kinney, across from The Brig.

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."

We are pattern seeking animals. We love our symbols and icons. Before there was shared religion or tribal customs that provided the arteries that kept humanity in a shared cultural stream. Doesn't it make sense that in our contemporary culture, so centered on commodification, that iconic furniture would prove to be so integral?

Japanese artist Makoto Azuma has been described as a "florist who creates punk art using plants and flowers." Here, he uses something like AstroTurf to cover a classic Aeron chair for Herman Miller.

Sori Yanagi's Butterfly Stool reworked from recycled cardboard boxes by Kin ichi Ogata:

An old classic, the Windsor chair, remade with new sustainable materials–Bamboo–by Bo Reudler.

Two new takes on the popular Thonet chair: Top, #18 by Matthias Pliessnig, and bottom, Mike Kann for Studio 801.

Thonet in the colors of M&Ms:

Two retakes on an Arne Jacobsen classic:

Studded:

Eames chairs are so ubiquitous that they certainly don't need reworking to rekindle interest, but some game designers decided to take a few swipes at it anyway:

An Eiffel Tower chair with kitschy graphics:

The Rocker Arm chairs feature unique hand drawn graphics by illustrator Mike Perry. Each chair is drawn to order.

A couple of irreverent hacks:

An Urban Outfitters version of the Eiffel with some added notches and a few less bends:

The ever popular Eames Lounge chair featuring some experiments with upholstery:

Peiter Maes references Eames:

More Eames, this time with more muscular legs:

Eames done with a Rococo twist by Perter Shire:

Elephantine chairs in the Le Corbusier style:

Water as a symbol, not surprisingly, features prominently in all cultures—especially in its religious and spiritual aspects. In mythology water represents both the beginnings of life and its ending. Like the Christian baptism, in feng shui water is the source of purification and healing.

It's easy to see why water would be such a potent symbol in gardens. If gardens are the hospitals for returning balance and harmony to our thoughts, then water is an important part of that medicine.

In purely graphic terms, water adds a dark element to contrast with the light and color of leaves and flowers. Water is represented graphically in feng shui as black or blue.

A reflecting pool that is unexpectedly serene for a public housing project.

In the New Testament, 'living water' or 'water of life' represents the spirit of God, or eternal life.
In Japan, water incarnates the purity and pliant simplicity of life. A spiritual connection with elements like water is a primary force in the life of a Shinto priest.
In India, the sacred River Ganges embodies the water of life for Hindus. Legend has it that the Ganges is the river that flows beyond its earthly bounds to Moksa, the realm of Nirvana.
In China, water is considered to be the source of all life and it is the specific den of the dragon.
Jews use water for ritual cleansing to restore or maintain a state of purity. hand washing before and after every meal is mandatory.
In the Vedas, water is referred to as the "most maternal".

This and more like this here.

A Romanesque pool:

Water compliments the rage of color in the meadowy array of flowers.

A bounty of life affirming symbols in this garden design by Andrea Cochran: Olive, water, gravel, and grasses.

Growing in pots may be the highest expression of our humanity's desire to contain nature. The joy of gardening, and its most challenging aspect, is the vigilance required to keep it all in accordance with our desires and not nature's. It's not called the constant gardener for nothing.

A previous post on the glories of pots is here.

An exquisite palatte:

Two accent pots growing nothing but lending a touch of formality.

A green chandelier:

Contained bamboo screening:

A Lilliputian olive grove:

A Great Japanese maple from the Portland Japanese Gardens captured brilliantly by photographer Fred An. This image is one of National Geographic's 2012 Traveler Photo contest winners. See the lot here.

There's no red quite like the red of the leaves of a Japanese maple.