Knibb Design Blog

So called section of train track in Kleven, Ukraine.

Someone could've easily seen these trees as pests and ordered them eradicated. Glad to see romance prevailed.

Pic discovered at the Landscape Architects Facebook page.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868 - 1928) believed everyone that came to the table deserved a throne. His high backed dining chairs not only radiated royalty but seemed to praise formality in the everyday. Mackintosh came early to the Modernism game and his designs embodied the movement well: Rejecting tradition and even burlesquing it but never without a subtle reverence for it. (Always best to give a nod to the giants that came before.)

More of a niche than a chair, this Mackintosh design shows more than a little of an Asian influence (above). Clearly, it's a design that still resonates as demonstrated in the Philippe Starck chairs (below).

In many of their chairs, contemporaries Frank Lloyd Wright and Mackintosh shared a similar vision. Two of Wright's master works below: The Barrel (below, first) and the Robie House chair (second below).

Before Danish architect Arne Jacobsen bombed the furniture biz in 1952 with his first major success, the innovative Ant (below left) chair, he contemplated the future of Modernist design from the seat of his favorite Eames plywood chair. Soon after, he'd follow with Number 7 in 1955 (below right) to even greater effect. The ne plus ultra of Danish furniture design, Number 7 would go on to sell over 5 million units.

Jacobsen continued to produce iconic pieces throughout the 50s and 60s: Most notably, the Egg (below), Swan (second below), and Drop (third below) chairs.

As students, Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames would collaborate on a collection of furniture that would win first prize in a 1940 exhibition at MoMA "Organic Designs in Home Furnishings." By 1946 Saarinen and Eames would follow their muses seperately: Eames with Herman Miller and Saarinen with Knoll. For the Finnish born Saarinen, this fertile muse would lead him to some of the most renowned chairs ever designed. This included the Ball chair from 1946;

the well furnished playboy's pad staple, the 1968 Bubble chair;

the 1948 Womb chair;

and the chair made famous on the starship Enterprise, the Tulip from 1956.

The Jorge Ferrari-Hardoy designed Butterfly chair would come to rule bourgeois homes of taste in the 60s, even though by this time his 1938 design was practically middle-aged.

Here, the Butterfly elegantly coerces Sophia Loren's knees into the sun.

In 1955 sculptor Harry Bertoia won "Designer of the Year" for what was to become the iconic Diamond chair.

Another chair with considerable aesthetic stamina is the Xavier Pouchard designed Tolix French Café chair from 1934.

The 1006 Emeco Navy Side chair is probably one the world's best known. Founded in 1944 to create a chair for the U.S. navy worthy of a torpedo strike (company founder Wilton Dinges tested the chair by tossing it out of a six-story window), Emeco fabricates the chair in 77 step that is still guided and crafted by hand. (Apparently the curtains may be closing on the traditional process soon.) Despite their sturdiness the chairs are lightweight, the result of being made from corrosion-resistant aluminum. Interior designers would later discover the chair for themselves and pluck them from maritime obscurity. And the rest is aesthetic history.

More recently, Emeco has been producing chairs from recycled materials. This, their plastic version, is called the 111 for the fact that it's made out of 111 recycled Coke bottles. It also comes in a range of colors beyond red.

African-American designer Nathaniel Alexander was first to patent the folding chair (1911). (The idea of the folding chair goes back to the Egpytians.) Though, his version still had a ways to go as it didn't include folding legs, he certainly was a forerunner in what might be the most pervasive chair in modern life. If success in design has anything to do with commonality and use then surely Alexander is one of the giants of the chair.

Even more awesome chair shizznit to come in The Definitive Guide: Part 3; Part 3.

The Agave americana, AKA American aloe or century plant, is a Mexican native cultivated and naturalized all over the temperate world. Its power as an ornamental comes from its color, which can range for soft to vibrant and multi-hued, and its savage appearance: With barbs, spikes, and serrations it provides a nice foil to soft grasses and round leafy shrubs.

The name century plant itself is a bit of mythology. The plant's lifespan is most often 10 to 30 years, with plants known to reach 50, but nowhere near its centenary. This agave produces a vertical spike of flowers from which it propagates new pups. Unlike many other monocarpic agaves that can flower several times during its life, the century will do this only once, the stock serving as its melancholy end of life swansong. (Don't worry, the process is slow.) The semelparous process takes a lifetime for the century to develop the necessary energy to produce its column (which can reach a height of 40 ft). Once done, like the self-sacrificing mother, the plant dies.

So much for the legendary americana: Below, Agave bracteosa or spider agave.

Beyond their ornamental uses, Agaves have provided humans bounty for millennia: The flowers and stalks are edible; the stalks provide sugar for syrup and mezcal (tequila), and as proficient retainers of moisture their inner flesh allows for excellent water collection. Agave also provides substance for multifarious other uses including fibrous hemp for weaving, sewing, and cordage, and "lethally" sharp spikes for needles. No small achievement for a plant requiring so little water.

Various agaves suitable for potting: Above, petite agaves and, below, the Squid agave.

The Mediterranean favorite: Below, Agave attenuata.

Greens of the attenuata can appear to adjust to the varying light.

Agave works well as both soloist and background player, demonstrated here with potted specimens accompanying a raging chorus of bougainvillea.

Agave americana in its native environment, above: A plaza in Mexico city.

What else in the garden can offer such a stunning kaleidoscope of forms? More inspirational agave eye jams found here.

Paint the walls or swath a fabric around a room and it can gush as much color as you like. But this isn't about that. This is about choosing a whisper or a breath, an accent to stand apart.

In design, like art and politics, power can come from the margins.

Here, the blue flowers make a brilliant and contained explosion.

A suggestion of a tint from the windows adds a low chorus to the blue of the sky.

Tomorrow, the table could be red. But for today, it's blue.

Beneath the cabinet there's another margin of opportunity.

The quasi-blue of Mexican Blue Palms at LAX, and the Hilton Hotel in Pattaya, Thailand, with intermittent radiating blue cubes.

Long ago, before the living rooms of America were designed to funnel all attention into home entertainment centers, the social space of well-designed homes would have inhabitants focus on each other rather than appliances. A quintessential example is this seating platform by architect Paul Rudolph from 1955.

Just by the fact we descend into the space transforms the atmosphere into something more rarefied. It practically gushes with implied intimacy.

Perhaps the most iconic of conversation pits, below, from Eero Saarinen’s Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, built in 1957.

The pedigree for the pit may come from the Middle East or North Africa. The Moroccan trend of the early naughties brought a resurgence of conversation spaces, especially outdoor.

Below, a more recent interpretation created by March Studio, Australia.

And more classics of the mid-century:

Another of more recent vintage, below a Chicago townhouse by Roger Hirsch Architect.

As seating, this stark vision in triangles may be more appropriate for lectures on particle physics or hostile take-overs than soft-spoken candlelit conversations.

This example, with its resplendent views of the outdoors and pillowy comforts, invites much more than conversations with its provocative mirrored ceiling.

Thank you to the Ouno design blog for material and inspiration.

Does this look like the face of an evil empire to you?

Not a bank but a credit union so the evil factor may be downgraded a bit. (Sugamo Shinkin Bank: Shimura branch, Tokyo.) Here, French born and Tokyo-based architect and artist Emmanuelle Moureaux has ingeniously created a welcoming space for a business not often associated with jolly atmospherics. (The elliptical portal in the ceiling is actually a skylight: When's the last time you saw that in a bank?)

If only hospitals could look like this: The warm colors, the energetic ceiling motifs, even the use of white has doesn't have the usual unnerving institutional quality.

A conference room that might lift you even through a credit denial.

That same atmosphere is projected both inside and out.

The architect's intention was to greet visitors at the door with 12 layers of colorful bliss. Inside this feeling is sustained with plantings revealed in the windows and oodles of natural light.

It's also interesting to note how the small areas of outdoor planting were used to maximum effect. Not just in the visual register of the plants themselves but also in the use of their morning shadows. Even if you can't view the plants directly in the window you can still experience their presence in shadows and light. The use of potted plants also helps to bring the garden inside.

Thanks to www.contemporist.com for inspiration and info. More pictures and story here.

The Nanyang Art School in Singapore: Not overpowering or separate from its environment but assimilating, like a good guest. As other architectural trends go long past their expiration dates, this building will likely remain as fresh as the evergreen fescue that covers it. Nature does that.

Garden styles may trend but they never date.

Picture and source Inhabitat.com:
The roofs create open space, insulate the building, cool the surrounding air and harvest rainwater for landscaping irrigation. Planted grasses mix with native greenery to colonize the building and bond it to the setting.

(The title is taken from Grass (1918) by Carl Sandburg.)

For plants, humans could be just another invasive species.

Michael Pollan argues that when it comes to choosing what goes in your garden the choice may be less yours and more the plants', Darwinianly speaking. It could be that unsuspecting humans are being duped by the corn, grass, and flowers no less than the have butterfly or the bumble bee.

We're outmatched: Humans don't even have as many genes as rice. At the very least, plants are smarter than we think. Sure, we humans have consciousness, we make tools and form societies, but plants have a powerful and ancient biochemistry that may have us outgunned.

The color, shape, texture, perfumes: Humans can no more resist this than the hummingbird can.

And so, the meadow: It may the best compromise between flora and two-legged fauna.

The Serpentine Pavilion by architect Peter Zumthor at London's Kensington Gardens with interior garden designed by Piet Oudolf.

What's particularly interesting here is how the designers allowed the building to provide frame and backdrop with few details to distract from the dynamic centerpiece of the garden.

British garden designer Andrew Wilson describes what he believes sets landscape apart from architecture and why it's so important: It's "the garden's sensory uplift in experiential terms... The perfumes, the organic nature of things growing around us...." A garden is more than an intellectual experience, and if you want to get to the Dao of it, it's less as well. The garden represents the consequence of living things being nurtured and pampered and in the act of being within it allows us to share in that joy.

In the best circumstances, a garden is a setting for nature to feel its own bliss. In the Pavilion garden sun, sky, air, and nature all join together in a chorus of smiles. A plant by it's very character is a monument to hope: Always reaching optimistically toward the sun.

The Pavillion from the outside.

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses. Hanna Rion

Sam Maloof (1916 - 2009) didn't think of himself as an artist; Furniture-maker was the title he preferred. Starting out by building furniture in his garage from his house in Ontario, California, his ethic and process would remain the same throughout his life: Create furniture of his own design and by hand in limited quantities.

Today his furniture is being made in the same slow and limited process by three men who trained and worked with Sam himself. According to the company's website, in 1960 Maloof told an interviewer that he'd been offered mondo loads of cash for the rights to mass produce his work. Maloof saw it as a Devil's bargain and refused. He was a craftsman in the truest sense.

This, his most popular piece — the Hornback Chair — appears to be equal parts Modernism and Amish Duxbury. But the beauty and integrity of Maloof's work goes well beyond the surface.

Some of Maloof's legacy will be on display at the Huntington until January 30, 2012.

Another in the Maloof woodworkers tradition was the aptly named Arthur Espenet Carpenter (1920 - 2006). Like Maloof, he was also a self-taught master (his Band Saw Box, 1972, above).

Carpenter's work is certainly more whimsical than his peer Maloof's. There's also a strain of the exotic, a bit Africanism with some hints of motifs from post-war painters like Miró and Wilfredo Lam, among others: The Rib Chair from 1968. One of Carpenter's Bandsaw Jewelry Box variations below.

George Nakashima (1905 - 1990) was a woodworker who began his career as an architect (he trained at M.I.T. and later worked with Antonin Raymond). Born in Spokane, WA to Japanese-born parents, Nakashima would travel and work in France and Japan as an architect and designer. He'd also learn Japanese woodworking under the tutelage of another internee in his time in an internment camp in Boise, ID.

One obvious difference between Nakashima and his peers Carpenter and Maloof is in his approach of using the natural character of the wood to inform his design. All three would bring out the spiritual depth of both the wood and the woodworking process, but in many of Nakashima's pieces he allows the wood to speak for itself. He uses the particular shape and character of the wood as well as the burl as an integral component of his design.

Below, the Concordia chair: Note how he ties together separate pieces of wood for the seat using butterflies.

Below, a bench from  1965: