Month: September 2010

As a kid in 70s-era New York, I wasn’t especially attuned to home decor. But there was one thing I did notice: virtually all of my friends’ parents had the same tableware. The dishes were a heavy, gray stonewear, rimmed by a pair of concentric navy bands. Cups and serving bowls had an abstracted floral pattern in the same navy shade. A handsome modern design, and utilitarian—my parents used them for everything: a formal dinner party, a quick meal. They were essentially indestructible, which is why, to this day, my parents still use those same plates. As do my best friend’s parents. Etc.

This wonderful tableware was made by the Finish firm Arabia and designed by Ulla Procopé. I discovered this only recently, which shows just how blind even a design writer can be to design, but is also a testament to the new book on D/R by Jane Thompson and Alexandra Lange, which inspired me to look. I knew Design Research primarily through the brilliant concrete and glass building Ben Thompson designed as its Cambridge flagship, and hadn’t quite understood its critical position in the dissemination of modern design in the American home. Certainly I had no idea about the close connection between D/R and Julia Child. That section alone is worth the price of admission, but really the whole thing is terrific, and looks great too, thanks to design by Michael Bierut.

As it is, my parents did not purchase their Arabiaware at D/R. They bought it at Pottery Barn, back when Pottery Barn was still a discount shack, and the means of display was simply to leave the goods out in boxes overflowing with shaved-wood packing. More serious kitchen items were purchased at Bridge, and there was Zabar’s to fill the pantry. D/R was not in their repertoire, but we spent many hours at Conran’s in CitiCorp Center.

It’s sad that today we have nothing analogous to D/R (or Conran’s in its original, low-price incarnation), retailers that offered modern design at modest prices. We have Ikea on one pole and DWR (or Moss?) on the other. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were something in between?

I will refrain from pimping it here too hard, being a member of the sponsoring organization, a friend of the triumvirate of visionaries who put it together, and a (limited) advisor on the proceedings (publishing division), but let me nonetheless urge you to visit SukkahCity, both on the Web and in its physical manifestation in Union Square Park, starting Monday. The sukkah, a (green!) temporary structure erected to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival, is an ideal form for an experimental architectural competition. What with this crap economy, it also happens to be a good time for a competition, as evidenced by the more than 1,400 entries to this one. At a preview out in Gowanus eariler this week, I was especially impressed with the pneumatic “Bio Puff” from Brooklyn’s own Bittertang—a throwback to what the late Marc Dessauce dubbed the Inflatable Moment. The rendering, above, is kind of somber, but the real thing is of clear plastic with a definite 60s/70s vibe. Check ’em all out.

The paperback of Master of Shadows hits the stands on October 6, but advances are in, and if I do say so myself, it looks fantastic. Many thanks to all my new friends at Anchor for seeing it through, and especially to John Gall, for his typically stellar cover design. If you’re a media pro and interested in it or its esteemed author, give a shout.

The new Yankee Stadium is heading toward the close of its second season, and though I can’t say I love it, I think I’ve come to terms with its existence. The abandoned old ballpark next door is now gone, having given way to construction fencing, so there’s no longer a specter looming ominously over the new joint. But that Yankee Stadium, the rough-and-ugly, 1970s-era edition of the House that Ruth Built, will always be my Yankee Stadium. It was a great public space—to walk up one of its tunnels to see the emerald field revealed below (stirring every time) was a lesson in what Philip Johnson called “procession.” It was an electric place when packed for a big game.

Baseball, of course, lives on the memories it inspires, and that place has left more that its share. As a tribute to it, last year Alex Belth published a series of the reminiscences of the old park on his indispensable blog, Bronx Banter. My contribution, about life in the bleachers in the 1980s is here. Now, Alex has collected all the pieces he commissioned, and added many more for a new book, Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories, out next month. It’s got an intro by Yogi Berra (who else?), and pieces by Richard Ben Cramer, Jane Leavy, Kevin Baker, and countless others. A great project, and a worthy memorial to a great New York place.

[Photo: NY1]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the Sony (nee AT&T) Building, as I research my Philip Johnson bio. It’s also been on the minds of the curators of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which recently purchased a presentation drawing of the project for a forthcoming show on Postmodernism. In an insightful post on the building and the controversy it engendered, the V&A’s Glenn Adamson quotes Michael Sorkin’s acid review of it: “The so-called ‘post-modern’ styling in which AT&T has been tarted up is simply a graceless attempt to disguise what is really just the same old building by cloaking it in this week’s drag, and by trying to hide behind the reputations of the blameless dead.” Alexandra Lange, on her blog, quotes this quote from Adamson. (Sorkin, as ever, makes great copy.) I’m going to save my bullets for later, but I just thought I’d point out that AT&T, love it or hate it, was hardly the “same old building”; that is, a generic office tower of stacked floor plates—what my friend Philip Nobel calls a “lasagna” building. (Or how about “Saltine“?) The AT&T was hardly standard. This is a thirty-eight story building, afterall, that rises to sixty stories (check out the grand staircase connecting the three executive levels, above), a building with a “sky lobby” and an attached museum (which, by the way, is now operational as the Sony Wonder Technology Lab—seriously—with free admission). Which is merely to say, this is no ordinary building.