Table of contents for Jul-Aug-12 in Dwell

Industrial designer and adjunct professor at Pratt Institute This is an issue that highlights women in design, both past and present. That’s a true statement, but here’s an even truer one: This issue promotes good design by people who also happen to be women. We’ve been careful to acknowledge the distinction between the two throughout the process of building this theme—a first for us—because we feel it’s better to recognize excellence than it is to assign merit based on arbitrary conditions. Of course, the path here has been long. In the summer of 1959, Lucia DeRespinis joined a team of her colleagues from George Nelson & Associates to take part in the American National Exhibition in Moscow. As the only woman in the group, she faced inevitable assumptions about her…

Under the tutelage of a Bauhaus master, Margaret De Patta trailblazed the American studio jewelry movement with wearable art. Margaret De Patta (1903–1964) followed a circuitous path to becoming one of the 20th century’s seminal figures in jewelry design. She was trained as a painter in her native California, only turning her focus to jewelry after she made her own modernist wedding band in 1929. A few years later, while tinkering with the lively forms that would become her hallmark, De Patta studied under the Hungarian-born constructivist László Moholy-Nagy during a yearlong sojourn at the New Bauhaus (now the Institute of Design) in Chicago. Channeling the school’s principles of art and industry, she helped to redefine jewelry for a design-cognizant audience. The resulting pieces were both carefully crafted and inexpensive,…

Touting a model of collaborative creativity, five young Chicagoans share talent and resources to promote the work of female designers. Design, like music composition or the scientific method, can be lonely, insular work. Which is precisely why, in January 2010, five Chicago creatives met for brunch and decided to combine forces. “More brains are better than one, especially when you need to come up with singular ideas,” says art director Elaine Chernov, one of the twenty-something females who moonlight as Quite Strong when not working day jobs either as freelancers, in graduate school, or at some of the Windy City’s biggest design agencies. Though Chernov, web developer and photographer Jennifer Sisson, illustrator Jana Kinsman, and graphic designers Katherine Walker and Victoria Pater knew each other vaguely through friends, the professional…

NEUTRAL 1. Salvaged Wood Side Table by Urban Hardwoods $1,250 Crafted from reclaimed timbers, this bedside stand need not be relegated to the bedroom. It could work as a sculptural piece anywhere. urbanhardwoods.com 2. Crushed-Silk Sham by Eileen Fisher for Garnet Hill $68 each Layer in texture and dimension with this ruched silk sham. We favored the fawn hue, but its sister shades of soft white, oat, and rosewater are also attractive. garnethill.com 3. Egg Press Dot Sheet Set by Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co. $145–$235 A hand-printed pattern of dots adorns these 280-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. schoolhouseelectric.com 4. Ines Duvet Cover by Area $420–$495 We love the earth-toned gradients in this duvet, shown here in the sand colorway. It’s made from 100 percent linen, a material that wicks away…

Project: Poetryworld House Designer: Paula Leen Location: Akkrum, the Netherlands For a country as small as the Netherlands, the province of Friesland is about as remote as you can get. Located 80 miles north of Amsterdam, in an agricultural area laced with canals and bordering the Wadden Sea, Friesland is distinct from other Dutch regions for a grab bag of reasons—a high concentration of windmills, a high concentration of speed skaters—but is especially notable for having its own native language, Frisian. Uniquely tuned in to the region’s weather and landscape, Frisian has a multitude of poetic words to distinguish subtle climatic differences: Rûzig means “there is a lot of wind”; koeltsje means “there is a little wind.” Krôkje refers to tiny, slow-falling snowflakes, izelje to the rain that falls on…

Since the moment I received my first press release on the “Barbie I Can Be… Architect Doll” (for short, “Architect Barbie”), launched at the American Institute of Architects National Convention last year, I’ve had a consistently negative response. What does Barbie have to do with architecture? I’ve wondered. Future female architects should be playing with tools for building, not dolls inappropriate for use as scale figures. Also: Why isn’t she wearing flats? As a design critic and parent, Architect Barbie didn’t sit right with me, and I was not alone. Much disquiet on the architecture blogs and in the field focused on her stylized wardrobe: black-rimmed glasses, an outdated hot-pink blueprint tube, a skyline-print dress, white hard hat, those oh-so-fashionable high-heel booties. But that was window dressing for a deeper…

The products, furniture, architects, designers, and builders featured in this issue. 23 In the Modern World Brandtset tea and coffee service by Alessi alessi.com E1027 side table from Aram aram.co.uk Grasshopper floor lamp from Design Within Reach dwr.com Coupe line and Dimensional oval tile by Heath Ceramics heathceramics.com House of Cards by Eames Office eamesgallery.com Classic Century sauce boat from Crate & Barrel crateandbarrel.com Florence Knoll bench and Maya Lin Stones seat by KnollStudio knoll.com Strips sofa by Arflex arflex.it Componibili by Kartell kartellstorela.com Mercer Stump table by Knoll International knoll-int.com Otto high back dining chair by Gervasoni imoderni.com Resolve System by Herman Miller store.hermanmiller.com Prince chair by Hay finnishdesignshop.com Caboche ceiling light by Foscarini ylighting.com Moël armchair by Ligne Roset ligne-roset-usa.com Fungo stools by Riva 1920 unicahome.com Morgans chair…

Thanks for publishing examples of “good design” and the updates on environmental strides being made in both construction and product (“Coming into Views,” April 2012). Seeing everything come together in a pleasing project is why I subscribe. David Ruud Posted on dwell.com What a great house (“Grateful Shed,” April 2012)! The wingless plane in the backyard is a cool element. David Reamer Posted on dwell.com There are many things I love about this space (“Hygge House,” April 2012), but it desperately needs color! The shots of Maja’s room and those with family (who are wonderfully colorful) add warmth it otherwise lacks. I’m all for clean white spaces, but it just seems to make this space look barren. Ann Posted on dwell.com While I thought the photo accompanying “Back to Nature”…

A Martha’s Vineyard retreat surpasses the traditional boundaries of Cape Cod architecture with a contemporary design by Harvard professor and practicing architect Toshiko Mori. After years of renting a modernist Martha’s Vineyard summer house by famed Harvard Five member Eliot Noyes, Kathy and Jerry Kauff wanted a place of their own, one that would be both a pleasurable à deux retreat and a kids-and-grandkids magnet. So when a rare four-and-a-half-acre property with magnificent sunset views across Menemsha Pond became available, the Kauffs jumped at the opportunity. “They’re very athletic, very outdoorsy,” says architect Toshiko Mori, yet the Kauffs wanted to be able to live entirely on the ground floor if time’s march made stairs a burden. At the same time, says Kathy, “we didn’t have the means to build a…

Idaho-based architect Susan Desko—previously a senior design architect for Frank Gehry—created a house built of untreated steel plate and glass that towers among the trees of its Ketchum landscape. As a bricklayer’s daughter, Susan Desko spent much of her childhood exploring her father’s building sites, which helped inform her improvisational style. Inspired by a pair of rectangular zinc vases, her very first residential commission began as two chimneys with fireplaces and a kitchen between the two. The house appears in its finished state as a series of forms that evoke minimalist sculpture, including a rectilinear main house, a guesthouse, and a 60-foot-long bridge of raw steel that joins the forms. The intense geometry of the untreated metal changes color with the light of day, while the glass reflects blue sky,…

PORTRAITS BY JONATHAN PUCKEY Natasha Jen Pentagram, the world’s largest independent design consultancy, applies the same unconventional thinking to its infrastructure as it does to its many client projects all over the globe. Natasha Jen, the firm’s newest hire (and first intern to return as a partner), explains that though partners do collaborate informally with one another, “it’s like running your own business.” Given that Jen only started her own practice, Njenworks, in 2010 following stints at Base, 2x4, and SYPartners, working with the “tremendous scale” of Pentagram is, she says, an “obvious” honor. The self-described architecture enthusiast, who has worked with Rem Koolhaas’s venerated Office for Metropolitan Architecture, OMA offshoot REX, and experimental architecture firm SOFTlab, sees graphic design as complementary to the built world. Jen’s first order of…

“There are two Ibizas,” states practically every guidebook written about the Spanish Mediterranean island. Yet it ceases to be a travel cliché as you leave Ibiza Town, Ibiza’s capital. Past the periphery of the city, given over to formulaic holiday apartments and billboards advertising Ibiza’s legendary dance clubs, the island’s scrubby, gently hilly terrain unfolds toward a coastline of sculptured cliffs cradling sapphire coves. In early spring, pale pink almond blossoms blanket valleys and carob trees fill the air with their pungent, chocolaty scent. Traffic is sparse and the whitewashed roadside bars and restaurants are empty. July brings a different scene, when the island is thronged by millions of tourists in search of their summers of love. It’s safe to assume that the majority of visitors know little about Ibiza’s…

If the monumental geometries of Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasília shape the popular idea of Brazilian architecture, the buildings of architect Lina Bo Bardi tell a different story, one in which a woman manipulates the heroic forms of modernism to make space for the Brazilian people. As Bo Bardi put it in an interview with Domus published in 1993, shortly after her death, “I work for public power, I don’t believe in private enterprise, not even in a capitalist country. And in Brazil I have always succeeded in doing what I wanted without accepting conditions or shady compromises.” Born in 1914 to a middle-class family in Rome, Achillina Bo was a maverick from the start: Defying her mother’s wish that she leave school and marry, she earned a degree in architecture at…

When fantasizing about the ultimate home office, the owner of this project imagined something sleek and sculptural that would conceal all the cords and contraptions that clutter most desks. To bring this vision to life, architect Alvin Huang and his team at Synthesis Design and Architecture hung sheets of CNC-milled birch—fabricated by local firm Cutting Edge—from the wall to form a continuous three-dimensional form. Look closely and you’ll glimpse the five hidden cabinets concealed within its sinewy surface that obscure files, books, a phone, and a paper shredder. In keeping with the theme of optical illusion, Synthesis inset a series of horizontal wooden spacers to form, from a distance, an abstraction of a world map—a way to hold the boards in place and nod to the resident’s love of world…

Sarah Amelar Sarah Amelar Los Angeles writer Sarah Amelar trained as an architect and was a longtime editor of Record Houses in her native city of New York. In covering the “The Homemakers,” (p. 70), she joined owners Laura Purdy and Juan Devis, their architect Linda Taalman, and landscape designer Laura Cooper around a backyard table: “With our glasses clinking, the group shared fond recollections of this renovation experience—and, let’s just say, the conversation flowed.” Hotze Eisma Photographer Hotze Eisma was born and raised in Amsterdam. “I was named for my grandfather, who lived in a small village in Friesland, which is a northern province of Holland that has its own language. Even for the Dutch, my name is uncommon,” he says. “While shooting the Friesland residence of Paula Leen…

We cast the net far and wide to find the next generation of iconoclasts: five industrial design products—from the craft-influenced to the machine-inspired—destined for tomorrow’s museum collections from up-and-coming female designers. @ Extended slideshow at dwell.com/magazine Pauline Deltour Paris-based Deltour was a designer and project leader at Konstantin Grcic’s office in Munich for three years before branching out on her own in 2010. Current clients include Alessi, Tacchini, Muji, Bree, and the city of Munich. paulinedeltour.com Carousel table for Kvadrat (limited edition) kvadrat.dk Deltour designed this low table with a revolving bookrack to display bound ephemera in polychromatic fabric compartments. Tanya Aguiñiga The Los Angeles furniture designer and maker was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Her highly emotional, tactile, and colorful work combines furniture design and community activism. aguinigadesign.com Rope lights…

To afford property in Los Angeles, I was going to have to buy something cheap. I had been monitoring the MLS [Multiple Listing Service] almost daily for a year or so, and when I saw this property come up for sale, I pounced. Although the lot wasn’t in the best neighborhood, it was geographically central and just a couple of blocks away from a future light-rail station [now open] which I found appealing. The asking price—$225,000—was also low for 2007. As I was designing my house I kept in mind standard lumber and plywood sizes so that there would be minimal waste. When choosing materials, I did basic research on cost per square foot and picked out some of the least expensive materials in the building industry. Basic, inexpensive stuff…

Project: Devis-Purdy House Architect: Taalman Koch Architecture Location: Los Angeles, California When experimental filmmaker Laura Purdy describes the transformation of her house in Los Angeles’s Los Feliz neighborhood, she speaks glowingly of a “perfect storm” among the women who collaborated on the renovation. For about a year, architect Linda Taalman, landscape designer Laura Cooper, and Purdy met for creative sessions, exchanging ideas as they converged on a detail or spatial sequence. “In a field so often dominated by men, it was unusual to find myself in these intensely fruitful all-female meetings,” recalls Taalman. As the women met—getting critical input from Purdy’s husband Juan Devis and Taalman’s husband and former codirector at Taalman Koch Architecture (TKA), Alan Koch—their children often played together in the background. And like those great conversations, the…

What led you to create your gallery, Spazio Rossana Orlandi, 12 years ago? I’ve always been a collector. I’ve followed design since I was very young. But there’s a difference between art and design. Some design pieces can become art, become sculpture. But I am not interested in having an art gallery, but rather, a design gallery. Sometimes it’s difficult to say if it’s a piece of design or art. For instance, Nacho Carbonell. He started as a designer, but from my point of view, he’s not simply a designer anymore. His work is art. You must be bombarded at all times by designers who want you to see their work. How do you decide? When something is good, I feel excitement. Sometimes it’s not immediate, I have to think…

For all the noisy charm of Marrakech’s old city, with its twisting souks, grand La Mamounia hotel, and stately Koutoubia Mosque, one of the most popular tourist destinations remains the Majorelle Garden—once owned by, (and now the eternal resting place of) fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. Hordes flock to the magnificent walled oasis of lush trees and sculptural cacti to pay homage to an artist who found a place in haute couture for the motifs of his beloved Morocco. Visitors hoping to bask a bit longer in YSL’s afterglow are well advised to nip just across the street to 33 Rue Majorelle, a concept shop that has certainly embraced something of Saint Laurent’s spirit. Founded in 2010, this thoroughly modern trio of spaces—a boutique specializing in housewares and clothing, a…