Four young studios have created installations for Design Biennial Boston, an event that aims to provoke more “architectural imagination” throughout the city (+ slideshow).
Their contributions include an “urban periscope” composed of glass blocks and a series of pole-like sculptures made of wharf pilings from a local shipyard.
Grove by GLD. Photograph by Jane Messinger
Design Biennial Boston, which launched in 2008, showcases emerging architects, designers and landscape architects in Boston who are producing distinctive work. The organisers hope the event will inspire better design throughout the city.
“Boston is in the midst of an enormous building boom, but as the mayor and countless others have pointed out, that boom has lacked architectural imagination,” said architect Mark Pasnik, one of the biennial’s three curators and a principal at the architectural practice Over, Under.
Grove by GLD
“The Biennial connects the public to the region’s inventive emerging practices – and offers a way forward. If we want more sophisticated buildings and urban spaces, we should enlist practices like these in the making of our city.”
Grove by GLD
The temporary installations have been erected in the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a downtown Boston park that was built on the site of a former highway. An aerial rope sculpture by artist Janet Echelman was recently installed in the same area.
Grove by GLD
Design studio GLD, founded in 2010, has used resin-infused fibreglass to create balloon-like forms that sit atop a white steel structure.
Grove by GLD
Called Grove, the installation is meant to evoke a dense cluster of trees. Visitors can see inside the hollow structure through nine viewing holes.
Grove by GLD
“By peeking inside, visitors not only see the voids that were formed around inflated mold, but might also catch glimpses of others doing the same,” said the firm.
Grove by GLD
“Such chance encounters are common to urban life, but here they are exaggerated, reframed and celebrated as a moment of both estrangement and connection.”
Grove by GLD. Photograph by Jane Messinger
Cristina Parreño Architecture, founded in 2009, has created a 17-foot-high (4.8 metre) sculpture made of 350 custom-fabricated glass blocks.
Tectonics of Transparency: The Tower by Cristina Parreño Architecture
Called Tectonics of Transparency: The Tower, the installation is part of an ongoing series by the firm that examines “the innate capacity of glass to withstand extraordinary compressive forces.”
Tectonics of Transparency: The Tower by Cristina Parreño Architecture
The sculpture is also meant to refer to its context. “The piece invokes the Greenway’s infrastructural and maritime heritage,” said the firm. “Working as a periscope, it recuperates the views from the elevated highway that only two decades ago rumbled overhead. From the more distant past, it recalls a lighthouse guarding the harbour before the city extended its landform into the water.”
Tectonics of Transparency: The Tower by Cristina Parreño Architecture
Landing Studio, established in 2005, has created 18 pole-like sculptures made of weathered oak pilings from a shipyard in the Boston Harbor.
Tectonics of Transparency: The Tower by Cristina Parreño Architecture
The pilings were sliced into more than 1,000 cross sections using a chainsaw, with each two-inch-thick (five centimetre) piece sorted into one of three categories – round, “chewies”, which are pock-marked pieces that have been nibbled on by marine borers, and oblongs.
Marginal by Landing Studio
The installation’s name, Marginal, refers to so-called marginal wharfs, which typically are flush with the shoreline and are commonly found in New England.
Marginal by Landing Studio
“Marginal wharfs are characteristic features of New England, although many are in decay today,” the firm said.
Marginal by Landing Studio
“Remaining from earlier industrial and shipping eras, they have now become markers of the interface between the ground and the sea, a dynamic landscape of tidal movement, ecological diversity, and contestation between the interests of expanding human development and the imminent threat of rising sea levels.”
Marginal by Landing Studio
MASS Design Group, founded in 2008, has created a rounded structure made of machined lumber connected by customised metal joints.
Marginal by Landing Studio
The lattice-like structure covers a curving pathway. Called Lo-Fab, the installation was designed using high-tech fabrication techniques and was assembled by volunteers.
Marginal by Landing Studio
“The formation of an intimate space for only a few occupants at any one time identifies this spot on the Greenway as a contemplative retreat in the midst of the whirling activity of people and vehicles,” said the firm.
Marginal by Landing Studio
“Our work seeks to provide infrastructure, buildings, and the human and physical systems necessary for growth, dignity and well-being,” said the firm.
MASS Design Group
The 2015 Design Biennial Boston installations are on view until 25 September.
“Boston has such a vibrant talent pool of designers, and these four installations remind us of how creative those designers can be when given opportunities,” said Boston’s mayor Marty Walsh. “I want Boston to be a municipal arts leader, and putting this type of exciting and thoughtful work into the public realm is what gets us closer to that goal.”
MASS Design Group
Images courtesy of Design Biennial Boston, Landing Studio and MASS Design Group.
Our latest pick of new designs includes some striking animations for Monotype by FIELD, a charming pop-up book by graphic designers Louis Rigaud and Anouck Boisrobert, pattern-based branding for a dessert boutique by A Friend of Mine and a beautifully crafted catalogue for the new YSL retrospective in Durham by Here.
A Friend of Mine – Bibelot
Bibelot is a European style dessert boutique in Melbourne, Australia, home to a patisserie, gelateria, coffee bar, chocolate shop and ‘tea salon’. Local studio A Friend of Mine (founded by Suzy Tuxen in 2009) was commissioned to create branding, packaging and signage for the shop, and designed an elegant system based on mosaic tiling. “Wanting to marry branding, packaging and signage together to evoke a strong sense of place, and drew upon mosaic tiling techniques as a design reference point,” says the studio. “We custom crafted typography with intricate tiling patterns in a bold geometric typeface to give a sense of modernity and avoid a pastiche look.”
The monochrome palette and sans type create an upmarket feel, while splashes of colour and patterns on packaging add a playful touch. The studio also worked with Breathe Architecture on mosaic signage in the boutique, which unites the point of sale displays and interiors.
FIELD x Monotype
Motion design studio FIELD has been working with Monotype this year to create Type Reinvented, a series of digital installations using the company’s typefaces, which are inspired by ideas about the future of typography. The studio created an elegant display using Didot for Le Book’s annual event in Paris, followed by an interactive display (above) for Resonate Festival in Belgrade, which presented viewers with ‘an infinite journey’ through Unicode glyphs in 96 font variations of Noto Sans, the only typeface designed to represent every symbol in every language.
For this year’s Cannes Lions, FIELD created Responsive Energy, a series of animations exploring type in context with space, material and light. “In a percussive sequence, bold letter shapes define spatial compositions, melt into tactile surfaces, and form out of dynamic generative processes,” says the studio. Films feature some striking visuals and some excellent sound design by Jochen Mader.
Creative Direction: Marcus Wendt. Production: Valtteri Laihanen, Vera-Maria Glahn. Responsive Energy animation by Julien Simshauser, Matt Evans, Fernando Magalhães. Sound design: Jochen Mader. Glyph Index Software Development: David Li, Patrick Fürst, Tak Fung, Marco Weber.
That’s My Hat
That’s My Hat is a pop-up adventure book for children, created by graphic designers Louis Rigaud and Anouck Boisrobert. It tells the story of a small boy who travels across a city, visiting a library, zoo, shop, hairdressers and other buildings along the way. Each page features a clever pop-up structure, with colourful illustrations and geometric patterns throughout. It’s a pleasure to read, and the latest in a series of imaginative titles by Rigaud and Boisobert.
That’s My Hat is published in the UK on September 14 by Thames & Hudson and costs £14.95
RKCR/Y&R – Camden Lock Books
RKCR/Y&R has created a lovely series of print ads for independent bookshop Camden Lock Books, highlighting the results of a recent survey which found that sales of e-books are falling while paper book sales are on the rise. The campaign offers reasons why paper books are better than digital ones, with lines such as ‘you can’t get an author to sign an e-book’ and ‘you don’t have to turn of a book before take off’.
Page ads were created using pages from books, with individual words from the page highlighted to create the headline for each ad. “The illustrations were designed to be bright, colourful and eye-catching, everything that an e-book is not,” says art director Tim Brooks.
Here Design – Yves Saint Laurent: Style is Eternal
The exhibition is on display at Bowes Museum in Durham until October 25, and includes 50 iconic pieces of clothing by the designer, as well as sketches and photographs from throughout his career.
Here’s catalogue features a blind embossed monogram on the cover, which the studio says is inspired by the timeless nature of Saint Laurent’s work and his famous quote, “fashion fades, style is eternal”. Inside, bright pink stitching and end papers reference his shocking pink Zepherine dress, which is being shown in the exhibition for the first time since it featured in a fashion show at Blenheim Palace in 1958.
The book also pays homage to craft with open binding and different textures and paper stocks, and an ‘Alchemy of Style’ section is printed on gloss art paper to echo the design of the exhibition space, where the same section is housed in an all-white glass box.
“We wanted the book to become a souvenir of an idea, rather than just an assemblage of photographs and information. We therefore designed the book as something both useful and beautiful, rooted in the authenticity of Yves Saint Laurent’s visual and verbal worldview,” says Here.
Music – British Fashion Council Annual Review 2014/2015
Music has created a sleek annual review for the British Fashion Council, with an all-black cover housed in a foil blocked slipcase.
An acrostic design spells out the word ‘influence’ alongside the Fashion Council’s key goals. Inside, tip-ins separate chapters on its five ‘strategic pillars’ (business, education, innovation & digital, investment and reputation), while stats are broken up by quotes from industry experts about the industry in bold type.
The publication also features gilt edging and photographic spreads showcasing imagery from the British Fashion Awards and London Collections: Men. Music creative Lottie Brzozowski says the book’s “confident aesthetic” and “bold tone” is designed to make “as much of a statement as the content itself”:
Something I like about the EZSTAX system is how the designers have considered the entire process of clothes storage, from laundry room to closet. Thus the system is meant to be brought to the laundry room, with the clothes folded and “loaded” there, then brought back to the larger storage unit and dropped in, pre-organized.
This idea of a storage system with removable, mobile elements is intriguing, so I’m looking around to see if there are any other precedents or applications. The closest I could find is this project on Lumberjocks by user Kabashu, though it’s to do with organizing tools rather than clothes.
“[I got] sick and tired of carrying black plastic cases in and out of my shop every time I have a travel job,” he writes. “Tired of opening and closing those same cases every time I need a tool in the shop.” Here’s his DIY solution:
“Problem solved. Things I use the most all in two portable boxes that fit into drawers when I’m in the shop and easily loaded into trailer when working off site. Even made a portable charging station with programmable timer to keep them fresh. Long overdue project!”
Again, this seems like a great 1.0 for what could be a very efficient system. What would those of you with shops do to improve upon this design?
While some of us keep all our contact information in digital forms, many people still prefer to keep paper, including business cards. But for business cards to be useful, they need to be kept where they can be found, in some sort of order.
The business card file cabinet from Princess International is a clever idea for those who don’t need a mobile solution, and it holds a lot of cards. However, it has the same problem some full-size file cabinets do: Those aren’t full-extension drawers, so it’s hard to reach any cards in the back.
The business card holder from Lipper International has three dividers to help keep the cards upright when the box isn’t full—but they can be removed to save space as the box fills. The box is also expandable, so it can accommodate a growing collection while not taking up more desktop space than needed. However, making the box expandable results in two widths, and some purchasers have noted that the index dividers don’t quite fit in the narrower sections.
The open top will appeal to those who work best when things are visible and readily accessible, but not those who need to protect the cards from dust or other pollutants. And without a lid, the cards will go flying if the box is accidentally tipped over.
The business card box from Semikolon has a lid—but there’s no way to remove the lid entirely, which end users would sometimes like to do. The three internal dividers help keep the cards upright. This box uses individual-letter index dividers, which means the dividers take up more room in the box than if each divider covered a range such as A-C and D-F; however, that’s a trade-off many end users are happy to make in order to find cards quicker.
The business card boxes from Organizing For You use a “spring slide assembly” to keep the cards upright. The handle on the double-row box makes it easy to haul this one around if need be. It’s designed partly for organizations which collect and share business cards from the members.
The business card box from Helit has a roller-style lid which allows the cards to be covered or not. Since this is a smaller box than some others, it makes sense to have multiple-letter dividers. But the low-contrast design on those dividers might be hard for those with poor eyesight.
The Helit Foster Series, designed by Foster + Partners and made by Helit, includes a number of desktop items; a business card box is one of them. The box is made of high-quality extruded aluminum and it has a fully removable black plastic lid which can be attached to the base of the box. The dividers here are easy to read.
It’s not clear how the dividers are situated in the box; if they are fixed in place this would be limiting, since not all sections would necessarily have the same number of cards. A nice feature is that the dividers seem to tilt forward and back, making it easier to see all the cards as the box gets filled.
This basic business card file sold by The Container Store has one distinct advantage: It doesn’t assume the groupings should be alphabetic. I’ve used this box with clients, and we’ve created sections based on function: business contacts, friends, medical professionals, etc.
Another desktop alternative is the good old Rolodex rotary file, which is now available with pockets you can insert the cards into. There are both covered and open designs. Each section can include exactly as many cards as needed. It’s a design that has endured because it works well for many end users. However, purchasers have noted that sometimes the cards slip out of the pockets.
Those who want to carry their business cards with them will want a business card book or binder. Bound business card books can be frustrating to used because it’s hard to keep the cards organized as more get added. But business card binders, which often include index dividers and which allow pages to be added to sections as needed, can solve that problem. (They also allow pages to get replaced if they get torn or soiled.)
Having seen people put rubber bands around business card books to keep them closed, I appreciate that the EasyPAG organizer comes with an elastic cord.
The Contact Keeper is a unique product, designed so end users can keep business cards together with relevant notes about the person and/or business. It’s going to take a lot more space than other business card organizers, but anyone who gets frustrated trying to fit a bunch of notes on the back of a business card might appreciate this design.
There’s abundant advice, here on Unclutterer and elsewhere, on overcoming procrastination so incomplete work gets finished. But in some circumstances, the best approach might be to forget about completing certain things.
I’m in a book club that’s been meeting for years, and I just finished our latest selection — a book I really enjoyed.
But I haven’t enjoyed all of our choices, and when that happens I just stop reading that month’s book. Fortunately, my book club still welcomes me to attend the meeting, and it’s interesting to hear the different reactions. Even if those who didn’t finish the book were not welcome, I’d still give up on the book. Time is such a precious resource, and I’m not going to spend my limited reading time with a book I’m not enjoying.
If you feel guilty about abandoning a book, it might help to know that some authors quickly give up on books that don’t grab them. Eleanor Brown doesn’t finish about 20 percent of the books she starts. She stops as soon as she’s no longer interested, which could be on page 2 or page 150. John Scalzi writes, “I put down books the instant they bore me.” As Laura Miller notes in a New York Times article, Michael Chabon gives up on books after just a page or two. Myla Goldberg goes a bit further, but still only gives a book 15-20 pages to convince her it’s worth her time.
I make similar choices when it comes to reading news stories. I’ll sometimes begin an article and realize I don’t feel a need to know anything more than what’s in the title, or maybe the first sentence or first paragraph. Or sometimes I begin a long feature article I thought I’d enjoy, but I don’t. In these cases, I stop reading the article and move on.
It’s also fine to give up on a movie, although you’ll want to be considerate of others if you’re watching in a theater rather than at home. (It’s easier to leave if you’re on an aisle than if you’re in the middle of a row.) And you might decide to stop watching a particular TV show or to abandon a weekly show mid-season.
I also see lots of people with partially completed craft projects that got set aside many years ago. When Susan Reimer of The Baltimore Sun asked people about long-unfinished craft projects, she got stories about a dollhouse kit that had been unfinished for 27 years and an unfinished sampler that got moved to eight houses. The same thing can happen with woodworking projects and other such activities.
If the person no longer has any real interest in completing that project, for whatever reason, it makes sense to just let it go. It can be a relief to acknowledge a project is not going to happen and to dispose of the supplies set aside for it by selling, giving away, or repurposing them for more compelling projects.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
