Hasta La Ideas

Our series covering modernist architecture in Palm Springs continues with the city’s municipal building, designed by Swiss architect Albert Frey to include large canopies over its entrances – one with palm trees growing through its centre.

Frey – who was prolific in the city – completed the Palm Springs City Hall in 1952, in the modernist style popular of the location and era.

Like many of his designs, the building is integrated into the surrounding terrain. Its outdoor walkways appeal to the sunny, arid climate suitable for outdoor spaces, while landscaping includes sections of grassy lawns with flower beds and mature trees.

The low-lying structure is organised around its main entrance, where a flat roof covered in corrugated metal extends from the doorway. Painted pale turquoise underneath and yellow around the sides, this expansive canopy creates a shaded area for approaching visitors on the sun-drenched south facade.

A giant hole in the centre of the entrance canopy allows a group of three palm trees to grow up through, around the base of which are curved benches. Embossed lettering spells out the building’s name on the front of the portico.

A secondary entrance to the right is also protected by a canopy. This one is circular – as if cut out from the first – supported by four cylindrical pillars, and painted white. A motto that reads “The people are the city” wraps around its front, taken from act three, scene one of William Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus.

Frey drew from the local area when selecting colours and textures for the project. The exterior facade is a light taupe hue to match the desert beyond.

The aqua colour on the main porches was selected to deter birds from building nests, as it resembles the sky, and can similarly be found on homes in Florida’s Key West for the same reason.

Colonnades around the perimeter create partially enclosed walkways. Panels formed from grids of white tube sections allow air to pass into these paths while shading them from strong sunlight.

Born in Switzerland in 1903, Frey began his architecture career in Belgium, before moving to Paris to work for Le Corbusier. While at the famed architect’s atelier, Frey contributed to many significant modernist buildings including the iconic Villa Savoye.

Soon after, he left to work in the United States. During a spell in New York City, Frey designed the ready-to-assemble Aluminaire House in 1931, which was recently moved from the East Coast to Palm Springs and assembled in a local park.

In 1939, Frey moved to California and worked with American architect John Porter Clark for almost twenty years.

He later collaborated with Robson Chambers on the Tramway Gas Station, which now serves as Palm Springs Visitors Center, and completed a variety of private residences in the city.

Palm Springs celebrates its architectural pedigree during the annual Modernism Week, taking place this year from 15 to 25 February 2018. To coincide, we’re profiling some of its best buildings, including E Stewart Williams’ Twin Palms estate, John Lautner’s Elrod House and Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House.

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Children with type-1 diabetes can administer insulin in a way that is both easy and fun, using this toolkit created by Mexican designer Renata Souza Luque.

Presented during the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town this week, Thomy is an easy-to-carry kit containing a child-friendly insulin pen and a set of temporary tattoos, designed to make life easier for young people suffering with the medical condition.

Souza Luque, a product-design graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York, starting developing the project after her seven-year-old cousin Tomas was diagnosed.

Like around 80,000 children each year, he found himself in a situation where he had to inject himself with insulin as often as five times a days, to prevent the level of blood sugar in his body increasing to dangerous levels.

“From one day to another, Thomas has to deal with his fear of needles,” explained Souza Luque.

“I realised how much this was stealing from Thomas’ childhood,” she said. “That’s when I decided I wanted to design something for children with type-1 diabetes, something fun, something they could look forward to.”

Her aim with the Thomy kit was to create something her cousin would be proud to carry around in his backpack.

The two products inside are both designed to make the process of injecting insulin safe and easy. They respond to a series of three issues that Souza Luque uncovered during her research. The first is that the site of injection must be rotated, to prevent lumps of fat developing.

“When injecting insulin, it is crucial to rotate the injection site,” she said. “But it’s very hard to remember where you have already done so.”

As an alternative to the hard-to-use paper templates that are usually issued to diabetes sufferers, Souza Luque designed a set of temporary tattoos featuring playful designs, from outer-space imagery to underwater scenes.

These tattoos create a map of injection spots, identified as coloured dots. Users use an alcohol pad to remove a single coloured dot – ensuring that the area is disinfected – then administer the injection.

“After roughly thee days the tattoo will have no more colour, indicating that it is time to remove the tattoo, choose a new design and move on to a new injection site,” said Souza Luque.

The second product in the kit aims to solve the two other issues the designer identified: that the pens typically used for injection are not suited to a child’s hand, and that they don’t make it easy to administer a full dose.

“Children have a hard time reaching the release on the top, and they don’t have the coordination nor the dexterity to hold it in place,” she said.

Her design is a pen with a short, easy-to-hold body, which is compatible with standard insulin cartridges and pen needles. It also has a unique feature – a release valve that is wrapped in thermocromic plastic, meaning it changes colour when it comes into contact with skin.

“It motivates the patient to keep the needle in their body longer, ensuring that the full dose is administered, not only this, it distracts the kid when the needle is in their body,” said Souza Luque.

To test the success of the project, the designer sent her cousin the product without any instruction manual, and asked her family to send her photos of the results. One of the images she received showed one of Thomas’ brothers – who doesn’t have diabetes – wearing the tattoos.

“I knew then that I had hit my goal. I had made things better for Thomas,” she said.

Souza Luque completed the project in 2017, as part of her studies at Parsons. It was a national finalist in the US edition of the James Dyson Award 2017.

She presented it on the second day of the Design Indaba conference, taking place from 21 to 23 February 2018. Dezeen is media partner for the event.

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The more attuned I am to practicing simple living, the fewer places in my home have hidden corners of clutter. There are some places, though, where disorder thrives and I realize that I am completely okay with it. In fact, these areas serve as little humbling reminders that I am human and am far from perfect.

Case in point: My sock drawer.

Did I just hear you gasp? Are you completely horrified? Are the hairs standing up on the back of your neck as you compose an e-mail to me offering to organize my sock drawer for me? Take a deep breath and move your fingers off the keyboard. It is going to be okay.

You should know that all of the other drawers in my dresser are beautifully organized (imagine the successful use of separators) and contain little to no disarray. It really is just my sock drawer that looks hideous. My husband’s sock drawer is ordered by type of sock (dress or sport) and color coordinated (a helpful activity for those who are color blind), which is strange since I’m the one who often folds and puts away his laundry. My sock drawer is messy, however, and the whole world has not collapsed around me.

I’m mentioning my sock drawer because people can have the misconception that being organized means that every single minute aspect of one’s life is in pristine order. Order is a goal, yes — but so is sanity. Being organized and living simply is about removing distractions that get in the way of a remarkable life. Right now, my sock drawer is not a hindrance to the life I want to lead. Maybe one day it will be, and I will buy some dividers and establish order in my sock drawer. Until then, it is one of a small handful of places where disorder exists in my home, and that’s okay. Really, it is.

Do you have a space where disorder reigns, but the whole of your organization system isn’t collapsing as a result? Feel welcome to tell us about it in the comments. Get it off your chest. You are, after all, only human.

This post has been updated since its original publication in 2008.

Post written by Erin Doland

Leandro Erlich réalise ce magnifique trompe-l’oeil au sein de Bon Marché, reproduisant la forme d’un noeud. Le grand magasin ayant commissionné une oeuvre carte blanche, le créateur argentin a voulu rendre hommage aux cieux de Paris en créant un monde suspendu par le biais de cette sculpture toute en légèreté.

In this week’s video, Eric Strebel casts a series of concept car models and reminds us that industrial design often involves a lot of bodies. Here he shows you his part of the process, which also includes designer Brook Banham, modeler Claas Kuhnen and Joe Fournier’s Millennium Mold & Tool.

The project was done for the 2018 North American International Auto Show, and the object being made is “the Axalta Iris concept vehicle that was used to unveil their StarLite color of the year,” Strebel explains. “All of this work was done in Michigan, U.S.A. Even the polyurethane resin used for the casting was from a Michigan company.”