Hasta La Ideas

As the talented and exceedingly charming gentleman of Rich Brilliant Willing (a.k.a. Theo Richardson, Charles Brill, and Alexander Williams) head across the pond for the London Design Festival, which kicks off on Saturday, join them for a video interview produced by our friends at Design Within Reach. Click below to watch the trio discuss their design process —which only occasionally calls for consensual “duking it out,” their way with materials, and how their own decidedly 21st century aesthetic resonates with that of midcentury masters.

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We hate to fly and yet love airplanes. We eschew airplane food yet can spend hours happily discussing the EPCOT-y optimism of the curvy blue plastic silverware favored by Icelandair, the smart lighting choices (and kooky liveries) of Virgin America, or the evolution of Delta’s increasingly unhinged pre-flight safety video. We wish that the short-lived dramatic series Pan Am had not been grounded after one season. And so it is with nostalgia for a “golden age of air travel” that we never actually experienced—and yet can get an intoxicating whiff of in the streamlined, space-age-polymer forms of Marc Newson—that we anticipate Keith Lovegrove‘s Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet, out next month from Laurence King. Charting a course through interior design and fashion (pass the Pucci), technicolor food, and logos a-go-go, the book shows how airborne culture has changed from the 1920s to today’s sweatpants-and-flip-flops milieu. Here’s a cinematic sneak peek made by Lovegrove and Andrew Lennox:

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Surely one of the most mesmerizing installations at this year’s Salone del Mobile was Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec‘s “Quiet Motion,” a quartet of cork platforms that rotated, slowly and silently, in the cloister of a Milanese monastery. The installation, presented in partnership with BMWi, was designed “as an allegorical interpretation of movement and contemplation,” according to the brothers, who interpreted the concept of sustainable mobility with materials including fabrics made of the sustainable wool yarn that will be used in the electric car’s seat upholstery and lightweight carbon columns created using renewable energy sources. Here’s a cinematic souvenir of the project: the Quiet Motion film, directed by Juriaan Booij:

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Taking a good photo of a great building is no easy task, as Flickr or Instagram can demonstrate. Meanwhile, even the most expansive Pinterest page of stunning architectural images is likely to feature the work of a relatively small group of photographers–those who have mastered the tricky art and science of capturing the utility, spirit, and beauty of the designed environment. Many of those names are followed by “Esto,” the firm built on the image collection of Ezra Stoller. Esto assignment photographer Albert Vecerka was on hand last week at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Center for the latest in the museum’s “Harlem Focus” series. “I look to tell a story about a place; a neighborhood, a building, a room,” Vecerka has said. “Looking for the right light, right day, or right time of day is a part of that narrative, and it is no different for commercial assignments than for personal projects.” Watch the event below and then mark your calendar for June 26, when architectural historian John Reddick will be joined by curators and gardeners from the Central Park Conservatory Gardens to talk “Garden Design: The Art of Color, Variety, and Form.”

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Holocaust survivor Ben Baseman spent four years fighting off Nazis in the birch forests of what was then Poland (now part of Ukraine). Decades later, the episode inspired his son, Gary, to create the Buckingham Warrior, a “defender of strong ideals and a stark reminder to the fragility of our own ecology.” The artist, illustrator, and cult toy maker’s multi-headed deer character comes alive in a new MOCAtv animated short released to coincide with Baseman’s megashow, “The Door Is Always Open,” on view through August 18 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Directed by David Charles and animated by Peter Markowski, the allegorical tale plays out against a raging score by the South-African rap-rave duo Die Antwoord.

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