Hasta La Ideas

This next item in the UnBeige Gift Guide combines four of our favorite favorite things: modernism, minimalism, photography, and Todd Eberle. A longtime contributor to Vanity Fair, Eberle defies categorization: one day he’s revealing the beauty in overlooked architectural spaces (abstracted elevator banks, ceilings, bathrooms) or immortalizing the works of Donald Judd and the next he’s making a luminous portrait of the uber-multitasker: Martha Stewart. Part of the pleasure of paging through Eberle’s 30-year career in Empire of Space (Rizzoli) is that the book, designed by Richard Pandiscio, unfolds as a series of paired images, visual juxtapositions inspired by the Walker Evans book, First and Last. “It allowed me absolute freedom to mix subjects,” Eberle has said. “I wanted to have my first book represent what I do. I think it’s hard to come up with a point of view when making a book and the pairings solved many things for me.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House
♦ C is for Can Can Pendant Light
♦ D is for Dress by D-Crit

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Marcel Wanders loves a flash of brocade. The prolific Dutch designer has made a cheeky signature out of mixing ornate patterns with clean-lined shapes, bold colors, and modern materials for projects ranging from theatrical interiors and iconic chairs to MAC cosmetics and harlequin-patterned “jester” socks for British department store Marks and Spencer. Our gift guide pick is the Can Can pendant light ($232 at YLighting), which Wanders describes as “a dancing, seductive lamp that only shows her hidden secrets from a more private position.” Designed for FLOS, the linear suspension light conceals a delicate floral decoration that filters the light as it is diffused. During ICFF, FLOS’s New York showroom celebrated Can Can with the help of a tattoo artist, who was on hand to emblazon Wanders-drawn decorative flourishes on willing flesh, and now the company has teamed up with YLighting and Wanders to host the Pattern Play Design Contest. Design lovers are invited to apply the intricate inner pattern of the Can Can pendant light in “unexpected places.” And with this group of judges—Wanders, FLOS CEO Piero Gandini, and Sean Calahan, CEO of YLighting—the more creative and unusual the better. Entries are due by January 15, and full contest details are here.

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It’s that time of year again, when design lovers around the world seek out gifts that surprise, delight, and won’t be swiftly returned for store credit. In the coming days, we’ll offer an alphabet of suggestions in the UnBeige Gift Guide, which we hope will also supply some ideas on how to spend the seasonal smattering of gift certificates (and store credit) that will soon be burning a hole in your pocket. Our first pick: African Metropolitan Architecture (Rizzoli), the sublime new book by David Adjaye. The set of seven slipcased volumes is the culmination of the Tanzanian-born, London-based architect’s decade-long project to document the built environment of every major African city. It’s a fresh look at a continent that the world has come to know through exotic images from National Geographic.

“I just wanted ordinary pictures. Everyday life,” said Adjaye last week at Design Miami, where he was celebrated as Designer of the Year. “There’s a sense that Africa’s all a jungle, with savannahs, animals running around, and some nice natives.” In fact, with 54 countries and 1.5 billion people, Africa is on an urbanization streak. Growth of cities on the continent is now outpacing that of China. “But nobody’s talking about Africa. I couldn’t even talk to architects about it,” he added. In the course of visiting every African city, Adjaye looked beyond the political boundaries to examine the distinctive aspects of six regions: the maghreb, the sahel, savannah and grassland, mountain and gighveld, desert, and forest. A book of essays about African urban development rounds out the edition. “The landscape of Africa is one of the most primal and powerful environments that we have on this planet,” said Adjaye. “It’s nurtured a lot of artists and creative people, and even when architecture doesn’t realize what’s happening, it’s actually authoring architecture, and that’s what this book is about.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

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(Photos courtesy Wright)

What do you get the design lover who has everything? The answer can inevitably be found in the sublimely photographed catalogue for Wright’s bi-annual Important Design sale, and this season the Chicago auction house has outdone itself with works that include jaw-dropping Gio Ponti pieces designed for Villa Arreaza in Caracas (Santa, we’ll take the dining table!), the largest of Bertoia’s hollow-copper gongs, and a Rembrandt Bugatti cast-bronze condor that would make an ideal Christmas surprise for the Mulleavy sisters. And grab one of those giant Lexus-style red bows for the top lot: the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Kenneth Laurent House and furnishings. The Rockford, Illinois property has been consigned by its original owner, a disabled veteran who recognized Wright’s open-plan designs as a beautiful and functional fit for his wheelchair. Laurent and his wife became chummy with the architect and later commissioned interior furnishings for the home, which Wright referred to as his “little gem.” The place goes on the auction block at Wright on December 15 and is estimated to fetch between $500,000 and $700,000.

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Swiss businessman Peter Blum and his wife, Linda, loved Swatch watches. Their passion for the colorful plastic timepieces (which are credited with saving a Swiss watch industry decimated by the “Quartz crisis” of the 1970s and early 1980s) led them to amass a historic collection of 4,350 Swatches, give or take an interchangeable Pop Swatch face or two, and on November 24, Phillips de Pury & Company will auction the entire collection as a single lot at a special Swatch-a-riffic sale in Hong Kong. Among the thousands of specimens included in the Blums’ softly ticking hoard are a bunch of prototypes, hybrids, and production variants never offered for sale, including a number from the R&D phase that preceded Swatch’s 1983 commercial debut. There’s even an elusive Swatch Puff, the first of 120 such angora fur-rimmed timepieces ever created. And there are artsy Swatches a-plenty, including production models for Swatches created in collaboration with Keith Haring, Mimmo Paladino‘s impish “Oigol Oro,” and a signed set of Swatches featuring the work of Alfred Hofkunst. Meanwhile, Phillips chairman Simon de Pury took matters into his own hands when it came to Swatch art. In the early 1990s, he handed over his substantial Swatch collection to Arman, explains de Pury in his introduction to the auction catalogue. “He melted all of them into Plexiglas, transforming them into a spectacular work of art.”

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