Hasta La Ideas

“Get smart. Go to the library. Don’t read magazines.” Such was Michael Graves’ advice to young architects last month during a panel at “Reconsidering Postmodernism,” a real doozy of a conference organized by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art in New York. It was Graves’ way of encouraging a broad-based, historically informed approach at a time when “object buildings” and torqued shapes make headlines but not, in his view, an architecture of the city. “Can’t we call this Gaga architecture?” he asked. “Lady Gaga has a different dress everytime we see her.” (To which fellow panelist Paul Goldberger replied, “I did once refer to Zaha Hadid as the Lady Gaga of architecture.”) Graves has plenty of fans at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, which has announced that he is the winner of the 2012 Richard H. Driehaus Prize, established in 2003 to honor “lifetime contributions to traditional, classical, and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world.” Members of the jury (which included Goldberger, Witold Rybczynski, and Adele Chatfield-Taylor, president of the American Academy in Rome) commended Graves’ “commitment to the traditional city—in its human scale, complexity, and vitality—as emblematic of a time-tested sustainability.” He’ll receive $200,000 and a bronze miniature of the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates during a March 24 ceremony in Chicago. The Driehaus Prize has previously been awarded to wizards of classicism such as Robert A.M. Stern, Allan Greenberg, and Demetri Porphyrios.

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Deck the halls with LCWs (a rare rosewood version of the iconic chair sold for $7,500, not including commissions, last week at Sotheby’s), because ’tis the season for the television debut of Eames: The Architect and the Painter. Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey’s new documentary about the husband-wife design powerhouse of Charles and Ray Eames airs tonight at 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) as the 25th anniversary season finale of American Masters.

“Modern design was born from the marriage of art and industry,” notes narrator James Franco at the beginning of the feature (and in the trailer, below). “The Eames Office was born from the marriage of Ray Kaiser, a painter who rarely painted, and Charles Eames, an architecture school dropout who never got his license.” For this first documentary to be made about the couple since their deaths, Cohn and Jersey sought to look beyond the giddy publicity photos and molded-plywood marvels to explore the private world of the Eames Office and the designers themselves. They plunged into archival material ranging from films to love letters and interviewed family members—Charles Eames’ daughter Lucia, and grandson Eames Demetrios—as well as Eames Office alumni such as Jeannine Oppewall, Deborah Sussman, and Gordon Ashby. The Architect and the Painter mixes mesmerizing clips from the Eames’ films and exhibitions for clients like IBM, Polaroid, and the U.S. government with never-before-seen interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of the designers at home and in their studio. Meanwhile, Herman Miller has launched a delightful companion website for those who want to immerse themselves in all things Eames before or after viewing the documentary.

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“Glimpses of the USA (pictured) made [Charles and Ray Eames’] career soar, as well it should have. Charles’ greatest interest was in ideas. Glimpses of the USA was not to show off; I think he just loved doing what he did. When he did the do-nothing machine, for instance, that was just because he liked to play. This was a guy who never grew up—he was never ashamed of what he did.

I think Glimpses of the USA was their biggest impact. They were lovers—with one another, with the world, and with their work. And that came through, so that it wasn’t just information well told (which it was). It was a kind of a love affair with America that Charles had that made him a good propagandist, because he really believed that this was a good country for him and for the rest of us. I think the inspiration derived from the enthusiasm and the commitment, as well as from any mechanics of design. So while the chairs changed their careers as designers, Glimpses of the USA changed their public roles as filmmakers and communicators.”

-Filmmaker Bill Jersey, whose feature-length documentary, Eames: The Architect and the Painter, premieres Monday on PBS

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Would you like to start your Friday morning spending a couple of minutes with rapper Ice Cube while he talks about Charles and Ray Eames? Why did we even bother asking? Of course you do. Fortunately, the good people at Pacific Standard Time have delivered with this particularly nicely shot short film, taking you on a brief and somewhat bizarre journey through Los Angeles and architecture:

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In the throes of a massive renovation, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is a hive of design news. Today the institution announced that it has raised the $54 million required for the overhaul, a collaboration between design architect Gluckman Mayner Architects and executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle that will increase Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibition space by 60 percent (to approximately 16,000 square feet), as well as reconfigure conservation and collection-storage facilities. Meanwhile, much progress has already been made: renovation is complete on the museum’s two townhouses, which house the—new and improved!—National Design Library, the master’s program in the history of decorative arts and design, and administrative offices. Now comes the main event: renovating the Carnegie Mansion, a task that entails historic preservation (including restoring the exterior masonry and freshening up the wrought-iron fence) and is aiming for LEED certification. When the museum reopens in 2013, visitors will discover a spectacular, new third-floor gallery where the library used to be, as well as expanded and restored galleries on first and second floors.

“It is thrilling to see our vision for Cooper-Hewitt’s redesign becoming a reality,” said Bill Moggridge, director of the museum, in a statement issued today. “Restoring and transforming the Carnegie Mansion and elevating and expanding the museum’s online user experience will broadly increase access to the museum’s rich resources, scholarship, and collections.” Renovation on the digital front will be masterminded by Aussie tech guru Seb Chan, the newly appointed director of digital and emerging media. He comes to Cooper-Hewitt from the the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, where he brought the museum’s collection online, integrated digital content production into everyday practices, and pioneered the use of mobile devices, QR codes, and iPads to deliver gallery experiences. Chan names “increasing public access while communicating the important role of design in building a better world” as among his top priorities for Cooper-Hewitt. Tonight mediabistro.com founder and hostess with the mostest Laurel Touby opens her home for a party to welcome Chan and toast to successful expansion in the physical and virtual worlds.

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