Charts rock

Chart on the left about says it all, doesn't it?

Philippe Starck at TED

I never cared much for Philippe Starck until I saw this video. No self-aggrandizement - no slides of his work - just humility. Design may not be "oosless," but I agree that it creates better fiction than reality.

Vanishing Point

I finally watched Vanishing Point (1971) last night. I have no idea why it took me so long. What an excellent, excellent film.

Crittern Barn lives!

The folks at Critter Barn found a plot of land near the Tulip City Airport. I thought that the project would be completely, and forever, sidelined by the Great Recession. Tremble and despair at the eternal appeal of furry creatures!

Nostradamus works for AT&T

These predictions from 1993 are remarkable accurate... worth a watch!

Odds and Ends

Felini's 8 1/2 was on IFC the other day, and I had to get a picture of those glasses. Sadly, I couldn't wait around for the beautiful sunglasses that show up later.

This is my stepdad Dave's '95 Jeep. Over this past week, I sandblasted, primed, and painted the wheels to match the forest green body. We turned the whitewalls in when we remounted the tires. Looks pretty tough, I think.

Finally --- that's no dual monitor setup. That is the power of TWO desktops?!

Yet another portfolio update

The last piece of the puzzle: Standard Chartered Bank Experience Design.

New Grcic Table

This guy kicks so much ass.

Remember when?

I lived here, once...

NeoCon 2009 Aftermath

Somehow, Caitlin snagged tickets to a NeoCon afterparty at the House of Blues. What began as an academic day of research and study quickly devolved into a celebration fit for Bacchus. There were snacks!

And dancing.

Mostly, though, there was mugging for the camera.

More Portfolio updates

I must have job interviews next week... just updated my K60 Lounge Chair project. Reordered a few things, improved some renderings (you can see the original cover page below). Could a SCB update be far behind?

let's not forget

While we remember the heroism of all those involved in the Apollo space program, let's not forget the efforts of this terribly brave, yet terribly unlucky, man, the George Harrison of Apollo 11.

Another Google Blanket Update!

I swear, this is the last time that I update this project. I think, now, it's finally at the level at which it needs to be.

Related: 100th post! Updates have been scarce lately; I've been considering grabbing the rudder and changing the direction of this blog, now that I don't have tales from the East to share. Hopefully a new portfolio website is in the cards soon, as well as experiments with Rhino and Alias, more furniture concepts, and maybe even more car design crit...

neocon 2009

some photographs from this year's NEOCON furniture fair in beautiful downtown Chicago. this was my third year attending... i'm starting to get familiar with a lot of the furniture, so there wasn't much surprising for me this year.

definite highlight of the show: my stacking solution! this little plastic bumper, on the bottom of Haworth's Very Wire Stacker, took up the majority of my time at my internship at Haworth last summer. fun to see it real.

favorite chair from the show: Herman Miller's Setu. comfortable, flexible, constant seating surface: beautiful and functional plastic chassis. simple construction. really excellent.

i think this natural pattern, this idea, is finally on its way out.

it's not a movement, it's an abomination.

cool fabric at the show. from a distance, the print looks like clouds, but up close, it's a matrix of hundreds of different, colorful shapes. very cool stuff. very curious how the artist made the print, manually or through some computer algorithm...

portfolio update!

it's that magical time of the year!  check out the latest addition to my portfolio, the K60 Lounge Chair.  above, the quarter scale model that became one week of my life.

chair poster

things are coming together... the multiply textures and colors might be cheater tactics, but so long as the outcome functions, i'm not going to complain about it.

annie clark

she's my favorite.  her new album comes out next month, but god bless those folks at NPR if they're not streaming it right now.  for free.

41

a few weekends ago, i was blessed with the opportunity to visit the Houston Intercontinental Airport --- the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, natch.  inside, i discovered this magnificent bronze statue of number 41.  

such grace.  such contropasto.  such wind-blown elegance.

a dashing, handsome president?  mission accomplished.

more chair

it's coming along!

chair screen grab

at long last, i'm doing some work.

irish nachos

right: irish nachos

dubliner cheese

cheddar cheese

cheesy mashed potatoes

taco meat

peas

beans

green onions

radioactive green sour cream

left: green nachos

cooked spinach

fresh jalapeno peppers

green onions

green peppers

cheesy mashed potatoes

peas

beans

quacamole

el ranchero chips (in the green bag)

squeeze of lime

the double starch whammy of nachos and mashed potatoes was a true success.  

standard chartered, at long last

the odyssey is over.  my project from hong kong, a redesign of standard chartered's retail experience, is finally posted online at my coroflot webpage.  

now it's spring break!

chairs

the two boards for my midterm presentation for my chair design studio.  i'm leaning toward the second option, because it's nearly absolutely useless.  not much use for a chair that you can't put up against the wall --- unless you've got a big, beautiful space.

this has been a challenging project, and not just because i've also been trying to finish my china project at the same time.  i'm a big fan of my I.D. hooks (like, ooo, it's made out of recycled materials, or, ooo, it folds up!) and bullshit like that, but i've made myself stay away entirely.  it's been hard.  

it takes a lot of guts to get up in front of some designers and just say "this is my design, what do you think?"

buck wild

at long last, some real content.  two pictures of my full-scale plywood ergonomic buck.  she's wide and low, and i have half a mind to make some nice cushions and keep her around the living room.  

tomorrow, renderings.

change sushi

sushi we can believe in.

the future

watching a live stream on a newspaper website of our black president deliver the state of the union.  posted in real time.  sometimes i love the future.

art: sunlit couch

i promised myself i would make time to simply experiment.  it took me a little time, but i kept the promise.  beautiful and sunny morning, a nap on the couch, and a little photoshop spice.

chair 2

more chair: here, a form exploration / exploring new tools in Alias, a 3D modelling program.

koolhaus kandle

one would think that the people who invented fireworks would know how to control fireworks.  above, a famous and new rem koolhaas building that roasted down in beijing the other day.

more significantly, this chinese language website with great pictures, altered and otherwise.  as a friend back in hong kong would say, "soooo PRC!"

barcelona chair

the inspiration behind the chair below, and for any upcoming posts about my studio project, is this, Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair.  our brief for class is, natch, brief: design a timeless, elegant, and classic chair inspired by the design of a classic.  

the Barcelona chair had the most hooks to its story (maybe the most famous chair... designed for the German Pavilion in 1929... cool materials...), and I happen to like it, so it got the nod.

calatrava under construction

really awesome photo of a santiago calatrava building under construction.

side chair

preliminary model of this semester's project: chair.

japan, day ten

last day.  i won't lie, it was also the most boring.  i can't describe how exhausted i was at this point of the trip.  we only slept, maybe four hours, after our night out.  i honestly, really thought i might collapse on the walk to breakfast.

yet, i abide.

cute spelling.

we went back to shinjuku for one last look around before hopping on the plane to return to hong kong, shop for a souvenirs, for the girlfriends especially.

and to also take a few more pictures in the bright, morning sun.

tokyo.  wild style.

after walking around for a while, it was time to head back to the hostel and collect our things.  the front desk gave us directions to the nearest train to the airport.  

that's where things went wrong.  no trip is ever without drama, i suppose.

remember the picture of the tokyo subway system?  not only does it look like spaghetti, but there are two separate systems in the city, the tokyo subway and the JR lines.  we hopped on the JR, following the map and the instructions we were given.  there were no english signs in the station.  we should have known better.

four stops later and it became clear that we were on the wrong train.  we hopped off, struggled to ask someone about where to go, and then, ultimately, got back on the same train.  which, after 40 minutes, dropped us off in the middle of nowhere.  we were now less than two hours away from our flight's departure.

a kind, old lady (have i mentioned how great japan is?) waved us over and, though some creative gesturing, explained that we had to wait 45 minutes for the next train to the airport.  which would itself take another 45 to reach the airport.  it was going to be close.  we drank a hot, canned-corn drink.

we got to the airport with maybe 15 minutes to spare, mostly discouraged, but determined not to give up until it was really, completely too late.  we ran to the terminal and were treated like triage patients at the northwest terminal.  though initially they said we were too late, they were able to rush us through and get us on the plane, not three minutes before it left the gate.

one plane and one taxi later, we were back in hong kong.  for three days.

in conclusion, my visit to japan did nothing less than restore my faith in the human race.

japan, day nine

home stretch here, folks.

morning in the capsule hostel, surveying the damage.  most of the other guests had already gone, home to their wives and families.

we spent the next four hours wandering around tokyo, searching for a place to stay for the night.  one hostel after another in asakusa was booked up, or, even worse, had only one bed available.  we finally travelled deep into the heart of the city to find a room.

with what little afternoon we had left, we decided to visit the Yasakuni Shrine, Tokyo's own controversial war memorial.  i was excited.  first, the giant gate to the shrine, made out of steel and not the usual wood.  after a walk through a street market, and a quick stop at the temple proper, we found the Yushukan, the japanese war museum.

the museum did not disappoint.  after a few rooms of ancient samurai swords and armor, it was on to the real meat: revisionist WWII history:  germany had no choice but to start the war after suffering such disgrace after WWI.  japan fought in nanking with honor, then left its people alone.  america forced japan into war WWII by cutting off their oil supplies.  

i don't really blame them.  they weren't evil and hell-bent on genocide, they were just hell-bent on empire.  weren't britain, and spain, and the netherlands, and the french, et. al.?  after sealing themselves off from the rest of the world for some hundred years, it was the americans that sailed to japan and demanded they open their borders for trade.  with the americans came their guns, and with the guns came a devastating power struggle that opened the way for the power-hungry.

and never forget: samurai hearts.

it was cool to see this zero up close and personal.  but the last part of the museum, a few rooms covered floor to ceiling with pictures of dead soldiers, really nearly moved me to tears.

after that sobering trip, we went back to our new hostel to rest up and meet with a handful of austrialians we had met in kyoto.  we went to dinner with them, after having had dinner on our own, then went to a club that one of their local tokyo friends had recommended.  which sucked. 

so we went to another neighborhood, and found another club, this one, a little off the beaten path.  things were slow at first, but after a little gin and tonic, things started to pick up, and ultimately, we danced all night with some local folks.  it was a great last night in town.