Palm Springs Modernism Week

Thanks to the wonderful Vintage Seekers, I was introduced to Palm Springs Modernism Week which is actually 80 events crammed in to 11 days and ends on Sunday. In the winter of 2006 a few local design and architecture aficionados created Modernism Week to showcase Palm Springs’ world-renowned mid-century modern architecture.

Modernism Week is an exciting celebration of mid-century modern design, architecture and culture in the good ol’ USA. This design aesthetic, originated in the 50s and 60s, was typified by clean, simple lines and celebrated elegant informality which came to define desert modernism.

Kaufmann Desert House

The interior of Park Imperial South on South Araby Drive, Palm Springs

A date to put in to my diary for next year… I could do with some sun!

Confessions of a design geek

“Katie is a genuine new voice in design writing. She does Q&A in a fresh and unaffected fashion, allowing her subjects the space (both literally and metaphorically) to develop ideas and points of view. Deceptively reverential, she poses unaggressive yet astute questions that extract new insights.”

Barbara Chandler, design writer for the London Evening Standard

Have you ever wondered how Max Fraser put together ‘The Joy of Living’ exhibition, what inspires Anthony Burrill’s slogans or even what is John Makepeace’s favourite colour. Well, Katie Treggiden created the blog Confessions of a Design Geek to answer these important questions.

Skip forward a few months and she won the mydeco.com Design Democracy Award for Best Interior Design Blog and more recently has committed her interview to paper with the release of ‘Interviews, volume 1‘ full of eighteen of her favourite interviews.

The book is the first in a series of books to be released from confessions of a design geek in a limited edition of 1,000 and is priced at £10 and even better that 50p from the sale of every copy is donated to Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres.

Watch this short video to see behind the scenes of making her debut book…

“…[Katie] stands apart from other design writers… She turns designers into real people. [She] allows designers to speak in the same words as the people who use what they’ve made. There is something very democratic about [that].”

William Shaw, Web Editor for the London Design Festival

Over at Heart Home, Kate Baxter spent some time talking to Katie. You can read her interview at Heart Home blog.

Crane.tv Curates: One Room, Three Global Names

Culture lovers are in for a treat this month as Crane.tv go offline with a pop-up at the glamourous St Martins Lane (don’t use an apostrophe or call it a hotel, whatever you do).

Crane.tv, the leading digital video-magazine for contemporary culture, will exhibit a selection of their favourite objects created by their most loved artists and designers, alongside intimate video profiles and if you look closely in the video you’ll spy me near the door during the talk.

Starting with Sir Terence Conran, famed for transforming the look of the British home will be showcasing his most loved work from his retrospective at London’s Design Museum. The following week, artist Kate MccGwire presents a cabinet of curiosities, objects, which she has collected over the years that continue to inspire her work. Closing the week is digital artist and founder of ‘Universal Everything’ Matt Pyke who will exhibit digital wonders like ultraviolet trees grown out of mathematical formulas and 3D-printed figurines borne from code.

“In keeping with the Crane.tv ethos of thoughtfully exploring leading thinkers’ and creatives’ works, we curate our favourite and most loved artists and designers, and give them free reign to select their own favourites – giving viewers an exclusive look into their ‘world’.”
Trisha Andres, Editor, Crane.tv

Crane.tv in The Front Room at St Martins Lane is open Monday – Sunday from 11am-8pm. Admission is free.
The Front Room, St Martins Lane, 45 St Martins Lane WC2N 4HX

9th January – Sir Terence Conran
16th January – Kate MccGwire
23rd January – Matt Pyke

Damien Hirst, The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011

“I was always a colourist, I’ve always had a phenomenal love of colour… I mean, I just move colour around on its own. So that’s where the spot paintings came from – to create that structure to do those colours, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of colour.”
Damien Hirst

Something quite incredible is happening right now. The Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong are showing Damien Hirst’s spot paintings in all of their locations until 18 February 2012. Conceived as a single exhibition in multiple locations, “The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011” makes use of this demographic fact to determine the content of each exhibition according to locality.

Included in the exhibition are more than 300 paintings, from the first spot on board that Hirst created in 1986; to the smallest spot painting comprising half a spot and measuring 1 x 1/2 inch (1996); to a monumental work comprising only four spots, each 60 inches in diameter; and up to the most recent spot painting completed in 2011 containing 25,781 spots that are each 1 millimeter in diameter, with no single colour ever repeated.

To celebrate this, Paris store colette is selling merchandise from Damien Hirst’s own shop Other Criteria along with some other pieces such as this dress from the Art Freaks collaboration between Cynthia Rowley and artist Olaf Breuning.

Don’t miss your opportunity to see this show in your nearest location.

“What design means to me”

For more than 50 years the Prince Philip Designers Prize has celebrated how designers improve daily life by solving problems and turning ideas into commercially successful reality.

2011 saw the final year that HRH The Duke of Edinburgh delivered the Prize after stepping down from the Prize as he reduces his work-load and royal responsibilities in his 90th year. Quentin Blake, one of Britain’s best loved illustrators, won the 2011 Prince Philip Designers Prize.

“No-one can be in any doubt of the extraordinary dedication to promoting and celebrating design which has been shown by His Royal Highness during more than half a century of expert and insightful leadership of the Prince Philip Designers Prize. This year’s winner and nominees likewise demonstrate a dedication to creative excellence, but they are also exemplars of the international commercial success which springs from that creativity. Now more than ever, we must celebrate our world-leading designers, innovators and creatives, and their vital contribution to our economic future.”
David Kester, Chief Executive of the Design Council

To mark HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s contribution to the promotion of UK design, the Design Council commissioned a one-off book of original artworks drawn by over forty of the Prizes’ previous winners, nominees and judges including Sir Terence Conran, Vivienne Westwood, Jeff Banks, Lord Norman Foster, Kenneth Grange and Sir Paul Smith.

Thanks to http://manufactureandindustry.blogspot.com for introducing me to this document.