Girl Walk // All Day: Chapter 2 from Girl Walk // All Day on Vimeo.

One of our New Year’s Resolutions was to do a little more dancing. Here’s something to inspire you–Chapter 2 of a dance film called Girl Walk/All Day. Click here for more excerpts. Filmmakers Jacob Krupnick and Youngna Park.

Continuing our homage to all things Eames, we visit the factory where Eames shell chairs are made.

[Thanks to Swiss Miss]

From the Cooper-Hewitt’s website:

Known primarily as an abstract painter and colorist, Sonia Delaunay applied her talents and theories to all areas of visual expression, including graphics, interiors, theater and film, fashion and textiles. A trademark of Delaunay’s work is the sense of movement and rhythm created by the simultaneous contrasts of certain colors. This exhibition will focus on fashion designs from her own Atelier Simultané in Paris during the 1920s, as well as textiles designed for the Metz & Co. department store in Amsterdam in the 1930s. On view will be examples of designs, textiles, garments and photographs from the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, the Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes in Mulhouse, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and private collections around Europe and the United States.

From the Jewish Museum’s website:

Maira Kalman (b. 1949 Tel Aviv, lives New York) is the author of twelve children’s books including Ooh-la-la (Max in Love). Among her adult classics are The Elements of Style, an illustrated edition of Strunk and White’s timeless grammar, and The Principles of Uncertainty, a picture book of essays based on a yearlong online column for The New York Times. She has just completed a second online epic for The Times titled And the Pursuit of Happiness. Kalman’s best known work, created with fellow illustrator Rick Meyerowitz, is New Yorkistan: a cartoon map of the city designated by tribes, such as Pashmina, Irant, and Irate. When it ran on the cover of The New Yorker in December 2001, it sanctioned a first burst of laughter in the aftermath of 9/11. A relatively more secret aspect of her identity is as the “M” in M&Co, the revolutionary design firm founded by her late husband, Tibor Kalman, with whom she was a constant collaborator. The firm’s famous 10-One-4 watch is based on one of her doodles. She has collaborated on projects with the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, the choreographer Mark Morris, and the composer Nico Muhly.

Did I mention that these shows are across the street from one another?

[images from here and here and here]

Leila Sanderson’s home:

or:

Mandy Munro of Tractor Home:

The mission: “The Design Revolution Road Show is a traveling exhibition and lecture series bringing “product design that empowers” to 35 high schools and university design programs across the nation in the Spring of 2010. AProject H Design initiative, the road show will feature an Airstream trailer exhibition of 40 humanitarian design solutions that have been showcased in the book Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People.

The programming will bring the evidence of and tools for design for social impact to the doorsteps of students, with the ultimate goal of enabling and empowering the next generation of creative problem-solvers to apply their skills to the world’s most pressing problems and improve life on a global scale.”

click here for more info  

click here for more info 

I recently found several beautiful videos by Lisa Durfee. One of my favorites is “Wallpaper excavation.” Watch closely. All fans of wallpaper will have a special appreciation for the peeling part of the video. Mind the brief Dire Straits interlude.

Wallpaper excavation 

“Paula @433 Warren Street” is also beautiful.

Reminder: MOMA’s show on prefab architecture opens July 20

 Larry Sass’ housing for New Orleans design

Design Field Trips

If you are starting to melt in the city or the confines of your perch in the country, here are a few fieldtrips worth taking:

Taliesin West

Founded in 1937 by Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona was FLW’s winter home and also a school, up until FLW’s death in 1959. Today, the site is used as a school for architects. Tours have expanded to include not only the original site, but also the small shelters designed by the program’s apprentices. (http://www.peterbeers.net/interests/flw_rt/Arizona/taliesin_west/taliesin_west.htm).

Glass House

These tours of the late Philip Johnson’s New Canaan home have been sold out since the house opened to the public in April 2007, but book now for 2009! The house was complete in 1949 and became a National Landmark in 1997.

Levittown

The first mass-produced suburb, built between 1947-1951 on land formerly used as potato farms. Though there were four Levittowns, in total (New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, and New Jersey), the New York community was the largest and most famous. The houses were identical. The first 1,000 houses on the New York site were rented two days after an announcement of the project in the New York Times.

 Storm King

[photo: tripcart] 

Open-air sculpture park in Mountainville, New York with large-scale sculptures by contemporary sculptors including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alice Aycock, Mark di Suvero, Andy Goldsworthy, Alexander Liberman, Roy Lichtenstein, and Richard Serra [credit: Wikipedia]