In case you thought post-it notes were just for work, Arthur Jones staked a claim on their behalf with narrative and illustrations. He’s made beautiful art and readings (check out Post-It Note Stories). Go ahead and send him your one-sentence story.  

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In case you’re finicky when it comes to picking your tub, check out New England Demolition and Salvage. You’ll have your choice of doorknob, column, tub, window, and other elements. It’s worth a trip for the spectacle alone.

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Isamu Noguchi was a polymath. In addition to gorgeous lighting and design, he collaborated with choreographer Martha Graham and several other performers. The Noguchi Museum in New York City celebrates his life and work. You can buy not only lamps but stone carving kits in the gift shop, once you’ve toured the exhibits.

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If your interest in design extends to fashion, check out Lagerfeld Confidential, for a close look at Lagerfeld’s interior life–a fun summer flick.

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For the wallpaper lover, surrealien offers something new: custom-warped wallpaper!

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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.

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A public art project for your cell pone–ring tones.

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Though we prefer to keep things tidy at the office, we marvel a little bit at those who live and work like mad scientists, in a sort of ordered disarray, like Director and clothing designer Alexander Olch. The Selby strikes again!

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 Some people are calling the strange weather “Sprimmer,” or “Sprummer,” for the up-and-down temperatures that resemble spring one day and summer, the next. As long as everything’s blooming, we will take it by any name. Here’s our Sprummer soundtrack.

• “Coca Cola,” Pepi Ginsburg
  
• “Could you be loved,” Bob Marley
• “The magic of crashing stars,” Tender Forever
• “Unwed fathers,” John Prine (+Iris Dement)
• “Blackbird,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
• “Little boxes,” Jenny Lewis and J Rice
• “Lowlands low,” Bryan Ferry and Antony
• “Our town,” Iris Dement
• “Hotter than mojave in my heart,” Iris Dement
• “Somewhere over the rainbow,“ Norah Jones
  
• “Just like a woman,” Nina Simone
  

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More Inspiration, via Daily Routines Le Corbusier’s working hours were implacably regular. During my four years at the atelier, he worked at the rue de Sévres from two in the afternoon to around seven. The hour of 2:00 P.M., I soon learned, was holy. If you were a minute late you risked a reprimand. At first Corbu arrived either by subway (a convenient, direct metro line connected his Michel-Ange- Molitor station with the atelier’s Sévres-Babylone) or by taxi. Later on he started driving his old pistachio-green Simca Fiat convertible. In his last years it would be the taxi again. The process of returning home revealed quite a lot about Le Corbusier’s character. If the work went well, if he enjoyed his own sketching and was sure of what he intended to do, then he forgot about the hour and might be home late for dinner. But if things did not go too well, if he felt uncertain of his ideas and unhappy with his drawings, then Corbu became jittery. He would fumble with his wristwatch – a small, oddly feminine contraption, far too small for his big paw – and finally say, grudgingly, “C’est difficile, l’architecture,” toss the pencil or charcoal stub on the drawing, and slink out, as if ashamed to abandon the project and me — and us — in a predicament.

During these early August days, I learned quite a bit about Le Corbusier’s daily routine. His schedule was rigidly organized. I remember how touched I was by his Boy Scout earnestness: at 6 A.M., gymnastics and . . . painting, a kind of fine-arts calisthenics; at 8 A.M., breakfast. Then Le Corbusier entered into probably the most creative part of his day. He worked on the architectural and urbanistic sketches to be transmitted to us in the afternoon. Outlines of his written work would also be formulated then, along with some larger parts of the writings. Spiritually nourished by the preceding hours of physical and visual gymnastics, the hours of painting, he would use the main morning time for his most inspired conceptualization. A marvelous phenomenon indeed, this creative routine, implemented with his native Swiss regularity, harnessing and channeling what is most elusive. Corbu himself acknowledged the importance of this regimen. “If the generations come”, he wrote, “attach any importance to my work as an architect, it is to these unknown labors that one as to attribute its deeper meaning.” It is wrong to assume, I believe, as [others] have suggested, that Le Corbusier was devoting this time to the conceptualization of shapes to be applied directly in his architecture; rather, it was for him a period of concentration during which his imagination, catalyzed by the activity of painting, could probe most deeply into his subconscious.

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