LIMEKILN LATITUDES
on place, purpose and pretty thingsArchive for Eye Catching
doug aitkin at the hirshhorn
it suddenly seems i only have eyes for dc…
‘song 1′ is really astounding, both in its own right and especially for washington, dc. needlesstosay the live “happening” on may 11 will probably make me pee my pants.
love.
genius pairing two of my favorite things: succulents and wine glasses!
(respectfully stolen from flickr via apartment therapy)
flower school
yesterday was one big simple pleasure. the morning started with a maple bacon scone from city bakery (genius), followed by a brisk walk along the snow-dusted columbia street waterfront in brooklyn. i was headed toward red hook for an afternoon workshop at little flower school, the brainchild of floral designers sarah ryhanen (saipua) and nicolette owen (nicolette camille). i first noticed saipua when it opened its gorgeous wood-paneled storefront last summer, and have been following their blog pretty regularly since then. fast forward to yesterday and i found myself in the back of the saipua warehouse with a handful of other creatives and crafters seeking a little more color and/or nature this time of year.
yesterday’s class theme was hellebores – a delicate, intricately detailed species of winter flower that comes in nuanced shades of white, plum, and dusty lime green. let it be known that i’m a big fan of green flowers in general – the arrangement i ended up making is testament – and the fact that hellebores come in green is what motivated me to sign up once and for all.
to round out the hellebore palette sarah and nicolette provided an absurdly huge range of absurdly high quality flowers for us to play with. note that the photo here was taken *after* the class had picked through everything and finished their arrangements:
the space was amazing, the environment was totally mellow (with a little lionel richie and bjork to keep us company), and sarah and nicolette encouraged everyone to experiment away after they had taken us through the basics. this new york times write up describes the class pretty accurately, celebratory prosecco and all.
it was really interesting to see how wildly different everyone’s arrangements ended up being (check them out here), and more than anything i’m excited mine made it home in one piece! the images below are from this morning, showing details of everything i used: willow branches, eucalyptus, queen anne’s lace, ranunculus, anemones, freesia, paperwhite, a number of different hellebores, and scabiosa (my new favorite – the foliage looked like dark green daisy petals).
DesigNYC
Two immediate thoughts in response to the recently launched DesigNYC initiative that pairs New York designers with social causes throughout the city: Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) has been doing this kind of matchmaking for a couple years with their “Making Policy Public” project, and this is the kind of effort that I imagine will be coming out of the Winterhouse Institute / Rockefeller Foundation initiative. (See my earlier post on Winterhouse.)
The matchmaking concept is great regardless of who’s doing it, but it’s interesting to think about all these projects in relation to one another — scale of ambition (relative to star power and funding, of course), targeted professional audience, range of impacted communities, etc. Julie Lasky’s piece on Design Observer references a few other noteworthy precedents, as does DesigNYC’s site.
some favorites
with the new year comes, as always, a renewed commitment on my part to edit, reduce, and streamline as many things as possible (aka get organized). the first and perhaps most obvious item of business: three years worth of new yorker magazines that have been stacked, shoved, and preserved in way too many corners of my way too small studio apartment. i average about 1-2 articles per issue, but keep the entire thing around because i have this fantasy that i’ll stay home one evening and browse through old articles with a glass of wine, or because the cover just seems like an instant classic — reflective of a time and place that i’ll want to share with my kids someday. (note: i’m not even married.) needlesstosay i’m pitching them all, but before i drag them to the recycle bin i thought i’d post a few of my favorite covers…
on urban life:
on the age of sustainability:
and just generally lovely:
envisioning development
the good folks at center for urban pedagogy recently produced envisioning development, a website where visitors can “look at income demographics and rents in neighborhoods all over nyc.” stunning and smart as always:
the best part is that i learned about it not from anyone in the nyc urban affairs/design community, but from a friend out in san francisco. the subject of her email was simply “cool map,” and after some warranted gushing she naturally asked if a san francisco version was on deck. no small task, but i heartily support the notion of CUP going global. nice work, guys!
agnes varda
i love this woman. i knew nothing about her until my dearest film-hound-of-a-friend dragged me to see “beaches of agnes” this summer. but what a gem of a human, what a mind, and what a sweet and sophisticated riot… at 80!
the aurora project
a stunning and thought-provoking project by nataly gattegno and jason kelly johnson opened last night at van alen institute, and will be on view in the gallery through october 16, 2009. nataly and jason are founders of future cities lab, an “interdisciplinary design and research collaborative bridging architecture and landscape urbanism with material sciences, robotics and engineering.” they were in residence at van alen as new york prize fellows this past summer, and with the help of carrie norman, thomas kelly, and a small army of enthusiastic and crazy smart recent design and media grads, nataly and jason brought not only the aurora project but the entire van alen institute to life. they are fantastic thinkers, makers, and educators, and i highly recommend checking out this exhibition – and their work more broadly – if you’re into craft, technology, phenomenology, cartography, ecology… you name it, they nailed it.
the exhibition includes three installations: “aurora” superimposes the ephemeral qualities of the arctic ice field with the dynamic behavior of visitors, translating the shifting dimensions of the ice into an immersive system of flickering auroras and responsive luminescent skins. presented alongside aurora is “terra incognita,” a map room consisting of original drawings, diagrams and other materials that provide a view into how the arctic region has been represented, claimed, and mythologized in the past and present. a smaller interactive instrument, “the glaciarium,” engages visitors’ senses through the sight and sound of a melting ice core.
