Brilliant Orange

A storefront on a London street: There's a legendary story of American painter James Whistler testifying in court against British art critic John Ruskin. The artist sued for libel following a review in which Ruskin charged the painter for his casual and thoughtless use of paint in a particular work. (Actually, the word Ruskin used was "splattering.") Asked how long it'd taken him to complete the painting Whistler replied, "two days." The question implying that 200 guineas for such a work was entirely too generous. But it wasn't for his labor that Whistler had asked such a price. Said he, "I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime."

The decision to paint the storefront in brilliant orange may've come to the designer in a lark. But the ability to initiate such a lark, well, that could only result from an artist's long and arduous journey.

Brilliant orange, indeed.

Rustic Redefined

Remaking nature has almost surely been a human preoccupation since our ancestors first dragged their hirsute knuckles groundward. Despite humankind's best efforts, technology‒as sexy as it is‒still has a long way to go to prove itself nature's equal. (Granted, nature had a good head start.)

Two architects who seem to understand this well are Argentinians Martín Fernández de Lema and Nicolas F. Moreno Deutsch.
















Their project in Mar Azul (completed in 2007), a forest near the seaside resort area of Villa Gesell 400 km outside of Buenos Aires, mingles the mechanic with the organic in a manner as comfortable and unassuming as humanly possible.

For more on this and other architecture to overload you senses visit ArchDaily.

Where wallpaper was; where it ought to be (again).

Wallpaper designed by British architect Owen Jones (1809-1874), the Frank Gehry of the Victorian era.

Jones was an early devotee of Orientalism, the rage of his age. He famously published a fanboy book of drawings on the Alhambra Palace in Granada that brought the virtues of Islamic decoration to Europe and the West.

Jones set his eye to textiles and silks as well. Imagine a stultified Victorian society impaled on walls covered just so. More at V and A images.

Blurring the Boundary

moving from screening to transparent enclosures we completely remove the boundries, thus blurring the lines