Friday, February 24, 2012

Homework assignment: download this book

I recently went to an show at the Bellevue Arts Museum in, funnily enough, Bellevue, Washington, on George Nelson, one of the giants of 20th century design. It was quite small, but I saw a number of examples of his work that I was not familiar with (unlike his bench, which I admire and make). The King county library system (you won't be surprised to learn that Bellevue is in King county) had a handout available at the show which lists of books by George Nelson, including this FREE download of "Tomorrow's House: a complete guide for the Home-builder" . I'm only part way into it, but it's a fascinating read on the how and why of modernism, especially in the USA of the mid century and the ideas can certainly be transferred to the mini domain. I'd love to hear other modern enthusiasts' opinions.

2 comments:

  1. I think the challenge for the average miniature builders is trying to get the aesthetic design of a spare piece of furniture and room setting to read as a work of art. All to often the mid century modern miniature projects end up looking like an architect's scale model rather than a fine miniature. Or it ends up looking like a child's modern dollhouse full of plastic.

    Of course your work always looks like fine miniatures ;-).

    Architects take themselves very seriously but rarely realize they are saying the same thing as previous generations did. The justifications of how their design will change and improve a persons life and even society as a whole can be found in the writings of other architects writing about entirely different styles from all the ages.

    Basically the patrons and consumers of architects' and designers' products either finds it a mental relaxation or stimulant to live with less is more or more is more.

    We have just endured a decade where desireable design was all about swoopy curves just to have them. All to often they were clumsy and ugly with little function to the form, Leming like designers were following the crowd over the cliff in a personal suicide. I am glad Apple used a good designer for I-Pods and it started a trend to return to classic simplicity of design lines.

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  2. Wow, books. I remember books. They were made out of this stuff called paper.

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