Design Masters: Vignelli from VCUdesign on Vimeo.

Massimo and Lella Vignelli are designers who have created work in a wide variety of areas, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. This interview explores the Vignelli’s methods, philosophies and work, which have shaped how we see and interact with design for the past 60 years. It reveals the very human story of passionate, strong-willed people who have dedicated their lives to translating abstract ideas into the objects we love.

The LA property was built in the Georgian Revival style with a barrel-vaulted entry fit for the arrival of any Hollywood luminary. As a designer, Wearstler’s home reflects her artistic practice and finely honed sense of color and shape. Throughout the rooms, visitors can spot goat hair upholstery, graphic runners, bold silhouettes and a treasure trove of artisanal furniture, all enclosed by high-gloss white walls.

Continue reading on NOWNESS.com: https://www.nowness.com/series/in-residence/kelly-wearstler

Did you know that most people spend around 5 seconds on your website deciding whether they will stick around or click out of it? You don’t have long to attract a potential client further in to your website or get them to start taking action with you.

And when I am looking at design websites as part of my work with students in my online courses I notice a number of mistakes that designers make with their websites that make it really hard for potential clients to do business with them.

And the core one of these is that they make their websites far too much about them and nowhere near enough about their visitor.

So in today’s video I am going to share 5 ways to improve your website and make it an asset that will drive more clients and projects to your business – rather than just be a portfolio of project images that is all about how good you and your business are but not something that is focused on the needs of your potential clients.

The workplace is where we spend more of our lives than anywhere else. The spaces where we share ideas and build relationships. The environment where we reach to achieve goals larger than ourselves: together. The single most important thing I want to share with you is the workplace has a place in the future.

But returning to the workplace will require regaining trust. Each and every person has been affected by this pandemic to a different degree. Employee expectations will vary person to person.

I don’t know how your company has been affected by Covid but many return to work with a different number of employees. Some may have changed their plans for expansion or growth. Some are going to have new WFH policies or different teams utilizing the space. The workplace as a whole is no longer functional post Covid because the space was designed to operate under different pretenses.

Post Covid Workplace Design webinar from X3 Builders on Vimeo.

The home of architect Jim Olson—founder of Seattle-based practice Olson Kundig—is a monument to the principles that have underpinned his entire architectural career: the idea that buildings can serve as a bridge between nature, culture, histories and people. His 14-foot by 14-foot treetop house in Longbranch, Washington, is designed to encourage its inhabitants to look outwards and never forget that human beings are a part of the natural world.

Original video: https://www.nowness.com/series/in-residence/in-residence-jim-olsen

Archiculture takes a thoughtful, yet critical look at the architectural studio. The 25-minute film offers a unique glimpse into the world of studio-based, design education through the eyes of a group of students finishing their final design projects. Interviews with leading professionals, historians and educators help create crucial dialog around the key issues faced by this unique teaching methodology and the built environment these future architects will create.

Including Interviews with:
Shigeru Ban – Shigeru Ban Architects
Matthew Berman – Workshop APD
Phil Bernstein – VP Autodesk
Joe Brown – CIO AECOM
David Byrne – Musician/Artist
Annie Choi – Author/Critic
Maurice Cox – Professor/NEA
Ken Frampton – Historian/Professor
Terry Heinlein – TGH Architect
Ted Landsmark – President BAC
Thom Mayne – Morphosis
Mary Woods – Historian/Professor

When the financial crisis hit in 2008, architects Mary Clare DeReuil & Carlos Tardio were without work, but determined to continue creating buildings. “We were scouring the city all the time looking for cheap land, land that no one wanted to deal with because it was problematic,” explains DeReuil. They finally picked up property near downtown Atlanta that was “problematic” and “unbelievably cheap” because there was no driveway access.

Over the course of 4 years, the two architects (Tardio Architecture) worked 10 hour days to create an experimental glass dream home using materials easily accessible in industrialized settings: steel beams, cast concrete, 2 by 6 milled lumber, and lots of recycled glass. “We scrapped this thing together with personal loans, brother and sister loans, loan sharks, credit cards, we just did whatever and made it happen.”

Not wanting to cut down any of the mature trees on the property, DeReuil and Tardio designed the home around the trees. As a result, the structure floats among the huge hardwoods and has been nicknamed the “Atlanta treehouse”. Tardio prefers “House of Doors” since “the structural system was derived from an exploration of doors”. All the doors in the home are made of heavy sheets of glass with Tardio’s proprietary pivot system which allows even a child to open them with ease (we, the faircompanies family, took the home for a test drive and our then 3-year-old could open them easily).

To help pay off all those loans DeReuil and Tardio use only the studio on the top floor (a secret pivoting door separates the two floors) and rent the lower floor on AirBnB.
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/224977

Tardio Architecture: http://branchoff.net/tardioarch/macframeset.htm

Original story: https://faircompanies.com/videos/owner-built-atlanta-glass-treehouse-floats-among-hardwoods/

As we have spent significantly more time at home in recent months, could there be a change in top design priorities? What impact will health and wellness, outdoor living, or a practical and private home office space have on the future of interiors/exteriors? Will home furnishings and decor trend toward sleek or cozy? Join Furniture, Lighting & Decor’s Editor-in-Chief Diane Falvey as she explores what could be coming next in home design with a panel privy to the potential for shifting floor plans, use of space and home furnishings where it starts — the consumer level. (1 CEU)

Panelists:
Jamie Merida, Bountiful Home
Laurence Carr, Laurence Carr Design
John Dorlini, Circle Design Studio
Theresa Dorlini, Circle Design Studio

In the first of a series of video interviews with former members of Archigram for VDF, architect Peter Cook recounts how the influential avant-garde architecture group rose to prominence in the 1960s.

Archigram was an experimental collective of architects that became famous for its radical architecture concepts drawing from the emerging technologies and consumer culture of the time.

This week, as part of Virtual Design Festival, Dezeen is publishing a series of exclusive interviews with former members Cook and Dennis Crompton, sponsored by Enscape, looking back at the origins of the group and some of its most significant projects.

“Archigram was a very important stage for all of us,” said Cook in the video, which Dezeen filmed in London. “I think that we have probably never again had such a creative or exotic a phenomenon in our lifetimes.”

Archigram started life in 1961 as a self-published magazine by a group of young architects comprising Cook, Michael Webb and David Greene.

“At first, almost nobody took any notice,” Cook recalled. “I mean, we had difficulty selling more than 100 copies.”

However, the magazine piqued the interest of a group of slightly older, more established architects – Crompton, Warren Chalk and Ron Herron – who were working for London County Council (LCC) on projects including London’s Southbank Centre.

Crompton, Chalk and Herron began contributing to subsequent issues of Archigram, and the group that would come to be named after the magazine was formed.

“It was the sort of thing that can happen in a city like London at a certain time,” said Cook.

“A sufficient number of interesting people form subgroups and the subgroups coalesce. And in the coalescence, I think, was the strength because the LCC group had built buildings. The other three of us hadn’t; we were pretty much fresh out of school.”

Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/05/11/archigram-origins-peter-cook-video-interview-vdf/

‘We want our freedom and we want it now.’ — Watch the historic words of 23-year-old John Lewis at the March on Washington.

In US news and current events today, this historic John Lewis speech at the 1963 March on Washington cemented his status in the Civil Rights Movement. The John Lewis March on Washing Speech 1963 is among the most famous speeches of the Civil Rights Movement, and in the advent of today’s global Black Lives Matter movement, the words of this Congressman John Lewis speech have never been more relevant.

Kavi is a writer on a mission to transform how the world thinks about work. Over the past three years, Kavi has travelled tirelessly across Asia, Europe, Australia-Pacific, and North America to observe and advise companies, organizations, and individuals on how to prepare for a dynamic global talent marketplace.

Kavi is a writer on a mission to transform how the world thinks about work. Over the past three years, Kavi has travelled tirelessly across Asia, Europe, Australia-Pacific, and North America to observe and advise companies, organizations, and individuals on how to prepare for a dynamic global talent marketplace.

More importantly, Kavi is driven to help young people enter the global workforce to secure great jobs and great wages from around the world; to reinvent themselves constantly in the face of constant economic transformation; and to help underrepresented groups find a rightful place in the working world.

Kavi’s writing and opinions can be found in Forbes, the Harvard Business Review, and The Huffington Post, among other publications.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen—the creative duo behind Ghent-based design studio Muller Van Severen—are no strangers to having unknown visitors explore their carefully curated home. For the 2017 edition of Design Miami, the couple created an exact replica of their living room as an installation, collaborating with global room-for-rent service Airbnb. Earlier this year, filmmaker Emile Rafael travelled to the Belgian city to meet the designers in the space they call home, bringing our usual In Residence treatment to a space that we would become softly obsessed by.

The home itself, a large 19th century building accompanied by an adjacent studio, was originally an orangery that has later been renovated into a modern workspace. Prototypes and samples sit alongside materials and references, hinting at the thoroughly-researched process by which their highly refined furniture and objects come into existence.

The objects conceived and produced by Muller Van Severen tend always toward the deceptively simple, favoring geometric lines and subtle silhouettes over complicated fussiness. Their home also plays host to many collected objects, as well as a small wooden chair designed and built by their daughter. Bloc colours, supported on legs and frames of black, copper, and gold, mean that the objects remain light and uncomplicated, while also revealing—on closer inspection—their finely balanced engineering. Soft leather seats are suspended in frames of sharp metalwork; while plastic shelves rise confidently and sparsely against the wooden floors. Honest, solid materials prevail over fussy and complicated resources. The resulting furniture speaks confidently for itself.

Subscribe to NOWNESS here: https://www.youtube.com/user/nowness

By Design Undivided: Inner Strength from A Very Good Agency on Vimeo.

To urgently provide support and unity to architects worldwide during the COVID crisis, we rapidly transformed our multi-award winning By Design digital series into an exclusive 8-week streaming season titled Undivided.

Within days of approval from series sponsor Graphisoft, an 8-episode story arc was created that would follow real-time events as architects, designers and industry partners struggle to cope with the pandemic. Each episode was cast, filmed and edited on a rolling 6-day schedule to keep the storyline tightly connected to latest events, and running time was extended to 15 minutes (3x longer than traditional By Design episodes) to allow for a longer form documentary narrative.

Our third episode features Anthony Laney, co-founder of LA studio Laney LA, a young firm with critical lessons in internal culture as a source of strength, resiliency and growth through the COVID crisis, and beyond it.

The season is supported with social engagement, digital marketing, PR and media partnerships, and will be capped by a live interactive event to place the audience in conversation with our featured subjects. Created, directed and produced by A Very Good Agency in collaboration with Sagon-Phior.

Segregated By Design from Silkworm on Vimeo.

Examine the forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy.

Go to www.segregatedbydesign.com to learn more about the film.

Directed by Mark Lopez
Written by Mark Lopez & Richard Rothstein
Narrated by Richard Rothstein
Designed & Animated by Mark Lopez
Music, Sound Design & Mix by YouTooCanWoo

YouTooCanWoo post-production team:
Lead composer: David Perlick-Molinari
Composers: Zach Abramson, Chris Connors, Devin Johnson, Austin Mendenhall, Deidre Muro, Derek Muro, Robert Perlick-Molinari, Jake St. John
Sound design by Austin Mendenhall and David Perlick-Molinari
Mix by David Perlick-Molinari
Production management by Lea Wülferth

A Silkworm Studio Film

Watch five decades of Atlanta architectural development by architect John Portman. And be sure to view the “John Portman: Art & Architecture” exhibition currently on view at the High!

Architecture + Influence from The Glass House on Vimeo.

Interviews with Norman Foster, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, Richard Meier, Jaquelin T. Robertson, Richard Rogers, Vincent Scully, and Robert A.M. Stern.

Interviews by Dorothy Dunn
Directed by Drew Harty

The Glass House Oral History Project was underwritten, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional matching support was provided by Nathaniel and Lucy Day and the Taylor Deupree Family Foundation.