Post-renovation depression.

 

The New York Times this week ran a story on “post-renovation depression” and it made me very nervous.  As someone in the midst of renovating a new house and who comes in contact daily with people renovating their homes via DWR’s UWS Manhattan Studio, I had just assumed that most people are happy after renovations end.  The Times says many others experience just the opposite sensation.

Holes in the wall are suddenly replaced by holes in one’s life once the architects and contractors pack up and go.  One woman featured in the story stated, “There is a place where I unconsciously believed that remodeling the kitchen would remodel my life. While I definitely believe our interiors have a huge impact on our happiness (I often claim my Eames lounge has changed my life), I am hopeful that those suffering from this form of depression are few and far between. 

And if you are experiencing post-renovation depression,” you may want to splurge on that Eames chair.  Sitting in it on a lazy Sunday morning reading The Times just might be the cure-all to any depression.

Designer events.

DWR is excited to host two events, one on each coast, with two excellent designers whose works we're excited to have in our assortment. At DWR Jackson Street on March 1st, Matthew Hilton will discuss his work, including the Profile Chair and the Cross Extension Table, which was the winner of the 2006 Elle Decoration Best in Furniture Award.

On March 8th in New York City, DWR's West 14th Street Studio will host Jeffrey Bernett. DWR's partnership with Bernett started with the introduction of the Flight Recliner in 2005. We were so impressed with the piece (which was recently launched with new Maharam fabrics), that we asked him to create a desk (the Liege) and, most recently, a sofa collection (the Parcel Collection). And Bernett has delivered.

Accompanying both talks will be a slide show and a Q&A. Please see the individual Studio pages for RSVP information.

Top Design judge.

If you’re a television junkie like me then undoubtedly you’ve been watching Bravo’s Top Design. The program (in the same vein as Project Runway and Top Chef) is a reality show pitting would-be interior designers against each other in weekly challenges to design rooms. Much like Project Runway, this show has less to do with the contestants and more to do with the judges.

Hosts and DWR faves Jonathan Adler and Todd Oldham come across as geeky oddballs and it works.  They’re no Tim Gunn, but they do recall many interior designers I know and their love of paint colors and fabric swatches is evident.  Those two design giants may have more name recognition, but it is the two female judges that steal the show each week. Elle Décor’s Editor in Chief, Margaret Russell is (...how do I say this nicely) harsh, stern and basically mean. And she’s the perfect foil to helium-voiced Kelly Wearstler.  Wearstler is the over-the-top designer of such noted spots as Santa Monica’s Viceroy and the Bergdorf Goodman restaurant in New York. She’s just plain lovable and her fashions match her interior design work. She rocks teal leg warmers and frizzed/crimped out Pomeranian hairdos with equal panache.  A (reality television) star is born. And she blogs too.

A note from Jens Risom.

Despite over 1,000 entries to our Champagne Chair Contest, we always receive a couple of things that are going to stand out. Last week we got a letter from legendary designer Jens Risom. We were thrilled to hear from Risom, who is in his 90s and lives in Massachusetts. He printed out the Champagne voting page from our website and penned a lovely, silly note about how the only chair to sit in while sipping Champagne is “obviously” the Risom Lounge Chair. I won't try and recreate it on my own, take a look for yourself. Cheers Jens, keep the letters coming.

Downtown Meets Uptown.

The Cooper Hewitt/Kid Robot love affair continued this past week when the youthful toy shop opened its doors to the museum’s members for a private event.  Kid Robot’s buyers discussed the evolution of the urban toy craze, from its beginnings in Hong Kong and Tokyo to the pop culture phenomenon it has become.  It was a strange, but inspiring group. Normally Kid Robot is packed with teen boys in oversized A Bathing Ape gear.  This night the place was filled with Upper East Side society women drenched in pearls and holding Goyard bags. And they too are in love with the toys! The juxtaposition of young and old; establishment and anti-establishment is a wonderful thing to see.  One thing connects Kid Robot fans: a love of art and design. That transcends everything else.

DWR folks Sandra Hansel and Kimberly Oliver joined me there.  And no trip to Kid Robot would be complete without a purchase: I scored two Keith Haring  Andy Mouse toys.

People Used to Dream About the Future

Most people working in our office and Studios are fairly big design geeks. But while some are spotting Eames Lounge and Ottoman sets in Will & Grace reruns, others of us complete nerds are spotting the Salk Institute (completed 1959) and the Marin County Civic Center (completed 1967) – but in films. After watching a fairly bad science fiction movie the other night (I won’t name names), I found myself wondering about the role these objects play in both television and cinema and why, when executed well, a building from 1967 can appear convincingly as one in 2067. In the case of my bad science fiction movie it’s obvious that you can’t just put a guy in a black trench coat in front of a slab of concrete and call it the future.

Two movies immediately come to mind where architecture has played a very convincing role, George Lucas’ THX-1138 (1971) and Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca (1997). Both were filmed in the San Francisco Bay Area and both feature the Marin County Civic Center at some point in the film. The protagonists in each are part of an oppressive industrialized system and they are looking for something to inspire hope from their environment. Ask any architect or architecture nerd about their favorite building and most likely, somewhere between “cantilever” and “monumentality,” you’ll hear words like “inspiring” or “optimistic.” In many of the key shots in each movie the buildings play a role in helping to reinforce that optimism and contribute to the mood of the film.

Whether it’s Lucas’ efforts to make the ordinary great by showing San Francisco’s transit tunnels as futuristic hallways, or the utopian view of the future in the Civic Center’s role in Gattica, it seems more like a true depiction of the future is one where hope and optimism exist. Wasn’t that also a goal of the great architects of our time?

Hans Wegner (1914–2007)

Hans Wegner, considered one of the masters of 20th-century Danish Modernism, passed away in January at the age of 92. Best known for his chairs, Wegner designed some 200 over his career. His Round Chair achieved some notoriety when, in 1960, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were perched on them for the first nationally televised debate. The New York Times obituary quotes Paola Antonelli, the curator of architecture and design at the MoMA, “He was one of what I think of as the humble giants of 20th-century design, those men who would probably shun the term designer and prefer to call themselves cabinetmakers.” A gallery of his hugely influential work is available here.

Passion For Taschen

Benedikt Taschen has finally landed in New York’s SoHo district, after closing a pop-up shop over a year ago, and the only grievance that comes to mind: What took so long? Taschen has long been the go-to publisher for coffee table books that march to their own drummer. Taschen’s books are not for the masses. They’re for people who get “it.” And by “it” I mean style, design, countercultures and sex.

Judging from recent Taschen books, including Butt Book, a compilation from the gay Dutch sex/fashion mag and The Big Book of Breasts (the title says it all), you’d think their minds (and books) were in the gutter.  But this is also the company that recently compiled Domus in the form of a twelve-volume reprint.  So they know what their doing.

The NYC shop was designed by DWR fave Philippe Starck and features a colorful mural by Beatriz Milhazes  It has quickly become our favorite place to browse books full of the art we wish we could afford and the houses we wished we live in. And the people watching is not bad to boot!

Why should our fans have all the fun?

Our 4th annual Champagne Chair Contest is coming to a close. But before it's over check out the five finalists in our Most Popular Chair contest and help us pick the chair that should embark on a nationwide Studio tour. The voting closes friday, February 9th at 5pm PT.

It's so sad to say goodbye to all the mini cork chairs. I hope you enjoyed the contest as much as we did. We even had our own chair contest here in our offices. Above are the 1st and 2nd place winners (go Katie Perry and Mattia Nuzzo) . Cheers to everyone who entered our contest! Check back next week to see all the winners.

CA Boom 4 in Santa Monica

For the past three years, the annual CA Boom Design Show has been a must-attend event for both the design trade and savvy consumers of good design. This year, CA Boom 4 will showcase an impressive line-up of acclaimed fine furniture designers, architects and tastemakers. CA Boom brings "early adopters" face to face with designers who are debuting new products, showcasing their businesses and exemplifying new ways of living and working. Running concurrently with the show, CA Boom will once again offer Design + Architecture Tours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. These tours spotlight some of the most exciting new or recently completed residential projects in three Westside neighborhoods (Santa Monica, Venice and West Los Angeles/MarVista).

CA Boom 4 happens Friday, March 30 through Sunday, April 1, 2007, at the Santa Monica Airport's Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. Admission is $20; Design + Architecture tour tickets (includes same-day or return visit to the exhibit) are $75 or $200 for a three-day tour pass.

DWR newsletter and blog readers can save $4.00 on expo hall tickets or home tour tickets. Use code "DWR" at www.caboomshow.com.

Design Life Now.

Sandra Hansel, DWR’s regional director of sales, gave out a great holiday gift this year: membership to the Cooper Hewitt Museum. A gaggle of DWR folk met a few weeks back to check out Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006, which is running through July 29th. According to the Cooper Hewitt "the third Triennial brings together the experimental designs and emerging ideas—including animation, new media, and fashion, robotics, architecture, product, medical and graphic design—at the center of American culture from 2003 to 2006."

Included were many of my favorites.  Kid Robot displayed past collections of toys, complete with a giant Dunny that museum visitors could color with chalk. DWR fave Emeco was featured, showcasing their handcrafted chair as sculpture. Thom Browne, who is reinventing men's fashion one nerdy suit at a time, was the fashion highlight. Another DWR vendor, Humanscale, was spotlighted for Niels Diffrient's Liberty Chair.  Other notable inclusions: Herman Miller, Make Magazine, Rem Koolhaas and Tobias Wong.

If in NYC please check the exhibit out. They've even got a blog!

Leadership is an art.

Part of the fun of working for Design Within Reach is discovering and falling in love with the products we sell, their designers and the companies that bring good design to the masses.  One of my great loves is Herman Miller, home to the iconic designs of Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, George Nelson and Alexander Girard. They're also the manufacturers of Chadwick and Stumpf's Aeron chair and the new Leaf Light designed by SF-based Yves Béhar. Their catalog is a design-junkie's dream.

What is equally impressive about Herman Miller is the culture that exists at their Michigan corporate headquarters.  After recently reading Max DePree's wonderful book Leadership is an Art, I am even more impressed with HM.  DePree is one-time Herman Miller CEO (and son of its original visionary). The book was written in 1989, yet its lessons still resonate today. Not only has it helped me to become a more effective leader, but it has also allowed me a glimpse into the design of Herman Miller's people, and they're much more impressive than any piece of furniture. I even sent a copy to our CEO.  I suggest you grab your own.

www.hermanmiller.com