What Women Make

Prescription: Design Therapy

Apartment Therapy Design Evenings at ABC Carpet are a bright spot in the design scene here – the incandescent lighting flowing through the oversized glasses of wine, the luxurious mishmash of couches and chairs, and a packed room of enthusiastic design and decor citizens smiling in their camaraderie.

It couldn’t be more fun, more lively. But as I looked around, I wondered, what exactly is this scene?

Coming from Europe where there’s a massive design presence to here where there are so many lovers of beauty and talented creative minds of every ilk, I’ve starting to see a distinction between Europe and Asia’s definition of design – the beautiful and functional and functionally beautiful object - and what design is in the U.S.

First, just to get it out of the way, yes there is the design awareness made possible by Steve Jobs and Apple Computers. There’s Fast Company’s championing of design thinking and design in business. But for the lovers of design festivals and design schools, furniture design, and manufacturing, the individual maker and craftsman, there is a big empty silence filled only by ICFF and it’s satellite shows.

New York is largely about Decor and Shelter. It’s Design Sponge and Etsy. Pinterest mood boards and Decor 8. It’s decorating tips and DIY. It’s interior design and real estate lust.

I love decor. I do. I mean where else are you going to put your design but within some sort of decor? Decor can be very practical and personal at the same time. Hey, even I found myself doing a DIY project for the first time and I’m pretty proud of it.

See? Here it is.

From this

To This

I found an old ugly beat up nightstand on the street and went out and bought some white high gloss paint, a bottle of Mod Podge, some paper from Paper Presentation and found endless how-to sites to make sure I didn’t screw the whole thing up.

Pretty cool, right?

But I’m not a designer. I would never call myself that. So there you go. You’ve got design and you have decor. America is about decor.

I really enjoyed what Maxwell, the founder of Apartment Therapy had to say when I asked about the state of American design (which meant where the hell is American design?) because it was clear that he cares about design as much as I do. He told me that it’s hard to nurture design here because manufacturing has left America. I told him about my experience in Europe and he said “yeah, Europe’s ahead of us.” So in our haste to automate and simplify everything, to sell everything and consume everything, to consolidate everything and to watch the bottom line on everything, we forgot about design. Not good. And honestly, not very modern. I think all of this DIY activity is just another sign of how desperately we need design leadership. It’s not just about dressing things up but making things that are truly beautiful, thoughtful and reflective. Right now, the design landscape is practical and commercial, not gutsy. It doesn’t marry inventiveness and innovation with reality. Design can be the perfect summation of right and left brain and, at the risk of sounding lofty, hope for the future. It’s a visual manifestation of spirit, intelligence, and hope. In other words, design is more than a gorgeous bedspread with eclectic throw pillows.

The last Apartment Therapy talk I attended was a few weeks back. It was with the very popular and very personable Deborah Needleman, the founding editor of Domino magazine who has gone on to start a beautiful style magazine at the Wall Street Journal. I was a subscriber of Domino. In fact, it was the very last magazine I subscribed to before moving to Paris at the end of 2006. Domino was so pretty and useful and collectible where nothing else really was. I was tired of the stuffy celebraphotog-generated nonsense, the Vogues and Visionnaires. I was tired of being talked down to and dictated to. Domino was different. It wasn’t ‘design’ but it was great. She herself admitted that while she loves the practical application of decor – she’s coming out with a book about making your home ‘cozy’ – she ‘doesn’t know anything about design’. It’s hard to wrap my head around but I think ultimately I know what she means. I just hope the dialogue will open up and decor-lovers will also start to see just what design is and how much value it has.

Just imagine, a New York with a design scene as robust as London.. Heaven!

(It looks like our company Show Love may be doing some yet-to-be-announced work with the American Design Club led by the effervescent designer and design advocate Kiel Mead so more excitement to come!)

-Chauncey Zalkin

links:

Apartment Therapy
Decor 8
Etsy
Design Sponge
Pinterest

Saturday • February 25, 2012 • by Chauncey Zalkin

Category: 3D Printing, Architecture, Blog, Cities, Clay, Copper Wire, Deborah Needleman, Disciplines, Embroidery, Essays, Fabric, Furniture, Glass, ICFF, Interior Design, Leather, Lighting, Materials, Metal, New York, Plastic, Polyamide, Porcelain, Product Design, Resin, Schools, silicone, Sugar, Surface Design, Sustainable, Tablewear, Textiles, U.S., Wood, Wool

0 Comments

Share|

Designers / Artists: ON ZA LINE

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: Filename cannot be empty in /home/girlont1/public_html/whatwomenmake.com/wp-content/plugins/slidedeck-lite-for-wordpress/slidedeck.php on line 529

“We have found ourselves longing to return to nature and sooner or later, we believe we will. But what will nature look like in the future?”

Ai Kurahashi and Kiyomi Kodama are a ceramicist duo from Japan.

Ai Kurahashi – born in Japan, 1976. Ai graduated from Nihon University’s College of Art with a degree in architecture in 2000. She had countless part time jobs at bars, boutiques, interior design offices, factories, warehouses, publishers, fashion brands – as a graphic designer, interior designer, interior stylist, editor, writer, or just a worker before focusing fulltime on ON ZA LINE with Kiyomi in 2005.

Kiyomi Kodama – born in Japan, 1976. Kiyomi studied ceramics at the Jyoshibi University of Art and Design. After graduation, Kodoma worked for four years designing ceramics for a Japanese design firm. In 2003, she started collaborating with Ai while still at the firm, and in 2005, quit her job to make ON ZA LINE her full time focus.   

“We never know what will come out of the partnership between the medium and our creative processes. We could find ourselves with rings, necklaces, cups, or chandeliers. Some are born without a definition of what they ought to be.”

Industrial Designer / Sustainable Design:
DIANE RUENGSORN

Diane Ruengsorn brings a diverse background of experience that informs her current initiative, the socially and environmentally responsible home furnishings company Domestic Aesthetic.

After graduating from Smith College, she began her career as a writer covering technology and business trends and interviewing political leaders and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, which gave her great insight into the issues shaping industry and the environment. Later, she enrolled in a Masters program at the Pratt Institute and began apprenticing for a furniture designer/manufacturer where she witnessed the chemicals and materials that workers were exposed to on a daily basis. This led her to believe that products could be produced with people-friendly materials and methods that didn’t harm anyone in the process. She has since guest lectured on design management and publishing and presented her work internationally. Through a culmination of all these things, the idea for Domestic Aesthetic was born.

ABOUT DOMESTIC AESTHETIC

“Live well, live right” is the company’s philosophy. You can have products that enhance your life while taking into account people and our planet. Domestic Aesthetic offers consumers affordable products that adhere to environmentally and socially responsible standards.

Since their launch last year, the company has been in numerous publications such as New York Magazine, Interior Design, and multiple features in the New York Times. The company’s line of eco-luxe housewares can be found in stores across the US, Canada, and Australia including the MoMa Design store.

DIANE’S STORE-Y

Diane discusses her work leading up to the What Women Make ~Women in Design 1st ed.~ exhibit at the London Design Festival showing at Designerblock September 23-26, The Bargehouse, Oxo Tower

THE INTERVIEW

wwm: What are these plates made of?
DR: These plates are made from sugar cane fiber, which is a waste product after juice has been extracted from the stalks. In our work, we have several themes and one of them is using materials that take waste out of the wastestream. It’s an amazing material and gave us the look we wanted to achieve while also being sturdy, durable, heat-resistant and completely biodegradable/compostable.

wwm: Walk us down your path of discovery for creating them?
DR: The inspiration for these came from staircases, as I happen to have a thing for staircases. I liked the idea that they are functional but could also be a metaphor for transition. The first of this line, the dinner plates, remind me of Italian piazzas. The bowls will be modeled after amphitheaters, my favorite one being the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. It’s an interesting challenge to draw on this inspiration, translate it into a potentially commercial product, and make sure it’s consistent with everything else we’re doing.

wwm: How does this new line fit in with your other products?
DR: I love food – I’m an avid cook – and much of my work involves enhancing the dining experience. Our first line was about trying to create meaningful experiences through products that were timeless and long lasting, items that you could potentially pass on to future generations. For this new line, many of the themes are still there but I wanted to have a different approach. This time I wanted to solve a problem, to provide an alternative to the Styrofoam and plastic plates that are commonly used and thrown away.

wwm: What would you serve? Feel free to give us a recipe!
DR: I just made an arugula and watermelon salad with a balsamic glaze. It’s a light, refreshing summer salad and the first dish I made to test out the new plates. Even for a casual gathering, it can be nice to enhance the presentation a bit. In this instance, the plates worked really well because I used the balsamic glaze to dribble along the edges. It looked great against the contrast of pink and green.

Watermelon, Feta, and Arugula Salad with Balsamic Glaze