Michael Cannell

Curbside Marketing: Blu Dot to Drop Free Chairs on Sidewalk and Track the Takers

BY Michael CannellThu Oct 29, 2009 at 11:18 AM

Here's one for the annals of experimental marketing: On Wednesday and Thursday a white van carrying a stack of powder-coated Real Good chairs by Blu Dot, a Minneapolis design firm started by three college friends, will patrol ...READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | 5 comments

From Overwrought to Overly Simple: Is Green Design Anti-Style?

BY Michael CannellWed Oct 28, 2009 at 12:57 PM

Like everyone else, the design field braced for the fallout from the financial meltdown. At the time, some of us argued that good things could come from a period of constraint and reexamination. The consumer culture of design had ...READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

Return of La Buena Vida: Conran Poised for Cuban Invasion

BY Michael CannellTue Oct 27, 2009 at 6:25 PM

Sir Terence Conran, the designer and founder of the Conran Shop, has made preparations to design a dozen hotels and resorts in Cuba. Sir Terence, who revolutionized the sale and marketing of home furnishings in the sixties and ...READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | 1 comment

5 Ways Design Thinking Can Raise the Collective IQ of Your Business

BY Michael CannellThu Oct 22, 2009 at 12:25 PM

A panel held as part of National Design Week addressed ways to integrate designers, and design thinking, into organizations that usually resist change.READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

Does Architecture Have a Foot Fetish?

BY Michael CannellTue Oct 20, 2009 at 1:19 PM

You don't have to try very hard to spot the architecture students on a college campus. They're the ones with the carefully considered shoes (and artful eyewear). It's easy to see why architects are so selective about their footwear: ...READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

Romancing Ruin: Four Radical Rehabs

BY Michael CannellThu Oct 15, 2009 at 10:22 AM

Thirty years ago, in the badass seventies, the warehouse loft was cutting-edge real estate. The loft was then the height of bohemian cool; now it seems tame and utterly conventional. The conversion of offbeat industrial ...READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

Can Designers Stamp Out Rural Poverty?

BY Michael CannellTue Oct 13, 2009 at 4:27 PM

Designers, corporate leaders, foundation heads and journalists meet next month in Aspen to solidify plans for a national design center in Alabama to study and alleviate rural poverty.READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

Design Challenge of the Day: What Should Quarantine Look Like?

BY Michael CannellThu Oct 8, 2009 at 9:59 AM

In the wake of swine flu and body scans, designers reimagine isolation.READ»

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Can Blu Homes Fulfill the Promise of Prefab?

BY Michael CannellTue Oct 6, 2009 at 12:10 PM

A Boston start-up says its method will at last fulfill the promise of cheap manufactured homes. (But can anybody get a mortgage?)READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

The Return of Function: The Everyday Design Movement

BY Michael CannellTue Sep 29, 2009 at 11:29 AM

Why is the design world romancing staplers, pencil holders paper clips and other incidental objects of daily life?READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | 1 comment

Turn Back the Clock: Is Pre-Colonial the Design Vibe of the Moment?

BY Michael CannellThu Sep 17, 2009 at 11:05 AM

The 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s landfall romances salt marshes and beaver pelts.READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | 1 comment

Is the New Wave of Super Big Buildings Wretched Excess? Or Is Bigger Still Better?

BY Michael CannellTue Sep 15, 2009 at 10:33 AM

With the NFL season less than a week old, the new $1.15 billion stadium for the Dallas Cowboys may be the most talked about piece of architecture in the country. Designed by HKS, the go-to architecture firm for splashy sports ...READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | 2 comments

Six Object Lessons in the New Restraint at Maison et Objet

BY Michael CannellThu Sep 10, 2009 at 5:31 PM

While Americans checked out for the Labor Day interlude, the European design season got underway with Maison et Objet, one of the home furnishings fairs that set the agenda for the design year ahead. Maison is generally regarded as ...READ»

DROOG | 2 comments

New York's Design Scene Is Going Dutch

BY Michael CannellWed Sep 9, 2009 at 5:57 PM

A series of events and exhibitions by Dutch designers will transform New York into New Amsterdam, at least for the next few weeks.READ»

BEN VAN BERKEL | 2 comments

Instant Landmark: New Amsterdam Pavilion

BY Michael CannellWed Sep 9, 2009 at 2:17 PM

To mark the 400th anniversary of the Dutch arrival, New York unveils a gift from the Netherlands--a spiral-shaped visitor's center where 70,000 daily commuters pass.READ»

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Which Way Design: Seven Telling Events for the Fall

BY Michael CannellThu Sep 3, 2009 at 1:18 PM

As surely as weighty new catalogues from Design Within Reach and Ikea land with a thump at your door, the fall design season awaits on the far side of Labor Day. This is the customary moment for design editors to preview fall events. ...READ»

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It’s On: A Critic Says L.A. Is Now Architecture’s Leading Light. A Brooklyn Designer Says No Way

BY Michael CannellTue Aug 25, 2009 at 4:30 PM

Could this be the architecture equivalent of Tupac versus Biggie? Last Sunday Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for The New York Times, published an essay (“As Heroes Disappear, the City Nees More”) lamenting the 1970s ...READ»

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Got Pouffe? A New Ad Campaign Urges Consumers Unable to Buy New Homes to Shell Out for Furnishings Instead

BY Michael CannellTue Aug 25, 2009 at 9:44 AM

For more than a decade we lived in a culture of real-estate ambition as up-ticking values made every house a potential nest egg. God help us, we were a nation of bidders and flippers consumed by balloon mortgages, rate locks and ...READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

With the Advent of Edge Architecture, the Old Boys Are Making Way for Newcomers From Mumbai and Burkina Faso

BY Michael CannellThu Aug 20, 2009 at 6:38 PM

Move over Foster and Stern: tomorrow's design stars are the ones building schools and community shelters in their native countries.READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | Comment

Goodbye George Washington: Should Neighborhoods Adopt Their Own Currency?

BY Michael CannellTue Aug 18, 2009 at 5:08 PM

Five years ago we all gushed and oohed over how the Internet had shrunk the world, bringingMoscow as close as Massachusetts. In reaction against growing globalism we now cebrate the local: we buy carrots from nearby farms, and the ...READ»

HYPERLOCAL CURRENCIES | 1 comment

The Brooklyn Dollar: What Would Neighborhood Currency Look Like?

BY Michael CannellTue Aug 18, 2009 at 5:08 PM

Five years ago, we all gushed over how the Internet had shrunk the world, bringing Moscow as close as Massachusetts. Now, in reaction to growing globalism, we celebrate the local, buying carrots from nearby farms, and furnishings from local materials. Local currencies are emerging as well.READ»

THE DESIGN ECONOMY | 3 comments

Design Scorecard: Who's Winning and Losing the Recession?

BY Michael CannellThu Aug 13, 2009 at 3:54 PM

The economic upheaval has wreaked havoc on the world of design. Which brands are thriving despite the financial woes and which have been decimated, perhaps forever?READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | 3 comments

Would You Share a Home With 100 People?

BY Michael CannellTue Aug 11, 2009 at 12:29 PM

Cohousing was supposed to be the next big residential trend, but it never took off. Now the recession is reviving interest in shared living facilities. Kitchen duty, anyone?READ»

MICHAEL CANNELL | 8 comments

So Long, Stockholm. Six Reasons Why Belgium Will Be the Next Hotspot for Design

BY Michael CannellThu Aug 6, 2009 at 12:51 PM

Ten years ago the fashionable destination for design-minded travelers was the Guggenheim at Bilbao, where Frank Gehry's titanium acrobatics famously cast their spell. When design tourists pack their black clothing this month they will ...READ»

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Return of the Breezeway: A Morphology of Indoor-Outdoor Space

BY Michael CannellTue Aug 4, 2009 at 2:08 PM

Houses are like animals. They have their own morphology: They adaped and changed and developed new traits over long periods of evolution. As a concession to warm summer days like today, for example, the traditional home took ...READ»