Michael Cannell

Homes on Stilts: The Last Architecture Trend of the Decade

Michael Cannell — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:15:59 -0500

The clock is ticking down on the last design trends of the aughts. Squeaking in just before the calendar flips is this unlikely development: a fashion for stilted homes. Why stilted? Whatever their actual environmental benefit might be, stilts express a culture-wide desire to tread lightly on the land. These homes hint at mobility; without basements or foundations, they could be gone tomorrow. They're also a throwback to the virtuously simple tropical huts and the early days of prefab.

Aspen Report: The TED-Types Roll Up Their Sleeves for Social Design

Michael Cannell — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:11:49 -0500

Two years ago, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York displayed 30 humanitarian design and engineering projects, including a biodegradable shelter, a low-tech food cooler, and a straw that helps prevent the spread of cholera and typhoid. They were exhibited, incongruously enough, on the back lawn of the museum's headquarters, the former Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue.

Can Design Thinking Solve Your Problems and Make You Happier?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:14:57 -0500

Imagine for a moment that a business needs a radically innovative approach to a vexing problem. Designers and managers start with an intense focus on the human aspect--the real problems their customers face in daily life. Somebody gives the obligatory talk about out-of-the-box thinking. Then they step back--way back--and let creativity, not the cold exigencies of logic, reframe the problem. When it works, this process can lead to startling new solutions. In the parlance of the moment, this is called "design thinking."

The Post-Big Era: Will Small-Scale Ingenuity Replace Large-Scale Architecture?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:30:31 -0500

The extra-large architectural complex--art museums, libraries, office complexes--built so prolifically over the past decade are commonly described as expressions of civic pride. They might just as easily be called grandiose expressions of runaway prosperity and municipal vanity. Whatever you call them, shrinking government revenue and newly parsimonious corporate donors have combined to bring the curtain down on mega-projects. Welcome to the post-big epoch.

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

Michael Cannell — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:18:42 -0400

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 Manhattan neighborhoods dropping the chairs one-by-one on the street. No promotional material or sales pitch will accompany the drop-offs. The chairs will be free for the taking.

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

Michael Cannell — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:57:05 -0400

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 become overwrought, with limited edition candleholders that sell for $2,700.

Return of La Buena Vida: Conran Poised for Cuban Invasion

Michael Cannell — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:25:57 -0400

Sir Terence Conran, the designer and founder of the Conran Shop, has made preparations to design a dozen hotels and resorts in Cuba.

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

Michael Cannell — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:25:26 -0400

Business executives love stability and the cold imperatives of logic. Ambiguity gives them fits. Designers, by contrast, can't abide the status quo.

Does Architecture Have a Foot Fetish?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:19:27 -0400

Romancing Ruin: Four Radical Rehabs

Michael Cannell — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:22:44 -0400

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 spaces--designers call it ‘adaptive reuse’--has moved on to more adventurous ground as architects and developers try to preserve the past and keep building materials out of landfills. As these five projects illustrate, the art lies not in what’s removed but in what industrial memory is preserved, and how it’s woven among new materials.

Can Designers Stamp Out Rural Poverty?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:27:29 -0400

Plans for a national design center to help alleviate rural poverty will be solidified when 60 designers, corporate leaders, foundation heads, and journalists meet next month for the 2009 Aspen Design Summit. The event, sponsored by the AIGA and Winterhouse Institute, is a strategy session for the social design movement.

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

Michael Cannell — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:59:14 -0400

Four years ago Paola Antonelli curated a collection of emergency shelters, gas masks, and security bollards for a MoMA exhibition called "Safe: Design Takes On Risk." The show demonstrated how thoroughly 9/11 had galvanized the design field. Since then, our collective fear has shifted from terrorism to biology: Our nightmares now center on ebola, swine flu, and pandemic panic. So long Bin Laden. Hello hot zone.

Can Blu Homes Fulfill the Promise of Prefab?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:10:06 -0400

Maybe Barry Bergdoll should have come to the opening of his museum show dressed as the Grim Reaper. In Home Delivery, MoMA's show last summer, Bergdoll recalled more than 100 years of failed efforts to make prefabricated homes a workable proposition. Bergdoll offered no prediction for the much-hyped modernist prefabs of today, but the show by implication cast doubt on their feasibility.

The Return of Function: The Everyday Design Movement

Michael Cannell — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:29:32 -0400

A little more than a year ago the design world was still on its giddy pursuit of over-the-top items of questionable utility. Porcelain Squirrels for $1,100. A limited-edition armoire encased in hand-painted enamel leaves for $700,000. A bench made of hand-molded clay for $6,500.

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

Michael Cannell — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:05:21 -0400

Over the past week New York marked the 400th anniversary of the Dutch arrival with a design festival on Governor's Island and the unveiling of a pavilion by Dutch architect Ben Van Berkel, among other commemorations.

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

Michael Cannell — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:33:58 -0400

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.

Six Object Lessons in the New Restraint at Maison et Objet

Michael Cannell — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:31:02 -0400

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.

New York's Design Scene Is Going Dutch

Michael Cannell — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:57:02 -0400

It's easy to find the Dutch booths at the big design shows. Just follow the smirks. At least that's what people are fond of saying about them. The American design press often describes the Dutch design community as a bunch of happy pranksters, but that description is too glib and not entirely accurate.

Instant Landmark: New Amsterdam Pavilion

Michael Cannell — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:17:49 -0400

At least something's getting built at the lower tip of Manhattan.

To mark the 400th anniversary of the Dutch arrival in Manhattan, Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands today unveiled an unfinished pavilion at Battery Park, where the Dutch established the colony of New Amsterdam (though you're more likely to know the spot as the entrance to the Staten Island ferry terminal.)

Which Way Design: Seven Telling Events for the Fall

Michael Cannell — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:18:34 -0400

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. The predictions and appraisals have added intrigue after a year freighted with uncertainty. It's hard to gauge the design field during the dog days of summer.

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

Michael Cannell — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:30:16 -0400

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 heyday when Charles Gwathmey, who died earlier this month, and the rest of the so-called New York Five made New York a center of modernist discourse.

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

Michael Cannell — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:44:36 -0400

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 transfer taxes.

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

Michael Cannell — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:38:47 -0400

If the dozen most famous architects had gathered for a group portrait five years ago it would have looked like a fraternity of pasty white men from New York, Los Angeles and London. Picture the clubby assembly smiling for the Leica: Richard Meier, Michael Graves, Frank Gehry, and Robert A.M.

Goodbye George Washington: Should Neighborhoods Adopt Their Own Currency?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:08:11 -0400

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 greenest among us buy furnishings made from local materials. Could the new localism lead to local currencies, as well?

The Brooklyn Dollar: What Would Neighborhood Currency Look Like?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:08:03 -0400

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