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September 28th, 2010
Above: Silo House, Cornell University. (Click on image to enlarge and view slide show.)
One of the occasional criticisms of prefabricated modular architecture that we sometimes run into is that it tends towards the boxy. We’re somewhat puzzled by this assessment, since the same can be said of the vast majority of buildings erected since the Greeks began to construct their temples on rectangular plans 2,500 years ago. To be sure, our Platonic ancestors also designed the occasional circular edifice for purposes of pagan worship, but these are invariably regarded as punctuation points in a landscape of otherwise emphatic rectilinearity. Nor have any subsequent efforts to ‘break the box,’ be it by geodesic domes, fractured planes or undulating concrete, succeeded in dislodging the rectangular volume from its preferred status among the world’s structures.
  
  
Top row: Left, Silo House interior. Middle and right: Homes for Haiti by Joseph Bellomo. Bottom row: Roll It House by University of Karlsruhe.
For aficionados of modular building, this is actually a good thing, because the very process of erecting a prefab structure lends itself to the use of rectangular units. For starters, just about every modular building component has to be transported to its site on the back of a flatbed truck, which of course means it must rest on a rectangular surface without anything extending into adjacent lanes or striking roadside objects while moving. It’s also a relatively simple form to construct and to attach to other components to form larger compositions. And, as with site-built architecture, it’s a whole lot easier to furnish the interiors than spaces that look to do away with flat walls, geometrically grounded plans or angles of 90 degrees.
  
  
Top row and bottom row left and middle: Eco-pods for downtown Boston by Howeler + Yoon Architecture and Squared Design Lab. Middle row right: InflateIt House by Dimitris Gourdoukis and Katerina Tryfonidou. Bottom row: Walking House by studio n55.
But does that keep anyone from designing modular buildings that aren’t rectangular? Of course not – this is, after all, the age of hubris when it comes to defying expectations and perceived limits. We celebrate that spirit with a small collection of modular designs that eschew the rectilinear in favor of, well, in favor of just about anything else. We might not have been able to break the box in over two millennia of conventional building, but at least we don’t stop trying.
  
  
Top row: EC*-Cocoon House by Cyril-Emmanuel Issanchou. Bottom row: Modular housing by Guy Dessauges, 1960s.
References:
Silo House
Homes for Haiti
Roll It House
InflateIt House
Eco-pods
Walking House
EC*-Cocoon House
YouTube Housing
September 21st, 2010
In a time of informal attitudes towards shaping space, and a continued desire for flexibility in how space can be used, it’s no surprise that there’s been a resurgence of interest in diaphanous wall screens and movable partition systems within the design community. Gone are the days – thankfully – of cubicle dividers covered in burgundy fabric, at least in the milieu of the aesthetically sensitive (you know, like the people who read this blog). So too are beads (along with the aged hippies who liked them), homasote on wood studs (except maybe in architecture schools), bedsheets on ropes (except maybe in some dorm rooms), and shower curtains (shower curtains?).
In their place we now have a veritable flood of tastefully composed products ranging from the most ethereal and permeable membrane to the well-constructed metal and glass assemblies that shimmer under the glare of our low-energy bulbs. We present here a small sampling of some of the more noteworthy pieces in this category we have come across for your viewing pleasure. Many are modular. And, to remind us that there is nothing new under the architectural sun, we start off with some designs by sculptor Erwin Hauer, who was among a group of artists that emerged primarily at Yale in the 1950s and is now known as Modular Constructivists. Hauer, we are happy to remark, is alive and well and continues his work out of a Connecticut studio, including a recent commission for the über-hip Standard Hotel in New York.
  
  
  
We might also let it be known that our interest in this particular object of design was sparked when we decided to create a portfolio of new modular designs executed in fabric and intended to hang on walls. While not meant to serve the pragmatic purposes to which most of the screens featured here aspire, we were obviously intrigued by the way designers have approached the problem of creating very thin and attractive planes out of soft materials and non-structural assemblies.
  
  
We hope to have this portfolio ready for its debut later this fall; in the meanwhile, you’ll just have to do with the visual feast we have drawn from the work of others. (If you’re new to this site or haven’t yet discovered this neat trick, you can click on the top image and see a slideshow of all the images at their full size. Captions will include information on the designer and product.)
  
  
References
Erwin Hauer
Piasa
Egawa + Zbryk
Inmod
Mia Cullin
Moorhead & Moorhead
MOVISI
Deesawat
LOFTWall
Act
Lammhults
molo
3form
MIO
Kvadrat
September 14th, 2010
Not long ago, we were in conversation with a well-known real estate developer about our involvement in a potential project. At one point in the conversation the developer – known for his support of the arts – asked us about our motivations for being involved in the project. “So, do you want to do good? Or do you want to make money?” he quizzed us. To which we quickly replied “We want to make good money.”
The wittiness of our our quip aside, this exchange highlights a long-held perception in popular culture about business, namely, that it is by its own nature in direct conflict with the good. For the many people who have never seen the inside of a boardroom, the world of business would seem attract the worst sort of human characters, starting with the Borgias and ending with Gordon Gecko (leaving the not yet released Wall Street 2 aside). Of course, the reckless greed rampant among today’s bankers that we have all read about in the accounts of the Great Recession only reinforces this caricature.
Perhaps one of the most heartening characteristics of the post-boomer generation of entrepreneurs is its innate disposition towards marrying commerce with social good. Over the years this impulse has evolved from the charming benevolence we used to associate with youthful naiveté and lip service to a very real and very effective way of doing business. Should this trend continue there is a good possibility that the pervasive image of highly successful for-profit ventures being largely run by amoral cads fueled by personal gain will be substantially revised.
  
  
The company MIO is but one example of this welcome development. Founded in 2001 in Philadelphia USA by the brothers Salm (Isaac, the numbers guy and Jaime, the design guy, as they succinctly describe themselves), the design products company offers wallpaper, lighting, seating, shelving and storage, tables and accessories. We were initially drawn to Mio because they feature several modular products, including wall screens and wallpapers. But it was in reading the company profile on their website that we were really struck by the new spirit of entrepreneurship that is rising around us.
 “MIO was founded,” the brothers Salm write, “with the objective of combining business rigor with environmentally and socially progressive design.” Right there we have a clear renunciation of the perceived dichotomy of doing good and doing well. “All of our products use materials that can be easily recycled with existing infrastructures, fit into closed loop manufacturing systems available today or fit seamlessly with natural ecosystems.” The familiar but nonetheless welcome commitment to sustainable design – only they truly implement it in their products. “We make customers participants in the lifecycle of designs through information and technology.” Optimism in the promise of what our age can offer. And finally, “Since our founding in 2001 we have encouraged our customers to grow into a greener, healthier, happier and more profitable future. Our design focuses on the needs of people today and aims towards the technologically advanced and responsible product experiences of tomorrow.” It’s hard to imagine a more welcome and sincere set of statements of what business can and should do. It seems all we need are the right people in charge.
References
MIO
September 3rd, 2010
  
A sampling of modular paintings by Roy Lichtenstein (gridded arrangement by us).
Roy Lichtenstein is an artist widely known for paintings whose form and content are derived from comic book illustration. So it comes as quite a pleasant surprise to us to discover that his oeuvre includes a series of ten canvases and additional preparatory drawings based on a modular theme.
Lichtenstein executed the bulk of these works in 1969. Nine of the ten works were composed of four identical panels arranged in a grid; a single canvas, done in 1968, contains nine panels in a similar arrangement. All but two are square in overall proportion, since the individual panels in them are themselves square. All of the finished works are rather large in scale, measuring somewhere between eight and ten feet in either direction.
We find these pieces compelling on a number of fronts. From an historical perspective, it’s refreshing to see an artist ‘crossing over’ from one current stylistic genre to another, in Lichtenstein’s case, from the figurative Pop school to the abstract Minimalist one. This fluidity underscores one problem we have with art historical labels – they tend to pigeonhole people into categories under the assumption that one must be a hedgehog and not a fox when it comes to artistic production (the hedgehog knows one thing really well, the fox knows a bunch of things but none as well as the hedgehog). It’s particularly curious that we laud the idea of pluralism when applied to art and design as a whole, but seem less ready to embrace stylistic diversity when it comes to defining individual artists.
Then again, if one digs deep enough one might find some thematic connections in Lichtenstein’s paintings that tie the two seemingly opposite schools together. For instance, like other Pop artists Lichtenstein took inspiration from the mechanical processes of commercial illustration. Modularity and minimalism have a similar affinity for industrial character, but emphasize its abstract qualities rather than try to bring it into an overtly humanized framework. Lichtenstein seems to want to bridge the gap by using repetitive and abstract forms, but then endowing them with rich, sensuous colors and patterns for the purpose of inducing visual pleasure in the eye of the viewer.
  
Of course, people like Frank Sella, Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland had been generously applying color to their Minimalist canvases for some time when Lichtenstein produced his modular series. But Lichtenstein composes his panels with more visual complexity and contrast than his colleagues, many of whose works indicate a reductivist desire to simplify rather than amplify. In one sense, he was taking modular painting in the only direction it could go, if we consider Rauschenberg’s White Painting series of 1951 as the grand-daddy of the multi-panel modular work of art. Devoid of color or content, Rauschenberg’s paintings are the obvious antecedent to and a point of departure for all the modular canvases that came after them.
One quality which the modular pieces we’ve cited so far have in common is a lack of mobility. In other words, all of them are fixed works of art, unchanging and untouchable in their finished state. Other artists, like one of our favorites, Charlotte Posenenske, had already associated modularity with changeability, but she was among the few to incorporate this understanding into her work. Another was Norman Carlberg, a modular artist and sculptor who we will talk about in an upcoming post. Until then, you’ll just have to ponder the possibilities.
References:
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Website contains an excellent online illustrated catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works, including the modular series
Charlotte Posenenske
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Mission Henry Ford, move over – the era of mass production has come to a close! Personalization is the name of the game now. People want a role in shaping the physical world around them to suit their individual needs, tastes and resources; to satisfy that goal they're looking for works of art and design that are reconfigurable, interactive and scalable. This blog explores how creatives are responding to the quest for customization, as well as the impact customization is having on the creative disciplines themselves.
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