coffee table books

phaidon is reknowned for releasing some amazing books with lots of pretty pictures, i should know, my library is FULL of them. and it gives me fantastic excitement and spine chills when i check out the local bookstore in my lunchbreak (ariel at darlinghurst is absolutely phenomenal, for those who love art/philosophy/design etc, check out their collection!) and see that phaidon have released the third edition in their "10x10" series, whereby 10 design critics/architecture kingpins pick their 10 favourite up-and-coming architects (making for 100 in total) and cram this huge big book with lots of visual stimuli! also check out phaidon's other books in the series, "area"/"area 2" (meant to be little 2 to indicate area squared, but my typing skills are slightly lacking) which uses the same 10x10 concept, but with graphic designers as the topic of choice, and "cream"/"fresh cream"/"ice cream" from a few years back which went 10x10 on visual artists. makes for a well-wicked coffee table book for the design conscious mind, or for people who want to pretend to friends that they are actually "cultured".

peter eisenman / deconstructavism

...was randomly searching the intergoogle, looking up some of the old architects i used to have a fondness for, and stumbled upon this unbelievable concept model by architect peter eisenman, the master of the often controversial and highly confrontational "deconstructivist" movement of architecture, (of whom frank gehry, rem koolhaus, zaha hadid and daniel libeskind are also considered exponents) which was largely inspired by the philosphophy of derrida, and the geometrical imbalances of russian constravism and minimalism (two of my most favourite art/architecture movements!). sadly, i have no idea what this building is or any other information about it, just two ridiculously amazing images, in his distinctly unique style.

jeunet

i've been revisiting my foreign film collection recently, and i've just finished watching jean-pierre jeunet's "a very long engagement", and i must confess, the more i watch his films, the more i wish i was able to speak french, so i could woo audrey tautou, particularly the delightfully cheeky little darling she plays in "amelie".
next movie on the watch list is jeunet's "delicatessan" (sadly, no audrey)

in the court of the crimson king

i know i have a tendency to listen to a bunch of albums that were released more than 50 years ago, so instead of setting my time machine back to the 1950's jazz era, i will instead opt for the late 60's, and this absolute aural masterpiece, king crimson's phenomenal debut album "in the court of the crimson king". i was watching the film "kingdom of men" the other night, and in one scene michael caine has the song "epitaph..." playing on the radio, and it inspired me to get it out and listen to it repeatedly, non-stop, day and night.
loosely termed "prog rock" (although the band themselves despised that title) every time i listen to this album, it continues to blow my mind. i'm not even going to begin to try and describe it, because their music is chameleonic (is that even a word? anyway, like a chameleon) and changes form and structure so many times, combining elements of jazz, folk, classical, soundscape, etc. the list of influences is endless. i give up, i am just going to listen to the album again and lose myself.

landing sites - places to go when you die.

whoa. attempting to get my head around the work of arakawa and gins at the moment in a book called "architecture: site of reversible destiny", and getting majorly mind-fucked in the process. he's a philosopher, she's an architect, and their body of work revolves around the concepts of self-knowledge and self-formation, about how the human body interacts with the built environement and the socio-historical matrix, and the role the body played in the formation of the man-made world, presented through a philosophical argument into the realms of construction. some of the images presented are equal parts stunning and disturbing.

grrrr.

for years i've had this dream that i would be able to dedicate a room of my (future) house to be sort of a mini design museum, including

having a handful of iconic chairs. cassina of italy make some absolutely FANTASTIC replicas of the originals, including amongst their collection "red and blue"and "zigzag"chairs by gerrit reitveldt, and a handful of various charles rennie macintosh, le corbusier and frank lloyd wright chairs,

and so it breaks my heart when i drop into their australian distributor, space furniture, and find that they are over $10,000 each! they also have mario canzani's stunning "tatlin" lounge by edra in red velvet, but that tops out at over $25k! i'm going to need a very understanding wife!

as if i didn't know it already, but it just helped reinforce the fact - damn it is expensive to be a fan of nice design! angry face!

http://www.cassina.com/ENG/

leaning strata

once again, (until i can somehow work into my budget the money to buy a new digital camera so that i can photograph my own work), works i admire by inspirational artists in my fledgling art/design career.
probably THE founder of the movement towards a supposed "anti-architecure" (although never categorising his work under any such banner) robert smithson was actually at one point a lecturer at university to gordon matta-clark (who took his teachers mantle and made it his own.) unfortunately, australian libraries don't usually carry a lot of books on the lesser-known artists of the world, so i struggled to delve much further into his body of work, aside from probably his best known work, "spiral jetty" (a 1500 foot rock coil in the utah salt lakes, that become more or less exposed depending on the weather and how the tides were - google it!)
although better known for his works that involved the rearrangment of natural landscapes, i actually had the pleasure of seeing a smithson retrospective at london's tate modern in 2005?, where upon i discovered that smithson also had an impressive body of gallery works too. anyone who has seen any of my work can understand why the geometrically-mathematical nature of smithson's "leaning strata" (1968) particularly appeals to me.
check also the book that accompanied his touring retrospective exhibition, "robert smithson" published by Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004.

the holy grail

...fast becoming my favourite pedal. reverb rocks my world.

i must invest in some more electro harmonix.