Bourollec Brothers at Vitra

The Borollecs have an exhibit up at the Vitra Design Museum, which focuses partly on the importance of freehand drawing in their design process.

The exhibition emphasises the significance drawing has always had for the conception of objects – from da Vinci to Le Corbusier. The very word “design” can be traced back to the Italian term “disegno”, which was used in the Renaissance to refer to the sketching out of a pictorial motif.”

Album from Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec on Vimeo.

 

Eames Elephants

Via Metropolis Magazine, Valentines Day fun from the seemingly inexhaustible well of Eames-based inspiration. Toy elephants in Africa:

Which is great and alll, but I prefer the one of them in Los Angeles, in which they visit the Eames House:

Thursday Readings in Modern Architecture

Just in time lunch-hour web browsing:

Herzog & de Meuron, Actelion Business Center, study models, 2010. Via Design Observer.•Design Observer publishes an interview with Jacques Herzog about his work and the Swiss ideas behind it. 

•NYT House & Garden has a Q & A with a leading producer of architecture-related iPad apps about the future of architecture online.

•A standard, modern-house-irritates-the-neighbors story in the Wall Street Journal doesn't answer the main question we're asking: who is Sheryl Sandberg's architect?

SOL Austin in the NYT

One of the first houses to go up at SOL, in 2009We always try to keep up to date with what Karrie Jacobs is working on, ever since we got introduced to her--and for that matter, or our long-time collaborator Brett Zamore--via her book The Perfect $100,000 House. So after enjoying her recent Metropolis piece about Austin's Domain shopping center and changing notions of urbanism, we couldn't help but wonder what she was doing in our old stomping grounds. 

This morning over coffee and the Times' House and Home section, our curiosity was satisfied--and delighted--to discover her mission was to profile Hometta contributor Chris Krager of KRDB and his super-cool SOL development in East Austin. 

Chris was one of Hometta's earliest contributors, and is someone we admire immensely for his creativity and dedication to improving the built environment through progressive architecture. So much so that we traveled to Austin in 2010 to check out SOL and do a couple of podcasts profiling KRDB and the Dogtrot Casita, plans for which are for sale at Hometta. 

So if you enjoyed the Times piece today and would like to know more....

Here's my original blog post from that day, and the two videos we produced from our time there:

Meet KRDB from Hometta, Inc. on Vimeo.

Dogtrot Casita from Hometta, Inc. on Vimeo.

Freedomland

Keith Krumwiede's Lantern House for HomettaA Hometta contributor has a show opening at the Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery this Friday, and through tomorrow, you have a chance to be part of it via its Kickstarter campaign. 

Freedomland by Keith Krumweide, architecture professor at Yale University, is an "architectural satire." Simultaneously an art installation and a wild surmise, the series of drawings and texts is is "the latest in a long line of visionary plans for American living:"

In an attempt to solve every problem and please every citizen, Freedomland, in one bold, absurdist move, colonizes the super grid that blankets America. Like the work of a benevolent (or perhaps delusional) dictator, it seeks to accommodate every wish, every desire, no matter how contradictory and to combine them in a master plan that sets out a beautiful, if seemingly naïve, vision for a better, more harmonious world. 

Investors will receive "naming rights" to one of the estates, each culled from the numerous stock plans for sale by America's mega-homebuilders. For a minimum investment of $25, you can name one of the estates, a real bargain, Krumeweide says, "when you think of the millions some people will spend ot get their name on a building."

I love this. Adding to the unreality, Freedomland's 128 "unique neighborhood farm estates" each rotate counter-clockwise on their 40-acre plots every 40 years. Is Freedomland a bizarre square dance of land-use despair? Or that hilarity that comes aftewards, when you realize you're beat and can't stop laughing?

Or maybe it's our real future, after all. 

More info is available on the Freedomland Tumblr.