Nice deck from Adam Cahill on Obama and social media. Lots of lessons here, many already known and recognized, but well worth a timely reminder.

Image Source: Listen to ME! One of the key skills I noticed great designers have is the ability to engage in Active Listening. I was lucky. I managed to pick up this skill 6-7 years ago in a training seminar and it has been vital in helping my access situations quickly, make good decisions, [...]

Franco Marino Cagnina's Livebox router design for Saudi Telecom looks like vase and acts like a router. Says Franco, "STC was in need of a unique router design that would provoke a positive emotional response. The STC Router successfully bridges the gap between lifestyle and technology with it's flower vase functionality. Wireless internet, Voice over IP, land line telephone and wired DSL are all incorporated into this elegant device.". A quick look at Franco's portfolio revealed a few more innovative designs.

+ cagninadesign.com

Finally an update! Well I’m glad that I revisited Week 1 again before going into Week 2. It got my system moving and I was starting to feel comfortable going through the routine 3 times a week. I must admit, getting comfortable with any fitness routine is an important plus to maintaining [...]

October 15, is Blog Action Day 2008! This is where bloggers from around the world get together to talk about a common theme or topic. This year’s topic is about Poverty, and as Design Sojourn is a design blog, it will be about Poverty and Design. I’ve decided to do something different, rather than [...]

Pentagram's work on the new Quantum of Solace is a stunning example of design as key differentiator. The design is pure restraint and understatement, but is so clearly "on brand". The designers have resisted the temptation to draw on spy category cliches and instead have created something fresh and new. Kudos to the client for supporting a brave design.




Posted by Ed Cotton

This is one of the designs that originated from the design phase of the suburban house project.



I have to confess that I find the space really interesting, but no doubt it won't be for everybody.

Technorati Tags: house plans, modern design, modern house

Chile is exporting a lot more than a mean pisco these days. The XVI Chilean Architecture Biennial, a celebration of great Chilean architecture, recently wrapped this week in Santiago where the main theme was an exploration of architecture that cares for the earth. Hosted at the Contemporary Art Museum of Forestal Park, there was literally too much talent for the conventional structure to contain and the Biennial exploded out into the public eye in form of a completely sustainable, modern temporary pavilion designed by Assadi + Pulido, a young Santiago-based design studio with a modern, edgy and recognizable style.

(more…)

the k:fem department store by wingårdh architecture is located in the vällingby development, just outside
of stockholm. the store was conceived as a new beacon for the community serving to inject new life into
the area. the exterior is covered in a milky glass which get increasingly see through toward the top,
merging into the red overhang above. the list of stores inside are displayed on the overhang, all in white
on red. a pedestrian street cuts-through the department store, dividing it from the adjoining solo retailer.
inside the store, the semitransparent theme continues. the most unique features is the light filled central
core which is open to the sky.

http://www.wingardhs.se










via arch daily

What the heck. It's Halloween, and we might as well cover a few more architects in the fatality department. Enjoy! (via land+living)

I finally got the time today to sit down and really think about the impact of these troubled times. It has been a very hectic month since I officially started my new role, as a result I really only hovered around the “doom and gloom” of the global impact from the US Sub-Prime Crises. With [...]

Its time to build the house. All the steel pieces for the Massachusetts EcoSteel House arrived on site this week.



We've watched these go up here before and they generally happen very fast. I'll be posting progress photos in the coming weeks as fast as I receive new photos so stay tuned!



Here is the slab layout ready to receive the steel framing. The garage is in the foreground and the house beyond with the home office at the far end of the photo. More pictures in a photo browser below the link.

Technorati Tags: ecosteel, modern design, modern house, Plat House, prefab house

It’s about time, the (M)Ad Men figured that out. Well they sort of did before and there always been Industrial Designers in advertising and branding. But much of the focus then was on packaging design, and Industrial Design was often seen as nothing more than skinning. Core77 has a pretty good article called “Stepmothers [...]

Some links to workshops and seminars the Hong Kong Design Centre will be offering in London in June; just in case you're around the corner.

I got really fired up this morning after I read a great post in architect Greg La Vardera's blog. In "Our Remodern Movement - the tipping point?" Greg suggests that now might finally be the time for modernist homes to find a place in the mainstream. I really hope so. I see the momentum. And I believe in "tipping points." I know exactly what the tipping point was for me personally, the one thing that got me really excited about modern homes. I picked up a copy of Dwell at the newsstand for the first time, the April/May 2005 issue with Charlie Lazor's Flatpak house on the cover.

I had always been interested in homes. I always dreamed of something better and more exciting than the standard fare of suburban cul-de-sacs, though I wasn't totally hooked on modern yet. But when I saw this cover, with a real family in a cool-ass house, it was like a lightning bolt. I can't tell you how badly I'd like to live in a Flatpak. It's one of the top three contenders for me. It just fits me and my family so perfectly. When the time finally comes to really build a new home I will be giving them a call to talk.

It's funny though, how "weird" most people think modernist homes are. My mother said "you want to live in a white box?" with a look on her face that was pure disbelief. Talking houses with some neighbors I could detect their nervous smiles when I mentioned concrete and steel, as in "uh, okay, sure, as long as it's not next door to my house." And look at the real estate markets. That's all you need to know. You don't see a lot of developers building modernist spec homes. Just pick up a real estate magazine and thumb through it for a minute. How many cool modernist homes will you find in the listings. Maybe one or two in a hundred page book. And they're mostly really big, expensive houses, probably built in the eighties after watching too many episodes of Miami Vice. Good, simple, modern homes for real families are hard to come by. Your best bet is a fifties ranch. Even those are a minority in the market compared to the grand total of everything else.

But I think Greg is right. This is the right time. Dwell has been so successful that some other similar publications have started to appear. Blogs like mine are popping up like daisies. Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" movement has a lot of followers (because it makes a lot of sense). Or consider John Brown's Slow Home Movement. And green is suddenly king. People finally realize that their choices have a real impact. Now is definitely the time of Less is More, and modernism fits that bill perfectly.

Probably the biggest helper in all of this, in my opinion, is going to be the bursting of the real estate bubble. I say that for one simple reason: it will make people change their view as to what their home really is - a home to live in and not an investment to make a fortune off of. I really believe that people won't/can't build what they really want because they are too hung up on resale value and growing massive equity. I don't know if this attitude caused the housing bubble or vice versa, but either way they combine to create an effect where the resultant high cost of housing distorts our views, closes our minds to new ideas, prices lots of people out of the market for a good home, and places too much power in the hands of developers, not in the hands of consumers where it should be. And so, here we are. With the bubble busting and home prices correcting I think we may also see home buyers making very different decisions about what they want to live in. I know this is the case for my wife and I, and I hope, at least, that this is the case for others.

It's definitely time for America to focus its attention on things like better homes, greener communities, reliable energy, even better communications technology, education and health care. These are the things that make up the infrastructure of this country. We won't have to worry about foreign threats for long if we allow ourselves to fall apart from the inside.

This whole country is at a tipping point, or near one. Modern homes are just a tiny, tiny part of that. We can choose a better way to live without giving up all the really great things we already enjoy.

Better living through design. Work smarter, not harder. Find the holistic solutions.

We can do it.

it’s been a great week here at d*s and i’m super excited for next week…because it’s the premier of the d*s and new york public library project! so please tune in on monday at 1pm for the launch of the first episode of our series! i’m so pleased with the results and can’t wait to share it all here. i’m filming the second episode on monday and we have a bonafide design celebrity joining us so stick around on monday to find out who that is! until then, here is a roundup of this week’s highlights. have a wonderful weekend! [above is a beautiful paper cut out from heather moore of skinny laminx. click here for more info]

• must read post(s) of the week: ugliest pillow contest- finalists and voting! and alyson fox’s gorgeous wedding
• regional roundups: austin regional roundup part 1, 2, and 3
• new sneak peeks: ruth shively, melissa mcclure’s LA loft, matte stephens’ portland home, dolan geiman’s studio
• new guide: doorstop roundup
• new diy projects: custom house of cards, kate’s ceramic planters, candy control
• new before & afters: andrea’s outdoor seating, barb’s wooden table, whitney’s ottoman, summer’s dresser
• furniture: schindlersalmeron stools
• paper: new morris & essex stationery, linda and harriett calendar
• artwork: john murphy collages, alexander girard prints
• textiles: japanese tea towels, fabric covered boxes
• misc: new coe and waito ceramics, things i’m loving- metallics, modern pet houses, crystal kluge monogram font, new jocelyn warner wallpaper, pattern show at olio united, gorgeous green interiors
• gift guides: we’re launching ours after thanksgiving but better living through design just launched a great gift guide. click here to check it out.
• new d*s guest blog: click here to check out sarah fox’s fantastic guest blog posts (including 4 diy projects!)
• recipes: in the kitchen with ditte isager (fruit meringue cake), sarah fox’s goat cheese pear tarts

"The only woman-run, hybrid specialty garage has opened in the Bay Area, which has more Priuses ? 70,000 as of 2006 ? than most states... Ms. Coquillette, 30, an Ohio native, hopes to become a prophet of the all-electric future that some Californians dream of... But being a prophet is different from making a profit." Thanks, Lincoln. (via NY Times)

Matthias Demacker of demackerdesign sent us some pictures of his newest projects; takeOff.series (above) is a seating collection for Ferlea featuring a geometrically shaped compact seat, lounge chair and sofa. "The frontal cuts give the seats a light, dynamic look and offer place for your feet while swiveling in the seat.". The extensible curvex.table after the jump is for Italy's Varaschin.

+ demacker-design.de

When I initially designed www.greenhomebuilding.com I intentionally avoided advocating the use of much wood in building, because of my concern for the health of our forests and their ecosystems, with all of the over-harvesting of timber that has occurred around the globe. There is also the fact that forests help sequester CO2 (a greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere.

This was a difficult choice for me, since my father was a wood worker and I grew up learning many of these skills; I love working with wood and I worked for years as a carpenter. It is certainly one of the most versatile of all building materials, and is a renewable resource, when harvested sensibly.

I have finally come to realize that building with wood (at least partially) can still be a sound ecological choice, which is particularly true in regions where forests have regenerated to the point that they can be harvested sustainably. This means that the trees are carefully monitored to make sure that the health and character of the forest is maintained; only certain trees are culled periodically, leaving the remaining trees to grow and contribute to a healthy ecosystem. It is possible to buy wood that has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but if this means that you are buying wood shipped great distances, then this becomes a less ecological choice; use local materials!

Furthermore, with timber framing it is possible to use large wooden posts and beams in such a way as to create strong and versatile load-bearing structures, which can then be completed by either in-filling between the wooden structural members, or completely wrapping the timber frame structure with a variety of other materials (as is recommended in colder climates). Since this method of building has been recognized and approved by most code authorities, it is a way of approaching a natural building project that would otherwise be difficult for the authorities to sanction.

So I have now created a page about Timber Framing, greenhomebuilding.com/timber, with lots of media resources and informative links listed. I have also enlisted the gracious assistance of a preeminent timber framing specialist to answer questions from the public about this ancient art.

Will Beemer is a charter member and co-Executive Director of the Timber Framers Guild, and is owner of the Heartwood School for the Homebuilding Crafts in Washington, MA. For over 30 years, this school has been offering students a chance to improve their woodworking and timber framing skills. Will helps teach many courses at Heartwood and has been designing and building houses for over 35 years. He was a construction foreman at the Arcosanti project in Arizona, and design instructor at Cornell University. He has organized and taught building workshops around the world, including timber framing courses through the Guild and at Palomar College in San Diego, the North House Folk School and at the Colorado State University Mountain Campus. He has written for Fine Homebuilding, Joiner's Quarterly, and Timber Framing magazines.

You are invited to visit the new page about Timber Framing and to seek guidance about this art from Will Beemer.

Image: Happy 3rd Birthday by Laura-Beth Wow I almost missed it yet again! Yesterday, November 09, was Design Sojourn’s 3rd birthday. It has been 3 great years of blogging and to mark this event it I have been thinking about what I should do to celebrate it with you dear reader. Oh before I [...]

'matador necklace' by philip sajet

ornamentum gallery will be the first jewelry gallery ever to participate in design miami. founded in 2002 by
stefan friedemann and wife laura lapachin, the hudson, new york gallery represents a collection of pieces of
conceptual jewelry. ornamentum gallery focuses on contemporary jewelry designers who are working beyond
our traditional understanding of jewelry as ornamental, showcasing pieces that explore sculptural forms,
new materials and approaches.


'freundeund' by gerd rothmann


'rough ruff' by dan jocz


'marble necklace' by ted noten
all images © ornamentum gallery

designboom snapshots design miami 2007

design miami: http://www.designmiami.com
ornamentum gallery: http://www.ornamentumgallery.com

at night, light shines through the exterior patterned blocks of the 'patchwork pavilion'

'patchwork pavilion' is a temporary art gallery designed by DOMO arquitetos associados. the structure was
originally built for the casa cor 2008, an exhibition for home textiles in brazil. the name of the pavilion is fitting,
as the exterior is constructed from a random combination of four different pre-cast concrete blocks whose
patterns have been inspired by embroidery pieces that originate in the northeast part of the country.
these concrete blocks were largely used in early modernist buildings in brazil, because of their ability to ventilate
and allow light to pass through the patterns, as well as for their low-cost and shape.


the four different patterned tiles create a graphic patchwork effect




'cave house'

DOMO arquitetos associados' 'cave house', was originally designed for a competition called 'luxury for all'
which explores the idea of luxury living which considers our sensorial experience with buildings and objects,
with an approach to sustainability. the structure aims to continue the flow of nature through the cave-like space.

DOMO arquitetos associados: http://www.domo.arq.br

‘creative exchange’ is a new shared workspace complex designed by 5th studio in cambridge, england.
the project was publicly funded and designed for the area’s creative workers and innovators. the building
is designed as a studio not an office, with enough room for 14 different companies. the ground floor is
adaptable, making it suitable for meetings, exhibits and other events. the first and second floors house
the private workspaces. the architects left wide common areas on these floors to encourage cross
pollination. above all this is a ‘working garden’ to further encourage interaction. the building design was
also designed for optimal sustainability, using exposed concrete for thermal mass, natural ventilation
and cooling systems and large windows for minimal need for artificial lighting.

http://www.5thstudio.co.uk

park royal proposal by 5th studio









photography by tim soar

As the summer vacation period is starting soon I’d thought I celebrate and share the 5th anniversary of this blog a little bit earlier than scheduled with you. If you have a closer look at the ‘Full Archive’ section of this blog you will notice that e very first posting is dated 29. July 2003! Wow ;-)

After all in the very first posting (still written in small caption only; huhu fancy ;-) I’ll give credit to Lawrence Lee (back in 1997) who inspired me to do a regular publishing service on the web for the Design Management community as well.

However if I carefully remember how it all started I must admit that it has been more or less a technical coincidence that ‘Vol. 2: design-management.de‘ emerged: I’ve simply played around the other day with a piece of software called ‘Movable Type‘ and after a long night’s playing I succeeded to have this software installed on my hosted webserver. And most important: It worked ‘Hello World‘ :-)

From there the whole thing slowly developed into a tool for making my life as a teacher & lecturer for Design Management far easier. And still today many people ask me what to read or surf and ever since it simply takes a URL to point them to this blog and hopefully address their question in one or the other posting.

For sure the blog also emerged into a means to brand myself and raise my voice in the mist. What I’ve also learned however was that the often advertised ‘conversation‘ for most of us bloggers is a sort of ‘myth’ ;-( the blogosphere is not too different from the rest of the web and people on the web (as in real life) rather like to ‘lurk‘ than to ‘invest’ in a conversation. However please do not misunderstand this as a negative criticism, on the contrary: It’s not! It is simply helpful to keep this fact in mind in times of demotivation when you wish someone would clap on your shoulder and tell you how brilliant your postings are ;-) So yes, blogging also taught me to remain humble and appreciate & respect the fact that people are visiting this blog and spend their precious time on reading my musings.

So some of you might be interested in who else and how many are visiting this blog. Well that’s hard to measure for several reasons. While the web provider statistics report visitor numbers between 35.000 - 40.000 per month (personally I love that number ;-) Google Analytics reports some 100+ quality visitors per day on average (which is still fine for a niche topic I think). Visitors tend to come from across the globe and I think Tibet or Nepal belong to the very few countries that haven’t been logged yet ;-) The majority comes from the US as well as Western Europe, but this varies also depending on the country/institution where I’ve lectured last ;-) After all an interesting side note is the fact that more visitors come from Asia (China, India, and South Korea at the lead) as well as the Far East like Saudi Arabia for example!

So the fact that visitor numbers increased from 10/month in July 2003 to more than 10×10 per day is a good motivation to continue. However one of the key moments that made me think was at a DMI conference back in 2006. While sitting at lunch with a bunch of Design Management professionals both from academia and practice one commonly acknowledged ‘authority’ (at least by the grey hair community mostly in the academic domain) asked me: “Why do you waste your time writing for free on this blog?”. My spontaneous reply has been: “Do I also ask you: ‘Why do you waste your time writing Books?’” Needless to say that the quality of our relation ever since has decreased slightly ;-) After all I’ve learned to live with that.

Let me close this posting with a short anecdote that is linked to the picture above: For the recent inauguration in The Hague the panel members have been kindly offered the opportunity to display any book or paper they have written on a table in the reception hall. Since most of my writing on Design Management has taken place on the web (blog postings as well as guest comments on other blogs) and not on paper I’ve had a hard time to raise attention in the concert of publications on the table. Therefore my (graphic design) wife has been so kind to make a display for me that triggers visitor’s attention and points to this blog (have you noticed the ‘laurel wreath’ she has made ;-). While I can’t prove a correlation I can confirm that visitor numbers have increased slightly for the last couple of weeks ;-)

So, thanks for accompanying me over the last 5 years and I hope you hang out with me virtually or physically from time to time! Feel free to spread the information that there is a blog out there on Design Management and drop me a note whenever you like to: blog (at) design-management.de. Thanks!