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Observatory

Archive: September 2010

This is A Thrill...

Design Research reviewed in the New York Times.

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Yummy!

I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition Appetite, curated by Alexander Tochilovsky at the Herb Lubalin Center at Cooper Union, not least because it was bite-sized. One room, lots of mouth-watering artifacts, and a number of untold stories. My favorite: that black-and-white grocery sticker on almost every item you buy at the Met has a typeface, Hobo, designed in 1910.

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Masdar: So Many Questions

I was not planning to post anything about Sukkah City. I attended the post-tornado preview and was underwhelmed by the five sukkahs on display that night, already concerned that they had not been designed for the great outdoors. And the collapse of P.YGROS.C en route, one of the most technically interesting (if derivative of this lamp) seemed to prove me right. It all just looked like an architecture studio: so much effort, such worked-over results, and an inability to see the forest for the trees.

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Rendering v. Reality in Sukkah City

The Still-Expanding Airport

In 1958, after some failed attempts by the Saarinen office to make a stop-motion film of their model for Dulles Airport, Eero Saarinen called upon his old friend Charles Eames to help him out. The office had spent months researching the new jet airport, and had come to a number of conclusions about how best to connect people and planes. Among their researches was accounting for the steps taken from car to terminal, terminal to gate. In Eames’s resulting film, The Expanding Airport, the distressed passenger’s apparently endless path is animated, shown as a long dashed line, with some nice slapstick involving luggage and children.

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Shall I Complain About the New Yorker?

I know, I always do. But this week is the Style issue, which means they suddenly discover the world of design and there were two howlers in the profiles of James Dyson and Mickey Drexler (and please, does every magazine need to fawn over him and/or Jenna Lyons?

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NYT Opinionator: If These Walls Could Talk

For the second time in as many weeks, this blog has made the big time (i.e. publication). A post I wrote last winter about the ABC TV show Modern Family developed into my third and likely final entry in the New York Times Opinionator series Living Rooms: If These Walls Could Talk.

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My Franzen, Freedom Review

PP 3-26: Brilliant. Published in the New Yorker last year as “Good Neighbors, Freedom’s first chapter shows the kind of controlled, acid description of family that won Franzen many fans. As I wrote last year after I read the story,

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If These Walls Could Talk

In ABC’s hit sitcom Modern Family, the living rooms are active parts of the storyline, reflecting and counterpointing and interrupting their inhabitants — and, in doing so, eloquently commenting on today’s domestic condition.

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Make It Bigger

I was in Cambridge over Labor Day, and stopped on Brattle Street to see the latest inhabitant of the Design Research Headquarters (Crate & Barrel decamped in 2008): Anthropologie.

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An Honor Just to be Mentioned...

In 'Alexandra Lange and Rosanne Cash, Heirs to Edith Wharton and Jane Austen,' (I can’t really believe this headline exists), Jillian Burt shows herself to be a close reader of my writing, and makes me feel like I might not be so far from writing the comedy of manners I dream of — in the form of design criticism.

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In Dwell: Hands Off the Icons

In the October 2010 issue of Dwell, which celebrates the magazine’s tenth anniversary by revisiting its own (generally happy) homeowners, I offer the following Argument. It will be familiar to faithful readers of this blog or my Tweets. But it shows what a little time, second thoughts, and an editor can do.

Coming to the V&A: Tower of Power

It is not often that a museum blogs about Postmodernism, Michael Sorkin (one of the great take-downs) and credits the (female) renderer who made the AT&T Building look the best it ever has.

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Kitchen Godjets

The psychologists-cum-decorators in the NYT Home section “analysis” of the new rug are creeping me out.

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Alexandra Lange is an architecture and design critic, and author of Writing about Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities. (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). Her work has appeared in The Architect's Newspaper, Architectural Record, Dwell, Metropolis, Print, New York Magazine and The New York Times.

Recent Book

Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities
Alexandra Lange
Princeton Architectural Press, 2012
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Design Matters Interview

Alexandra Lange and Jane Thompson

In this podcast interview with Debbie Millman, Alexandra Lange and Jane Thompson discuss their new book, the store Design Research, creating the power of imagination, Marimekko, Sir Lady Jane and Benjamin Thompson.

Other Essays

Dreams Built and Broken: On Ada Louise Huxtable
The Nation, May 6, 2013

Questions for a Teenage Furniture Dealer
New York Times, April 18, 2013

How To Make A Great Kids' App
The New Yorker blog, April 4, 2013

Passive Voice
Dwell, April 2013

MetaMuseum Tumblr
Launched March 5, 2013

Plain or Fancy?
New Yorker blog, March 4, 2013

It's Toasted: Modernity and 'Downton Abbey'
New Yorker blog, January 21, 2013

Consider the Fork, Very Carefully
New Yorker blog, November 29, 2012

'Wreck-It Ralph' Is a Sweet, Animated Tale About ... Urban Planning?
The Atlantic blog, November 27, 2012

A Wide-Angle Lens on the Midcentury American Home
New York Times, November 15, 2012

The Woman Who Invented the Kitchen
Slate, October 25, 2012

Cornell's Silicon Island
New Yorker blog, October 15, 2012

Fear of Fun: A History of Modernist Design for Children
Los Angeles Review of Books, October 6, 2012

Home Sweet Architectural Masterpiece
New York Times, October 4, 2012

What Comes Second: The Lesson of the Barclays Center
The New Yorker blog, September 19, 2012

DIY Magazines
Domus, September 2012

AD Innovator: Johnston Marklee
Architectural Digest, September 2012

Don't Put A Bird On It: Saving "Craft" from Cuteness
The New Yorker blog, August 1, 2012

A Chair for All Seasons
Domus, July/August 2012

Serious Play | Century of the Child
T Magazine, July 2012

A Playground That Parents Won't Come to Despise
The New Yorker blog, July 6, 2012

Girl Talk: On Architect Barbie
Dwell, July/August 2012

Pinterest: Fear of the "Female Ghetto"
The New Yorker blog, June 13, 2012

The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Urbanism
Strelka Press, June 2012

Living In LEGO City
Print, June 2012

Edith Wharton's Houses
The New Yorker blog, May 23, 2012

An Interview with Murray Moss
Disegno No. 2, Spring/Summer 2012

Book Review: 'Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader'
Architectural Record, May 2012

Pedro E. Guerrero on Being Inspired by the Masters
The New York Times, April 4, 2012

Designing 'The Hunger Games'
The Atlantic, April 2, 2012

An Anatomy of Uncriticism
Print, February 2012

I Hate My Coffemaker
GourmetLive, November 30, 2011

A Serving of Style
GourmetLive, November 16, 2011

Table Dressing
T Magazine, November 6, 2011

Paper Tiger
Architect's Newspaper, November 2, 2011

Commentary: The World of Online Interiors
Architectural Record, October 2011

Elegant Solution
Metropolis Magazine, September 2011

The Search for the Perfect Fork
GourmetLive, Augustt 31, 2011

“Why’s This So Good?” No. 9: Herbert Muschamp builds a metaphor
Nieman Storyboard, Augustt 23, 2011

Dieter Rams: Less But Better
Architect's Newspaper, July 6, 2011

Going Back Outside (Again)
Metropolis Magazine, June 2011

Why Are Car Seats So Poorly Designed?
GOOD, May 27, 2011

High Fiber
T: The New York Times Design Magazine, May 1, 2011

Lake Effect
Architectural Digest, April 2011

A House Grows in Brooklyn 2011
Dwell, March 2011

Whatever Happened to the Dinner Party?
GourmetLive, February 10, 2011

The Moms Aren't Wrong
GOOD, February 1, 2011

What Next?: Criticism
Architectural Record, January 2011

Sidewalk Sale
New City Reader, November 2010

The Opulent Modernism of Warren Platner
Dwell, November 2010

The Architecture of Food
GourmetLive, October 28, 2010

Harry Weese's Pieces
Architect's Newspaper, October 22, 2010

People in Glass Houses
Financial Times Weekend, October 15, 2010

Hands Off the Icons
Dwell, October 2010

The Zootopian
T Magazine, September 30, 2010

If These Walls Could Talk
New York Times Opinionator, September 13, 2010

What's Cooking in Kitchen Design
New York Times Opinionator, August 27, 2010

Easier Living, By Design
New York Times Opinionator, July 23, 2010

Blue Sky Thinking
Metropolis Magazine, June 16, 2010

The Visceralist
Metropolis Magazine, May 12, 2010

Hole Earth Catalog
NYT Op-Ed, March 21, 2010

As the Tide Turns
Architect's Newspaper, February 4, 2010

Hands-On: The Gropius Touch
The Moment, January 20, 2010

Original Gossip Girls
New York Magazine, November 1, 2009

Fantasy Island
New York Magazine, May 28, 2007

The Next White
New York Magazine, May 13, 2007

Extending the Legacy
Metropolis Magazine, November 8, 2006

Once a Teardown, a Modernist Gem Is Reborn
The New York Times, November 2, 2006

Family Comes First
Metropolis Magazine, July 17, 2006

Building the (New) New York
New York Magazine, May 28, 2006

No Laughing Matter
Metropolis, January 2006

Brand Central Station
Metropolis, November 2005

This New House
New York Magazine, May 21, 2005

The Manhattanization of Brooklyn
New York Magazine, May 23, 2004

DESIGN OBSERVER JOBS

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ALEXANDRA LANGE: RECOMMENDED BOOKS

Above the Pavement — the Farm!
Amale Andraos & Dan Wood

America's Kitchens
Nancy Carlisle & Melinda Talbot Nasardinov

Guide to Easier Living
Mary & Russel Wright

A Pattern Language
Christopher Alexander

Exquisite Corpse
Michael Sorkin

The Spoils of Poynton
Henry James