Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen

I took the day off today, and set out for the MoMA bright and early for some much-needed inspiration. I didn't know what I would find, really, as I haven't been great at reading my member emails. The most delightful surprise was an exhibit that's been around for around 4 months, called Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen.



In their words:

Over the course of the past century no other room has been the focus of such intensive aesthetic and technological innovation, or as loaded with cultural significance. Kitchen design has been both a central concern of modernism and fundamental to our concept of modern life. Drawn entirely from MoMA’s collection, this exhibition explores the twentieth-century transformation of the kitchen as a barometer of changing technologies, aesthetics, and ideologies.

I read this description after walking around for a bit, and found that I'm definitely not alone in my fascination with kitchens. I don't do a ton of cooking, though I love the idea of it and always plan to do more. I always love kitchen-related gifts the most (you should have seen me when I opened a wine foil cutter at Christmas), love kitchen-related photography, and always daydream when I apartment-hunt that I'll find one with a window to filter Saturday morning sunlight in as I make tea. Not sure why, the way I frame kitchens in my head... it's almost like peering into a dollhouse.

Anyway, the exhibit. What a delight. There were rotating models of 70s modular kitchens, movie stills from the 50s, a plastic food collection from Japan, old appliances, historical photographs and ads (I noticed one on loan from DDB's archive, how cool is that), kitchen efficiency books, and a ton of stuff about the "Frankfurt Kitchen," which was part of a movement in 20s Germany relating to egalitarianism. Here are some pictures I took with my phone (why I didn't bring my camera today, I have no idea) --


This is an Irving Penn photo. I recently found out that he shot the first Clinique print ads, in the 1960s. Cool, no?


I have worked with GE for quite some time, so this was far out and awesome to see.


This was the first thing I saw when I walked in. Looking closely revealed old egg shells in the egg cups and cigarettes in the ashtray.

I also saw this thing – and I'm really annoyed that I didn't take a picture of it – that looked like a small bicycle wheel. I knew was it was before I even read the plaque: it was a cake slicer. My head blew up a little, because I've throughout my life always remembered this Betty Boop cartoon that features her inventor-friend, Grampy, opening an umbrella skeleton and pushing it down onto a cake to slice it instantly. I always thought that was so cool, and I can't believe it's actually a thing that existed once. Why don't I ever see those now? It seems like the most efficient way to do things, ever.



Anyway. I recommend paying this exhibit a visit if you're in the area and this sounds remotely interesting to you. Here is the exhibit site (there is a blog, too!). Also a few more pictures with commentary in this Flickr set.

Destination: Seoul @ MoMA's Design Store

I got an exciting email this morning:


The Korea Institute of Design Promotion, Design Seoul Headquarters of Seoul Metropolitan Government, and HyundaiCard have helped bring a new collection to the MoMA store. As the screen shot says, a collection of awesome stuff from young Korean designers. The stuff ranges from cute to strange, amusing and brilliantly practical. Check out the full collection here.

Korean Meal Business Card Holder by Hui Eun Chang
Tea Mug by Luna Seo - brilliant dip in the side!
Farfalle Brooch by Hye-ran Lee – so odd. love it.
Sandwich Sponge by Jaewon Yang & Hyung Jeong Lee – absurdly disarming (and subsequently charming).
Project Notebook by Second Hotel – love the idea of structuring a notebook with those 5 big questions: who, what when, where, why?
Luckily, there's a MoMA Design Store right down the street from Naked. See you there!

Color Chart: Reinventing Color

This is part 3 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.


I went to this member preview at the MoMA with my friend Diana. It was definitely a breezier one than Design and the Elastic Mind, but no less thought provoking. It was pretty self-explanatory and centered around the emotional and spiritual power of color. A really interesting part was that the exhibit was brought to us by Benjamin Moore paints.

Anyway, I was very surprised by how many well-known artists were featured. I am not sure why? Anyway, there was stuff by Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Warhol, Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Damien Hirst, among others. I was most delighted by these four:

Jan Dibbets, Colorstudy (close-ups of cars):


Ruscha, News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews & Dues (screenprints using mortar & pestle-crushed ingredients like baked beans, mango chutney, tulips, caviar and axle grease):


John Baldessari Common Memory Colors:


Dan Flavin Untitled (my favorite, I love love love light installations):

This one's around until 12 May, get thee to a nunnery the MoMA!

Design and the Elastic Mind

This is part 1 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.

"I think your blog is getting jealous-child syndrome and feeling alienated because of your Tumblr." - Satish

He's right. I turn to my Tumblr in times like these, because it takes less time to post a quote, a photo or a short anecdote than it does to write a long-ish piece on here. I'm sorry :( there really is no excuse. I have thought about taking an hour of time out of my sleep schedule every day so I can squeeze everything in, but really I don't think it would help. Someone at an Adcenter board meeting once mentioned that however much time you're given for something, it will take that long. Regardless of whether it's a week or a day, the same task will fill that amount of time. Nevermind, then.

Design and the Elastic Mind
I went to the member preview at the MoMA with Satish. Everybody can find a number of sources about this exhibit by now, so I won't get into detail about every single part of it that I loved (even though I filled four pages in my journal that day). For anybody who hasn't read about it though, it was full of stuff that showed designers as changing from form givers to essential interpreters. The elasticity part referred to grasping progress (in technology and the world) and making it one's own.



The exhibit was separated into small scale (nanostructures), human scale (interactions with others) and large scale (cities, www, the world, the universe), making it really easy to navigate. That being said though, do not go to this exhibit unless you have a lot of time and mental energy. Going through the entire thing, reading and thinking took us around two and a half hours. SO interesting though!

One of the things I wrote down was a water-moving system that used the Fibonacci sequence to circulate millions of gallons of water with minimal energy. There was some awesome visualization, like what the entire Internet looks like (by the way: it looks like fireworks); aircraft navigation paths; computer chess thinking paths; etc. Relatedly, the NY Talk Exchange was so incredible you should visit this link if you only click on one in this part. Oh god there was so so much more. Shoes that stored your walking & stair climbing energy throughout the day and then were used to power small electronics that night in your home; children's science ideas (including the caption "This is a squiggle. It is a plant that has been genetically somethinged"); more more more.

Visit this nerdy and fascinating collection of ideas, it's up until May. Oh, and the entire thing uses Courier Sans :D