EOA

Event: Todd Oldham on Alexander Girard

If our Alexander Girard post left you wanting more, there’s the perfect event for you in Brooklyn next week. Todd Oldham, whose massive 672 page tome on the seminal Mid-Century designer hit shelves late last year, will lecture at Pratt Institute on Tuesday the 14^th. The lecture is free and open to the public. Maybe we’ll see you there!

From the Pratt website:

“As one of the most prolific and versatile mid-20th century designers, Girard's work spanned many disciplines, including textile design, graphic design, typography, illustration, furniture design, interior design, product design, exhibit design, and architecture.

Girard's repertoire includes an incredible list of projects, including his bold, colorful, and iconic textile designs for Herman Miller (1952-1975), his typographic designs for La Fonda del Sol restaurant (1960), his celebrated retail store Textiles and Objects (1961), his own Girard Foundation (1962) that houses his extensive, personal collection of folk art from around the world, and his complete branding and environmental design for Braniff International Airways (1965).
 
Distinguished as an innovator of accessible design, Oldham is the founder of Todd Oldham Studio, a full-service design firm. Originally a New York fashion designer and host on MTV's "House of Style," Oldham's career has evolved to include all areas of design from interior design, film, and photography, to furniture, graphic art, and product design.” 

Pratt Institute
6 PM, Tuesday, February 14,  
Higgins Hall Center Section Auditorium
61 St. James Places (corner of Lafayette)  
Brooklyn

On View in our Neighborhood: "Interiors" at Andrew Kreps Gallery

Installation View, Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery

"The show highlights the rich optical and visual layers and patterning consistent in each of the artists’ work, depicting interior spaces full of feeling, psychological depth and a sense of remembrance – a domestic hedonism, or meditations on the nature of time, perception and memory."

Interiors
Pierre Bonnard, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, William Copley and Édouard Vuillard 
Andrew Kreps Gallery
January 14th -- February 11th, 2012

We're Inspired by. . . Alexander Girard

Read More »

Wish List: Bellocq Teas

Even though our new Nespresso machine (How did we live without this thing?) has turned us into total coffee addicts, we still love our tea. While the yellow and dark navy packaging of Bellocq looks fantastic on the kitchen counter, the real full-sensory experience starts when you pop open a tin and stick your nose inside. Smell is the sense with the strongest link to memory and I have to say, A LOT of different things came flooding back when I first smelled these teas; a sensation that was unexpected but delightful. I am putting a huge vat of Hindu Holiday on my wish list. With its combination of ginger, cardamom, and colorful petals, it is a treat for the eyes, nose, and taste buds.

Extra: Robin tells me that while in Paris over New Year's, she had tea at Mariage Freres, apparently a super-famous tea house that has managed to somehow eluded this tea lover until now. Although their website isn’t as pretty as Bellocq’s, that sumptuous packaging alone is deserving of its very own blog post. 

Images courtesy Bellocq Atelier

New Years Resolution: Grow More Food

Happy New Year! We’re back at our desks staring out the window at the beautiful green of the High Line. . . and tourists, lots of ‘em. Even though it feels like winter just started here in New York City, we’re already anticipating spring and the new gardens that will start sprouting up. If you have wanted to grow your own food for a while, now is the time (#NewYearsResolutions)!

Any seasoned gardener will tell you that planning is the key to success. To start, think about what foods you really, really like to eat. Will you grow from seed or transplants? What kind of space are you working with? A roof, a backyard, a fire escape, windowsill containers – no space is too little. If you plan to plant in the ground, get a soil sample tested for lead and heavy metals at a local university or commercial lab. Draw out a scale sketch of your planting space on some graph paper and mark where each plant will grow. Shade-loving plants will go behind taller full-sun plants; climbers need something to cling to. Begin collecting your vegetable clippings and other kitchen waste and store it in the freezer for compost. Request a seed catalog like Seed Savers or Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and drool over the pretty pictures. Johnny’s Select Seeds has a useful seed starting calculator that tells you when to plant seeds inside and when to move them outside. If you need practice, volunteer at a local farm where you’ll learn more in a couple hours than you will scouring the internet. In the NYC area, try Eagle Street Rooftop Farms or click on the volunteer opportunities section at GrowNYC.

If you’ve got plans too big for a planter bed, reach out to us, we would love to help. Our new urban agriculture design group, Grow Studio, was launched last fall and we’re looking for new projects. Our Harlem Community Rooftop Farm design was recently featured on DesignBoom and Inhabitat. We hope to make lots of projects like this a reality in 2012. If every new architectural or urban planning project made room for growing food, we could be well on our way to solving our nation’s health and food security problems. On top of the impact on health and diet, the benefits of urban agriculture include:

- increased property values
- urban regeneration
- reduced stormwater runoff and packaging waste
- improved air quality and biodiversity
- opportunities for entrepreneurship
- CO² reduction
- additional green space

Happy growing!