Poetry Break

Try this animated mini-movie poem (crossing enough genres here?) and start your day right.

John Siddique's "Rowan Moon"

Classics Gone Vegan

A friend sent me a very funny 8 minute reworking of OEdipus...
...as portrayed by a potato (with the voice of Billy Dee Williams), a piece of broccoli, and a tomato.  (I particularly like the sheep.)  See it HERE.

SNIPPET #13

The latest sample from the "Design Methods" chapter of my NOW IN PRINT set design book, Alice Through the Proscenium:

Minimalism -  “Less is More.”  That famous design dictum by architect Mies van der Rohe is good advice.  Distill your design.  Minimalism is powerful.  Most of us ought to design using more eraser than pencil, but remember that there is another opinion, put forward by Mies’s protégé, Philip Johnson:  “Less is a Bore.”

Reduction -  Sometimes the problem just seems too big, too complicated.  You’re overwhelmed with choices…  Simplify.  Solve only the one biggest issue.  Reduce the problem to its basic ingredients: instead of boiling a whole gumbo, simmer a nice plain clear fish broth.  You can always throw in crawdads later.

Can’t beat it?  Join it – Sometimes a problem fights so hard it wins.  Maybe there’s an area that, do what you will, insists on being all circulation, all crossing paths to other places.  So let it.  But don’t give in grudgingly, embrace it, give in BIG!  You may end up with the wonderful hall of Grand Central Station.  Celebrate your problem.

Contrarywise -  Or rebel against the evil oppressor!  Reject everything.  If something is normally round, make it square.  Usually tall?  Make it short.  Test every bourgeois assumption The Man makes with your heroic (idiotic) knee-jerk rebellion.  Power to the revolutionary!

(Design methodology can boil down to the intellectual equivalent of: if the door doesn’t open when you push it, then you pull.  Just get the #%$ door open!)

You too can own a copy of Alice... just visit Lulu.com and use this 15% off sale code: IDES305

Two Views: One Kitchen

Checking out BRW Creative (the architecture office's in-house blog) led me to these fascinating photos which perfectly illustrate the way architects versus non-architects can view the same space...  The architects tend to like it more austere; the civilians not so much.

This is the same room - all that has changed is the addition of a few (still pretty austere) bits of set dressing - a few blooming branches, a loaf of bread on a wood board, and a toaster - and that the second photo has more flattering side lighting, while the camera's view includes the warm wood floor and table.   

Imagine this room if those shelves were stacked with colorful Fiestaware plates and bowls and if the tables held colored vegetables? RED tomatoes?  GREEN peppers?  YELLOW squash?  As it is, the delicate pink of the blossoms has never seemed so powerful.

Set dressing.  (And color.)  Very important things.

I just noticed: the magazine also edited out a big air vent in that duct...  Cheat-y Photoshop-y.  Photos borrowed from Habitually Chic, originally from Domino magazine

Too Many !!!!s

It's that kind of week: a show opens, my Alice book launches (and has an intro-sale).  Exclamitory times.  But a favorite author, Terry Pratchett, writes that 4 exclamation points is a sure sign of madness - in which case...um...

Show Opens!

Boeing Boeing opens Saturday night at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth!

Surprise Sale!

At least it surprised me...

Lulu.com - the publisher of the paperback version of my set design book Alice Through the Proscenium
is offering an introductory sale of

15% off

Please use promotion code IDES305  -  Offer good until 3/15/11

Alice Through the Proscenium LAUNCH!

NOW AVAILABLE at Lulu.com