Top 10

Where we’ve been this week…

1. Dezeen for its coverage of Casa Puglia, architect Peter Pichler’s amazing update of a 14th century house in Southern Italy. And yes, those red stools pictured below in the home’s new kitchen are by Konstantin Grcic for Magis and we will be selling them come September.

2. LA Weekly for their story on John Lautner. He would have been 100 years old tomorrow.

3. Design Observer for Lorraine Wild’s piece on Sister Corita – an amazing artist and friend of the Eameses. Her posters will grace my new home office – once we get it finished! My grandparents lived in Los Angeles when she was exhibiting her work in the ’60s and I grew up with the print below in our family room. It’s good to have found her again.

4. The New Design Smell is a new online magazine with an odd name, vaguely annoying flashing blue graphics but some interesting stories. It’s heartening to see a new design magazine throwing its hat in the ring.

5. Destined to Design for its flat out beauty. (And that summer salad and ice tea look pretty damn good!)

6. MGB Architecture for this lovely backyard studio (below).

7. The House that Kat and Fred Built for lots of interiors inspiration.

8. The Travel Files. Can you tell I’m gunning for a holiday! Take a break from your work day and check out this site. Amazing places to stay all around the world – including the Moka & Vanille in Belgium (below).

9. Ecofabulous house on eBay because the bidding ends today.

10. Time magazine’s ‘Photos’ for the slideshow of Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

Best Blogs?

Times magazine just published their Best Blogs of 2010 list. Strangely Lifework didn’t make it on the list. Maybe next year! One that I hadn’t heard of turns out to be a great source for the Lifeworker. Zen Habits, a nicely designed blog, offers advice on simplifying life. You’ll find everything from ways to avoid being a workaholic to a how-to post on achieving “frictionless” work. It’s created and written by Guam-based Leo Babauta (pictured above). He’s a father of 6 so that may go a long way to explaining why he was drawn to simplifying things.

Image: Leo doing minimalist work. Photo courtesy of Norman Taruc.

A Chair That Owes its Form to a Bike Pump

Charles and Ray Eames used a little magic, a whole lot of work, and a bicycle pump to perfect their plywood molding technique. In the early 1940s, they worked through the evenings in their small Los Angeles apartment molding plywood in what they called the “Kazam! Machine.” It was a hinged two-by-four frame that held a plaster mold with heating elements against which a membrane (inflated by a bicycle pump) pushed thin sheets of glued veneer. That humble technology allowed the Eameses to design a chair Time magazine named the Best Design of the 20th Century.