We've moved on

The republic of less has joined the WordPress assembly of nations. It seemed simpler.
You can find us at http://therepublicofless.wordpress.com/

Pencil

Pencils are the most basic instrument we have for making marks on paper--or walls and white wooden fences, to name just two more suitable places. Above image from Wikipedia.




Lots of people love them. The above are from Pencil Talk, one of many blogsites devoted to pencils and pens. And while these humble, wireless tools might seem to be disappearing from designers' offices, they are still there, somewhere. Because nothing else can do what a pencil can do, especially in the hand of someone who loves it and knows what to do with it.


Eero Saarinen sketch for an ice arena at Yale University.


Sol LeWitt colored pencil drawing: ”Wall Drawing #85”, June 1971,
The drawing is appearing in Sweden until June 6, 2010--reproduced on a wall, drawn by others according to his instructions.


Robert “Bob” McKimson, Sr. (American, 1910 - 1976), “Bugs Bunny as Little Red Riding Hood”, c. 1950

Small country, humble design, BIG prize

A pair of architects from Japan, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who call their practice Sanaa, have been awarded the 2010 Pritzker Prize for architecture. Past winners include Luis Barragan, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Fumihiko Maki, Tadao Ando, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano.

Their work is praised for quiet beauty that is achieved through something quite their own, but in tune with other architects who seek to produce more with less. These images from inhabitat.



This is a recent building in New York, a New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery in Manhattan.


And this is O-Museum's interior in Nagano, Japan.

Yesterday, blogger.com was overwhelmed by the demands of people like me from all over who rely on her every day, every hour, to show our findings and notions to the world. Some, not all, of the pictures we had posted were missing.


Our sites looked like the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston after the theft of several of its paintings in March 1990. They've never been found. The Gardner has simply left the frames where they were, empty. Image from the New York Times.


Bloggers were luckier--our images returned to our sites after a few hours with the help of gentle experts like those above installing an exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool. Image from their Flickr set.

winning numbers

Neutraface numbers, inspired by architect Richard Neutra, designed by House Industries, and available from here. For your home, your home away from home, or your lemonade stand. Image from minimalicious.



Numbers on homes on the the island of Salina in the Aeolian Islands.
via 30gms.






Nice looking stick-on numbers (and letters) are available too from the comfort of your computer. Go online, choose your font and layout, results shipped to you, ready to apply.

simple lines

Living in a Roy Lichtenstein room could never be messy.


But it could be dramatic.



Keith Haring drew dramatic images with simple lines on walls, floors, ceilings, and his own body.


The people who make colouring books are not usually well known. The above is a coloring book depicting scenes and activities in Aspen Colorado. Artwork done by three sisters; Pauli Hayes, Elli Hayes Ford, and Jess Bates while they were each in High School. Image from here.

Japan is a small island country

Tadao Ando is a remarkable architect. He has influenced designers around the world. He understood from the start the power of simple solutions. He is a brilliant man.



Fumihiko Maki came to my town at least twice. He spoke about his work as a simple man might describe his garden. He understands the art of designing buildings in a way that so many could learn from. He is a brilliant architect, and a very humble man.


Other architects (like these) keep appearing in Japan who have a wonderful sense of small, beautiful, quiet buildings. They have a lot to teach the rest of us. More images here.

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Elizabeth David published her book called An Omelette and a Glass of Wine in 1984. It is a collection of articles she wrote for various publications. I've read parts of it, and they are very good, both as writing and as advice. What I remember most is just the title, which is a recipe all its own in a way. When you come home late from something that kept you from having dinner, but you don't want too much and you don't want to wait long, this is IT.



How to Cook a Wolf, written by MFK Fisher, was published in 1942. It was advice to troubled, untraveled Americans from a worldly woman about how to eat well in lean times, how to take what was available and make a tasty meal of it, no matter what.




Take day-old mashed potatoes (kept covered in the fridge to keep in the moisture), let them warm to room temperature, re-mash with a fork to soften, mix with flour until you get a smooth(ish) workable dough, with your hands, form the dough into a ball and then into a long stick shape about three-quarters of an inch thick. Cut one and a half inch pieces from the stick at an angle and toss these a few at a time into boiling water. Remove and put in a buttered, oven proof dish. Make layers of the potato/flour pieces, drizzling melted butter and parmesan cheese over each layer. Bake, and then eat your gnocchi. With a glass of wine. Longer version, one of a million, and image from here.

The Crown Prince

Never before, never since, never again. Just a wire and a man and his dream. Philippe Petit, our Crown Prince.

City Maps

Mr Harry Beck thought that riders of the London Underground needed a map that showed only what they needed to know. It was a revolutionary concept. As described on the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum) website for a 2006 exhibition: MODERNISM--DESIGNING A NEW WORLD 1919 - 1939: The iconic London Underground map, which has been in use continuously since 1933, is in fact a diagram of the network. It shows relationships rather than distances to scale and uses only vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, with different colours for each of the Tube lines. The map has become a design classic, implicitly demonstrating the importance of simplicity, economy and utility – all key values promoted by Modernist design. Yet it was devised and produced by an engineering draughtsman, Harry Beck, after he had been made temporarily redundant by London Underground.






Since then (and before then), creative people aiming at showing people where they are and where they might want to go have produced some beautiful maps. For e.g. the image of Manhattan shown above posted on a blog called Aardvaarks ("burrowing through the world of images", active until July 30, 2008)
Quoted from Strange Maps. The work is credited to Alexander Cheek, Assistant Professor of Design, Carnegie Mellon, and is called Neighborhoods of Manhattan.





And then there are the mapmakers who go beyond the limits of physical geography. Saul Steinberg, a New Yorker from Romania, via Italy, was the artist who, over and over, showed us what we already knew but had never seen.
These examples from Accuracy and Aesthetics.

With a Few Lines

There have always been artists among us who have achieved immediate, strong, and lasting impact with just a few strokes, well placed. Anyone who thinks this is easy should try drawing a cow from memory. Only small children and geniuses can pull this off convincingly.



Cave Paintings of Lascaux, France


Pablo Picasso


Henri Matisse


Saul Steinberg, Family of Man

Places to Live

Things Magazine from England has its eye on a lot of things in a lot of places. They share what they find in a generous, clear way--it's a simple format with an ocean of content underneath. I'm grateful to them all the time. This week, among other things they pointed me to Minimalicious. Plenty to like in this collection of small houses with clear lines and clear thinking, like these two from different times and places.


Maison de Verre, Paris by Pierre Chareau via NYT


Mugi Kara le by Koki Ogata