In the aftermath of World War II, the West was upended by a do-it-yourself boom. IKEA was founded in 1943, with its first flat-pack furniture catalog released just a few years later. By 1954, Time magazine had dedicated its August cover story to the phenomenon, declaring DIY “the new billion-dollar hobby.”
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/farrow-and-ball-brand-history/index.html
Nevada’s legislature is considering banning decorative grass. But really we should be banning most lawns in the country. The movement to ban unnatural turf lawns, particularly in America’s arid regions, has been around for a while, and for good reason. The Nevada policy would not actually affect most private yards, but many environmentalists would argue that it should. Read more (TSB)
The evolution of bathing goes back thousands of years, from religious ritual and social life – to today’s wellbeing haven and place of peace and solitude. Read more (BBC)
Contemporary artist Krista Kim’s latest project which features the first-ever sale of a digital home called the Mars House. Kim, who is responsible for high-tier collaborations with the likes of Lamborghini and Lanvin, just listed a neon-filled crypto abode filled with sharp, modern furnishings and complementing digitized adornments to boot. Most of the furniture items featured in the home can also be constructed in real life by glass furniture makers in Italy alongside MicroLED screen technology. The artist also teamed up with musician Jeff Schroeder of The Smashing Pumpkins to create an ambient soundtrack inside the virtual home. Read more (Hypebeast)
Within the design discipline, calls for sustainability and social responsibility have become some of the most common rallying cries of the past decade, generating countless new products, materials and technologies―all designed to change the course of our future. Adjectives like “sustainable,” “green” and “eco” describe this new wave of socially committed design. But though today’s conditions are urgent and particular, the ideologies behind these new products are often not totally new, but rather a part of design history. Contemporary sustainable design is just the newest chapter of a story that stretches back throughout the previous centuries. The Responsible Object presents a selected history of socially committed design strategies within the Western design tradition of roughly the last 150 years, from William Morris to Victor Papanek, and from VKhUTEMAS to FabLab. It includes about 20 interstitial mini-posters with slogans from the text, printed on different colored papers. Learn more (Amazon.com)
Will we live in a large robot in the future? Professor of Smart Architectural Technologies Masi Mohammadi is developing a robot house. “A house should accommodate its occupants needs and wishes.” Read more
There’s no going back to the old ways. Which technologies could propel the industry forward? Read more (NY Times)
Using Culture Mapping Data Visualization (click on this link to go to interactive visualization dashboard) to analyze the transcripts of Buckminster Fuller’s Everything I Know, a 42-hour thinking-out-loud lecture series videotaped in 1975. Read more
