The next week session in the program Collecting Design will be devoted to collecting contemporary. I am going to host Zesty Meyers, co-founder of the fabulous R 20th Century Gallery, who will discuss the gallery's program in the contemporary design area. Among the designers the gallery represents are the Los-Angeles-based David Wiseman and glass artist Jeff Zimmerman whose organic-shaped lights are to be found in homes and public spaces worldwiddc shapes have are intensely colorful but soft, mysterious but welcoming, disquieting yet familiar. Drawn formally from nature, they result from the dramatic pushing, pulling, dripping and spinning actions through which they took shape -- processes that Zimmerman exploits to suggest the mutability of the wo

While Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA Terminal at JFK airport will soon be turned into a hotel, another airport by the mid-century Finnish architect which was designed in Athens during the same time, is in a dangerous state. Now in the hands of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF), Saarinen’s Athens airport is a key part of the largest fire-sale in history. The HRADF was established in July 2011 to help the Greek state divest itself of real estate assets in order pay off its debt. The semi-derelict airport site, which also hosted part of the Athens Olympics in 2004, is thus one of the main symbols of Greece’s current financial predicament.

This evening, I am going to open the program Collecting Design with Cultured Magazine at the NY School of Interior Design. The topic of this evening lecture is collecting mid-century American Design. I am going to include Isamu Noguchi's Chess Table, which the Japanese sculptor originally made in 1944 for the "Imagery of Chess" exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. In 1947, director of design at Herman Miller, George Nelson produced the table in a limited quantities, and it had never entered production. The most recent example was sold at S$S Auctions last year for $109K.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will open "Marc Newson: At Home," a retrospective of the Australian designer, the first solo show. It is going to include Newson's furniture, clothing, appliances, and transportation. The exhibition will be installed as a six-room home, which includes adult and children’s bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and garage, all furnished with pieces by Newson lent from collections in Europe, Japan, and the United States and from the designer himself.  The living room, for example, will contain his iconic Lockheed Lounge (1988), which early established Newson in Australia as a promising talent; the Pod of Drawers (1987); the “Super Guppy” Lamp (1987); a marble Varonoi Low Shelf (2008).

Some of my favorite looks from the recent Paris Fashion Week. 

A new monograph on Art Deco sculpture and furniture designer Gustav Miklos is coming out soon, by Danuta Cichocka; Christiane Patkai; Etienne Bastin; and Jacques Renoux. It tells the story of this extraordinary figure who was first discovered by couturier Jacques Doucet, and then developed a cubist language, working with both Jean Dundnad and Jean Goulden in creating furniture, enameled objects, sculptures, and paintings. For more information and to order: http://gustave-miklos-monograph.com/

I am so pleased to announce that the program Collecting Design opens its fall edition this week (Monday evening program and Tuesday morning program) at the New York School of Interior Design. The first session will be devoted to collecting mid-century American design, but rather than focusing on “classic” postwar design, I am going to speak this time about designers who did not take part in the politics of design, and were not members of the star designers’ circles, those whose work had not been embraced by design history up until recently. These designers, T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Edward Wormley, and Greta Magnuson Grossman were looking into connecting modern design with traditional values and their work has been discovered by collectors much later than that of Eames, Saarinen, Noguchi, and Nelson. 

The power of basic colors to enhance happiness and creativity. The City of Paris commissioned architects Palatre & Leclere to design an elementary school. The result is a transformation of a small existing building into a unique-designed school with a front courtyard reflecting a rainbow in the sky, and interiors that come to stimulate creativity. 

The furniture which Pierre Jeanneret created for the public buildings of the city of Chandigarh, the first planned city in India post-independence in 1947, designed by his cousin Le Corbusier, was recently rediscovered by French dealers who have brought much of the pieces to the West and created a market for them. Today, they are found in beautiful homes in New York, London, and Paris, adorned yachts, stylish offices, and salons of avid design collectors. Yesterday, I have visited the Simon Preston Gallery, which presents a solo exhibition by Amie Siegel, an artist with particular interest in cultural objects. The exhibition consists of one fantastic film, which tells the story of the thousands of pieces of furniture – tables, chairs, settees, desks, Pierre Jeanneret created in Chandigarh, and their journey from India to the West.