Sisters use formula to find perfect fit
This article by Tanya Mannes with photos by John Gastaldo was published in the Thursday, April 15, 2010, edition of The San Diego Union-Tribune and caught my eye because my husband, Calvin Woo, and I are fascinated by the golden mean and apply this “divine proportion” to our graphic design work. I also teach students about this and other proportional ratios that have emerged over the course of design history, particularly during those eras when mathematics and geometry weighed heavily on contemporary thought and practice. It’s interesting to see how Ruth and Sara Levy apply these principles to fashion design.
The Union-Tribune article at signonsandiego.com:
Golden ration lends itself to fashion: Sisters use formula to find perfect fit
Ruth and Sara Levy’s website and a video of their presentation on the Rachel Ray show:
Vitra Design Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, is one of fourteen highlights on the Vitra Campus architectural tour.
During the summer of 2010, I visited the Vitra Campus in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany. Vitra manufactures industrial furniture, including classics by Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, Jean Prouvé, and Verner Panton, as well as work by contemporary designers. In addition to the factory buildings and the Vitra Design Museum, which was designed by Frank Gehry in 1989, the campus includes an array of innovative architectural structures designed by a diverse group of international architects. According to architecture critic Philip Johnson, “Not since the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart in 1927 has there been a gathering in a single place of a group of buildings designed by the most distinguished architects in the Western world.” A guided architectural tour provides access to many of the buildings, including the Dome designed by Buckminster Fuller in 1978, the Fire Station by Zaha Hadid, which boasts no right angles, and Tadao Ando’s Conference Pavilion both completed in 1993. These examples of modern architecture together with the museum exhibitions make the Vitra Campus an important cultural destination for the study of industrial furniture design and architecture. I was there to explore the newly opened VitraHaus, view the exhibition Die Essenz der Dinge/The Essence of Things, which considered “reduction in design from economic, functional, aesthetic and ethical perspectives,” and examine historical pieces from the Vitra collection, one of the world’s largest modern furniture collections representing all of the major styles and eras from the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The VitraHaus is a really fascinating building. It was designed by Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss architectural firm headquartered in Basel. Their inspiration for the VitraHaus derives from the graphic icon of an archetypal house with a gable roof. Twelve of these individual “houses” are stacked on top of each other and blended together to form a unified structure that deceives perception and defies gravity. The ends of the houses are glass and positioned to take advantage of incredible views of the surrounding countryside. The interior spaces invite exploration; they are unique and unexpected especially where the houses intersect. The VitraHaus Café, Design Museum Shop, showrooms for the Vitra Home Collection, and the Vitrine, an exhibition space that features historical objects from the Vitra collection, occupy the VitraHaus.
VitraHaus, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, opened on the Vitra Campus in 2010. Luscious ripe cherries dangle from the branches of a tree on the campus, which was founded in the midst of cherry orchards.
VitraHaus, interior, looking out over the beautiful countryside through iconic house-shaped windows where two "houses" intersect.
VitraHaus, interior, showcases products from the Vitra Home Collection.
Buckminster Fuller's Dome.
The Fire Station, designed by Zaha Hadid in 1993, has no right angles—a visual metaphor of the explosion that destroyed the previous structure.
- Susan Merritt in the Conference Pavilion at the Vitra Campus in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany, during a study trip to Europe in July, 2010. The Conference Pavilion was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando in1993.
All photographs by Susan Merritt.
References: Die Essenz der Dinge/The Essence of Things exhibition leaflet; Welcome to the Vitra Campus Design & Architecture booklet; notes from my personal travel journal.
Learn more about Vitra at their website: www.design-museum.de
As a design professor at San Diego State University, I interact with young adults all the time, so was particularly inspired by the vision of Dustin McBride and Vaughn Spethmann, two young men from Rancho Peñasquitos, California, who founded Zambikes to build strong bikes for the rugged Zambian terrain. McBride and Spethmann recently teamed up with American bicycle designer Craig Calfee of Bamboosero and are also producing bicycles made of bamboo. Their process exemplifies qualities of good design: identifying a critical concern, listening and being sensitive to the needs of the community, and responding with an effective solution.
I first read about Zambikes in The San Diego Union-Tribune in a letter to the editor from Diane Spethmann of Rancho Peñasquitos. Her letter was published in the “Community Dialog” section of the Thursday, December 23, 2010, issue in response to an article published on December 5, 2010: “Project putting garbage to work wins prize.” The article, as Spethmann stated in her letter “rightfully highlighted Long Way Home for winning the BBC/Newsweek World Challenge, which recognizes grass-roots efforts to better communities. Long Way Home developed an effective way to use unwanted tires to build much-needed schools. The story,” she continues, “missed an opportunity to mention that one of the 12 finalists was Zambikes, founded and run by two San Diego County men, Dustin McBride and Vaughn Spethmann of Ranch Peñasquitos. In the three years they have lived in Zambia, McBride and Spethmann have trained and employed 30 Zambians to manufacture and distribute bicycles, bicycle-drawn cargo carts and ‘zambulances,’ and are now making bike frames out of locally grown bamboo. Using microfinance loans, their bicycle products empower entrepreneurs to start businesses, and the bicycle-drawn zambulance enables people in remote areas to receive medical attention, thereby saving lives.”
According to The World Challenge website, 2010 was “the sixth year of The World Challenge Competition and our 12 finalists again raise the bar for sustainable enterprises that are putting something back into their communities. They are all boosting livelihoods and improving living standards without wrecking the environment.”
View the 12 finalists at The World Challenge website and learn more about the organization.
http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/2010-finalists.php
Learn more about Zambikes and Bamboosero from the following videos and website: