MoMA gives Modern a Makeover

The modern design section of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently received a facelift. Running from December 23, 2009 to July of 2010, the museum’s third floor Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries showcases “Shaping Modernity: Design 1880–1980.” The exhibit houses a selection of visionary objects, graphics, architectural fragments, and textiles from the Museum’s collection that reveal the attempts of successive generations to shape their experience of living in the modern world. Curator Juliet Kinchin and curatorial assistant Aidan O’Connor organized some 300 works into the following five sections:


The International New Art 1890–1914

The International New Art flourished in urban centers around the world taking on many localized forms and names (among them Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Arte Modernista, Sezession, and Glasgow Style). The pieces in this installation were used in the office of the MoMA’s founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Other examples in the exhibition include a side chair by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a side table by Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, and a plaster cast of Antoni Gaudí’s original finial sculpture for the Church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

New Typography 1927–37

In the 1920s and 1930s, the movement known as the New Typography brought graphics and information design to the forefront of artistic avant-gardes in Europe. Rejecting traditional arrangement of type in symmetrical columns, modernist designers organized the printed page or poster as a blank field in which blocks of type and illustration (frequently photomontage) could be arranged in harmonious, strikingly asymmetrical compositions. Included in the exhibition are 14 works by Jan Tschichold, Ladislav Sutnar, Johannes Molzahn, Theo H. Ballmer, Herbert Bayer, Frantisek Kalivoda, Zdenek Rossmann, Joost Schmidt, and Aleksandr Rodchenko.

Mind, Body, Machine 1925–40
The tone of this section is set by a giant railroad-car spring and a boat propeller first shown in MoMA’s landmark Machine Art exhibition in 1934, which celebrated such items of anonymous industrial design as symbols of social improvement and technological progress. The theme is further explored in utilitarian objects such as a streamlined meat-slicer (given in memory of the Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman), and the Vipp trash can, designed for a Danish hair salon.

What Was Good Design? MoMA’s Message 1944–56

This section,which opened in May of 2009, presents over 100 selections from the museum’s collection—ranging from domestic furnishings and appliances to textiles, sporting goods, and graphics—to illuminate the primary values of Good Design as promoted by MoMA within an international debate conducted by museums, design councils, and department stores.

Continuity and Critique 1960–80
The clean and elegant forms of classic modernism continued to appear in the domestic appliances of Dieter Rams for Braun, and the Vignelli Associates’ stacking plastic dinnerware. For many however, the emphasis on pop music, youth, and counterculture opened up new possibilities in materials, colors, and forms, as well as more humorous, expendable design.

Serving Architects, Consultants in Everything Green Become Mainstays

Lauren Yarmuth of YRG Sustainable Consultants if one of a growing cadre of consultants who specialize in helping developers, architects and sometimes tenants gain an official stamp of approval from the United States Green Building Council through its LEED certification program — the undisputed calling card of environmental bragging rights.

“Going green used to be part of just a handful of organizations’ mission statements, but now it’s become part of everyone’s agenda,” said Ashley Katz, communications director for the Green Building Council. “That has, of course, increased the need for sustainability consultants.”

Many of the consultants are, like Ms. Yarmuth, trained as architects and work directly with the Green Building Council to develop and refine the guidelines they help clients follow. At the end of 2006, the Green Building Council’s membership included 679 consultants. By July 31 this year, there were 1,590.

This mirrors the rapid increase in the number of buildings certified by the council: In 2005, there were 404 buildings that met LEED standards. Midway through 2008, 1,705 buildings have been certified. LEED started certifying new construction as “green” or “sustainable” in 2000, and the fifth version of standards is being prepared for 2009.

Despite a seemingly straightforward point system and scorecard, getting LEED certification is not always easy. Even large firms with employees with titles like “environmental strategist” hire consultants to walk them through the process.

MOMA Exhibition

Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling

July 20–October 20, 2008

Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling is both a survey of the past, present and future of the prefabricated home and a building project on the Museum's vacant west lot. Not since the mid-century House in the Garden series has MoMA built occupiable model buildings to demonstrate contemporary issues to the public. The fives homes erected on the vacant west lot are designed by Kieran Timberlake Associates (Philadelphia); Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas Gauthier (New York); Horden Cherry Lee Architects / Haack + Höpfner Architects (London/Munich); Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning / Associate Professor Lawrence Sass (Cambridge); and Oskar Leo Kaufmann (Dornbirn, Austria).

The exhibition, and its accompanying Web site (www.momahomedelivery.org), display the process of architectural design and production in equal measure with the actual end result. Within the gallery, eighty-four architectural projects spanning 180 years are presented by means of film, architectural models, original drawings and blueprints, fragments, photographs, patents, games, sales materials and propaganda, toys, and partial reconstructions. This diverse collection of material illustrates how the prefabricated house has been, and continues to be, not only a reflection on the house as a replicable object of design but also a critical agent in the discourse of sustainability, architectural invention, and new material and formal research.

I attended the HD Expo in Las Vegas last week. HD is a must-see Expo for interior designers, hoteliers, restaurateurs, architects and other creative professionals. The Expo and Conference brings together the industry’s most talented and significant players under one roof. This year's expo featured many new Green products and ideas.

The Expo featured over 1,000 exhibitors and had a reported 20,000 attendees.