design

Shield House by Studio H:T

Shield House by Studio H:T:

Studio H:T have designed the Shield House in Denver, Colorado.

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Description from Studio H:T

This urban infill project juxtaposes a tall, slender curved circulation space against a rectangular living space. The tall curved metal wall was a result of bulk plane restrictions and the need to provide privacy from the public decks of the adjacent three story triplex. This element becomes the focus of the residence both visually and experientially. It acts as sun catcher that brings light down through the house from morning until early afternoon. At night it becomes a glowing, welcoming sail for visitors.

[Sweet!]

Source: CONTEMPORIST

Sir Jonathan Ive: The iMan cometh

Sir Jonathan Ive: The iMan cometh:

Q: What makes a great designer?

A: It is so important to be light on your feet, inquisitive and interested in being wrong. You have that  wonderful fascination with the what if questions, but you also need absolute focus and a keen insight into the context and what is important – that is really terribly important. Its about contradictions you have to navigate.

[I loved this answer. Also… “Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can’t imagine any other way. Simplicity is not the absence of clutter. Get it right, and you become closer and more focused on the object. For instance, the iPhoto app we created for the new iPad, it completely consumes you and you forget you are using an iPad.” and this “One of the things we’ve really learnt over the last 20 years is that while people would often struggle to articulate why they like something – as consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed. It’s one of the thing we’ve found really encouraging.”]

Responsive Navigation Patterns | Brad Frost Web

Responsive Navigation Patterns | Brad Frost Web:

Top and left navigations are typical on large screens, but lack of screen real estate on small screens makes for an interesting challenge. As responsive design becomes more popular, it’s worth looking at the various ways of handling navigation for small screen sizes. Mobile web navigation must strike a balance between quick access to a site’s information and unobtrusiveness.

Teller Reveals His Secrets | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

Teller Reveals His Secrets | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine:

Magic is an art, as capable of beauty as music, painting or poetry. But the core of every trick is a cold, cognitive experiment in perception: Does the trick fool the audience? A magician’s data sample spans centuries, and his experiments have been replicated often enough to constitute near-certainty. Neuroscientists—well intentioned as they are—are gathering soil samples from the foot of a mountain that magicians have mapped and mined for centuries.

[Awesome.]

A Proposal for Penn Station and Madison Square Garden

A Proposal for Penn Station and Madison Square Garden:

The 1912 Post Office facade — also by McKim, Mead & White, with the “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom” inscription — will then become the face of Amtrak. That will restore a superficial measure of the dignity to railway travel that was lost in 1963 when the old Pennsylvania Station was torn down. But the experience for most people using the building will not be like the glory of moving through Grand Central or the old Penn Station. Aesthetically, a top-ranking state official confided to me in all seriousness, the Moynihan project aspires to be more like the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station in Secaucus, N.J.

Years ago the critic Ada Louise Huxtable noted that at the turn of the last century the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Alexander Cassatt, wanted to build a hotel atop Penn Station to exploit valuable air rights. But his architect, McKim, talked him out of it. The railroad owed the city a “thoroughly and distinctly monumental gateway,” McKim argued. Idealism temporarily triumphed over commerce, until McKim’s great building, across several troubled decades, became an increasingly rundown emblem of urban glory and gave way to an architecture of gloomy pragmatism and moneyed interests.

There is historic justice in trying to rectify a crime committed a half-century ago that galvanized the architectural preservation movement. “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat,” is the familiar lament from Vincent J. Scully Jr., the Yale architectural historian, about the difference between the former and present Penn Stations.

[the Rail Station in Secaucus is horrendous. A strange hard to navigate, joyless, gateway to NJ. Fitting since until recently that state has lacked any sort of integrity. But horrendous. If I have a vote… I’d move the Garden.]

Translucent, pliable material lights up your home and adds privacy, too

Lovell Residence modern kitchen

Translucent, pliable material lights up your home and adds privacy, too:

In the 1970s a new building material gained traction in the marketplace. This material had all of the advantages of a skylight while being superior to skylights in energy efficiency and structure. It’s no wonder that many architects started specifying Kalwall where the only option had been a glass or plastic product.

Kalwall, which was actually developed in the ’50s, is a fiberglass-reinforced translucent sandwich panel. Though initially used for commercial and institutional buildings, Kalwall has become increasing popular for homes. This is especially true for an entire, luminous ceiling or where light is desired but privacy must be maintained.

[I’ve loved this stuff for years. Little known outside of architectural circles, builders are shy to use it. Shame really. I could so do this to my kitchen… Modern kitchen design by San Francisco architect Quezada Architecture]

Path Design

Path Design:

This is the best thing I’ve read about Path, and it perfectly articulates something I’ve thought not only about Path, but also a lot of other exemplars of the fussy, post-Apple wave of “high design” in tech products.

Then Brent says:

Read both, and then the Khoi Vinh article article Buzz links to.

So I did:

It’s difficult to say exactly how much design is “too much,” but finding that middle ground may be the most important job that an interaction designer has. Negotiating an equilibrium between the user’s ability to roam free and the system’s desire to funnel activities into specific directions is tricky business. This is a challenge that requires not only imagination and skill, which the best designers always have, but also perseverance and insight — the ability and willingness to work in an iterative, responsive fashion, with the understanding that the job is never really done. Even among the best designers, that’s rare.

[But I don’t agree. There is no room to breathe in Facebook, or really in Flickr either. Flickr feels a bit more “mine” because in my use it’s mainly about me and people I know or know of. So it feels personal that way. Facebook, you’re thinking is as well. But I rarely really use Facebook per se. My tweets publish there for the sake of folks I know who inhabit that space. And I “like” a few things here and there. But that’s about it. So not only is my use limited, but I find the page jammed with alerts, ads, and junk about which I haven’t the slightest interest.

I think the “tricky” cases are where you want a clean and clear design for the main case, but make less used and more compacted flows available. to me that’s tricky. The other case for tricky smacks of trying to herd users into an action, or gaming. I’m not a fan of either tactic.

And while I’m railing about stuffs… notice how many sites have started demanding that you sign up before you can even see anything on it? I refuse to join any of them. If I visit a site with commerce on my mind, you darn well better be able to show a pretty picture and maybe some lovingly crafted text before I give you anything.]

Source: inessential.com

Design Sets Tone at Square, a Mobile Payments Start-Up

Design Sets Tone at Square, a Mobile Payments Start-Up:

…we sat at a square table, in a square glass conference room — all of which are named after a famous town squares from around the world. Mr. Dorsey was eating nuts out of a square bowl. (Don’t worry, the nuts were still round, I checked.) Employees are even referred to as Squares.

“We believe strongly that the company is going to be reflected in the product and vice-versa,” Mr. Dorsey said. “The internal matches the external and the external matches the internal, and if we can’t provide a clean, simple, well-designed experience in here, it’s not going to be reflected in our identity. It’s in our DNA.”

[I’m not sure about the employees being called “Squares” thing. But the rest is thoughtful, if only potentially meaningful.]