We spent the afternoon at the Eames exhibition at the Barbican, along with half of London, all of whom had realised, like us, that it closes tomorrow. It is a vivid evocation and record of the spirit of 1950s design, emerging originally out of the Cranbrook Academy, where he was taught by Eliel Saarinen and made friends with his son Eero, and then migrating to Pacific Palisades where they lived in Case Study House #8 on the edge of the Ocean. Their office was in 901, Washington Boulevard in Venice, CA. They were extraordinarily productive during the 1950s, doing industrial design, the Eames chair, books, films and exhibitions and, most of all, what I think of – and they probably called – informatics, the use of graphic design, as well as film (and slide shows) to convey complex information in the clearest possible way.
Monthly Archives: February 2016
RA Shop
I spent the morning working behind the till in the RA Shop. It was slightly scary learning the mysteries of the till system, remembering to ask if customers are Friends (they get a 10% discount), putting in my pass number, watching the amount of time people spend browsing, seeing the huge pile of catalogues gradually go down, cack-handedly trying to put postcards into a paperbag, and enjoying the camaraderie of the other shop staff under the eagle eye of Ramon. Someone asked me if I was a regular. They could probably spot that I wasn’t. In fact, the last time I served behind a till was driving an ice cream van across the South Downs.
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Plans for the Fondation Louis Vuitton were drawn up by Frank Gehry in 2000. It then took a long period of gestation, including difficult discussions with structural engineers, before opening in the Bois de Boulogne in October 2014. It’s an incredibly grandly theatrical building, generously proportioned, with an excess of mechanical swooping over and towards the viewer and a series of roof terraces from which one can view the surrounding countryside:-
Louis Vuitton
We went for a meeting with LVMH which began in the exhibition on the history of Louis Vuitton at the Grand Palais, drawn from its archive of trunks. It could have been a bit dry, but was animated by being curated by Olivier Saillard, the director of the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, included relevant fashion, and was designed by Robert Carsen, who has created a series of intelligently theatrical installations:-
Hyde Park
I have been sent a link by Tom Stuart-Smith to an article in Nature which suggests on the basis of a study in Toronto that proximity to trees is worth the equivalent of an extra $10,000 a year in terms of quality of life (what they call the cardio-metabolic condition). I thought of this research yesterday morning as I walked across Hyde Park to the dentist and felt my spirits lift in the Spring sun (11 trees per city block is worth $20,000):-
Ridge Wines
Years ago, when we were staying in Los Altos hills in California on the southern perimeter of San Francisco, we were taken to vìsit a local winery called Ridge. Since then I have always kept my eye out for their wines, although seldom been able to afford them, not least because, to my knowledge, they are only available from a wine merchant in Southwold and our local branch of the Bottle Apostle. So it was a pleasure when attending an event last night to celebrate – and consume – some of the world’s greatest wines to find that, in between the Louis Roederer champagne and the Chateau Lafite Rothschild, the main course was introduced by Hugh Johnson as being accompanied by Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon 1991.
Burlington Gardens (2)
We had a site visit of our building project this morning with Sir Peter Luff, the chairman of Trustees of the Heritage Lottery Fund. It’s interesting seeing the project through the eyes of its biggest funder and someone who has not previously seen the site. Even I was impressed by the scale of it: 100 people working on site, what is said to be the largest temporary roof structure in Europe, deep excavations to create new art handling facilities, the floor removed to create the new gallery behind the main staircase. Every time I go round there is more to be seen, more change, and more of a sense of a radical transformation of the building and of the site as a whole, particularly in the areas behind-the scenes in Burlington House.
This is the crane:-
Aldgate
In wandering around Aldgate at the weekend, I was struck by the ambiguity of it as a neighbourhood: forever on the threshold of the City; in the eighteenth century, bounded by the walls of the city to the north of Bevis Marks and Poor Jury Lane, intersected by Leaden Hall and Fenchurch Street. As pbmum, one of my correspondents, has pointed out, it used to be known as Gardiner’s Corner after a large neo-baroque department store at the junction of Whitechapel High Street and the Commercial Road (opposite the tube station) which sold clothes to mariners, from socks to an Admiral’s Hat. Now the boundary of the City is moving eastwards with huge new office buildings crowding out the old roundabout. What is odd and impressive is the way Petticoat Lane and the Sunday morning market survive, but only just, weaving their way northwards from the tube station nearly to Liverpool Street:-
Keynes Prize
I found myself attending the announcement of the winner of this year’s Keynes Prize in Keynes’s library in 47, Gordon Square (he actually lived in number 46, but bought the house next door for his books). The prize was only started last year, but already feels grandly honorific. Last year, it was won by Amartya Sen. So, the question in everyone’s mind was whether or not there was anyone of comparable international intellectual significance. The winner is Tim Berners-Lee. An email was read out in which Berners-Lee extolled the significance of the worldwide web as a vehicle for the freedom of expression. It felt like a good result.
The Cass
I have not been following in detail the controversy surrounding the proposed closure of the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, but have been encouraged to do so by Bob and Roberta Smith, a stalwart campaigner on its behalf.
Cass himself was a great east end philanthropist, a Tory MP, sheriff, master of the Carpenter’s Company and a Commissioner for the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. There’s a statue of him in the Guildhall and a monument in St. Botolph’s:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
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