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David Lynch discusses his scenographic installation at Salone del Mobile with curator Antonio Monda

2024-04-18T12:11:00-04:00

David Lynch is participating in this year's Salone del Mobile with an installation titled ‘Interiors by David Lynch. Thinking Room’ he designed to offer visitors of the fair a respite while serving tribute to the lurid scenography fans of his classic films Blue Velvet and Lost Highway will find pleasingly familiar.

The centerpiece of the installation is an oversized wooden armchair, designed by Lynch himself, with intricate brass tubes positioned overhead, creating a striking visual and tactile experience. Lynch's approach to design reflects his cinematic vision, where every element is imbued with meaning and emotion.

"Interiors by David Lynch. A Thinking Room," interior view. Image: courtesy Lombardini22

As part of the special weeklong exhibition, Salone curator Antonio Monda interviewed Lynch (who has also tried his hand at the visual arts, furniture making, and nightlife space design) about his contribution and the central role his advocacy for transcendental meditation plays in ...

Tadao Ando opens ‘Space of Light’ pavilion in South Korea

2023-08-28T17:21:00-04:00

Tadao Ando has shared photos of his studio's new Space of Light meditative pavilion at the Museum SAN in Wonju, South Korea.

The second of two pavilions designed for the ten-year-old rural arts institution opened earlier this month. It is the third structure on the Ando-designed campus in Gangwon Province and coincides with the museum's exhibition of his youthful early designs — a tourist draw that's recently been extended for another three months owing to the self-taught Pritzker winner's tremendous popularity.

Image courtesy Museum SAN

The object of this design, Ando says, is to emulsify nature into the user’s experience, incorporating light into the otherwise murky auspices of the concrete-walled pavilion’s interior space uninterrupted in a way that recalls the philosophies embodied in his breakout 1989 Church of Light in Osaka, which features a nearly identical narrow cross opening in its façade.

Image courtesy Museum SAN

Offering a demarcation from its domed 2019 predecessor, wh...

Building mental resilience in architecture during COVID-19

2020-03-20T13:27:00-04:00

With the rise in measures due to the impacts of COVID-19, many are battling the subsequent mentality driven pandemics of worry, fear, and anxiety. While we collectively strive to fulfill our work duties, we must couple them with parental, familial, economic, and a slew of other bombardments that have overcome our global community. How can we combat these mental intrusions during a time when poise and clarity are so needed?

Rasmus Hougaard, the founder and managing director of Potential Project, a firm that brings mindfulness to companies to unlock new ways of thinking and working, offers insights to how our minds respond to crises and how we can overcome the weight we often bring upon ourselves. In a recent essay, along with colleagues, Jacqueline Carter and Moses Mohan, Hougaard outlines a case for mindfulness that architects can pull from, as we tackle the complexities in our work and the complexities in our lives.

Our Tendency For Negativity and Distraction

As our minds wander, w...

How can mindfulness make you a better designer?

2019-10-01T17:00:00-04:00

As designers, we often are presented with an overwhelming amount of data to accompany a design problem. There are the client desires, the code constraints, zoning, the desires of the design team, materials, structural systems, and the list goes on. Sometimes, we can feel bombarded or crippled from receiving too much info. Where do I start? We might think to ourselves.

Nadia Surtees, a design researcher at IDEO makes a case for taking a mindfulness approach in our design thinking. "Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the fathers of modern mindfulness, describes the practice as 'paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally,'" she writes. She goes on to list 5 ways she and her colleagues at IDEO go about using mindfulness to tackle tough projects:

"Adopt a beginner's mindset." According to Surtees, a beginner's mindset means "starting fresh, assuming nothing, and living the question." It can be tempting to assume we have the answer to something or to draw on our prev...