It’s been a minute (three months, but who’s counting?) since I last sent an issue of Ground Condition. In the interim, my internal count of notable things has waxed and waned. I SHAN’T APOLOGIZE, but a proverbial sweeping of the deck is in order before we move onto to any semblance of a strategic content calendar.
A few places I’ve been this summer that are not this newsletter: putting together a list of sample sale favorites for Block Shop, commenting on can’t-go-wrong sofa GOATs in Schmatta, being interviewed by Fast Company about the print magazine I launched with our Herman Miller brand team, showing up in Sight Unseen’s summer reading list, getting namechecked in the internet’s #1 source for “anti-consumerist dope-clothes style & culture” recon Blackbird Spyplane, recommending wedding guest dresses for The Strategist, and gushing about my favorite contemporary magazine editor, Asad Syrkett, in WWD. (Get around that paywall by selecting “Reader View” in your browser….)
Arguably my most important summer activity: I joined the board of Center for Craft, an Asheville-based, grant-making organization with a national remit. The Center provides grants for students, artists, researchers, curators, and educators in the field of craft. Trust me that its scope and track record are remarkable. For anyone interested in learning more—whether through participation or grant applications—the annual fundraiser, Craft Watch, is happening October 18. Info here, or ask me directly (I’m co-chairing with the inimitable Meaghan Roddy).
As for the why?? of Center for Craft, well: Real ones know that making things by hand is both a primordial function of being human AND extremely appealing, even sexy, in an age of deep scroll, biohacking, algorithmic nonsense. Specific examples to love: weaver and living legend Kay Sekimachi (whose work is on view at the much-better-than-it-ought-to-be museum at SFO airport) just designed a bag with Loewe. Among the many Center for Craft grant recipients is Robell Awake, an Atlanta-based chairmaker who is one to watch. Awake’s been covered in the Times and most recently Dwell, he’s teaching at Penland, and he’s working on a book with Princeton Architectural Press. And this year’s fundraiser honors Tanya Aguiñiga, whose work starts with fiber and crosses many disciplines (and borders).
Market report
Calling it now: Lighting as a category is about to pop off. It’s not nearly as saturated as it could be within DTC corners, and lighting is—famously, according to designers who do this for a living—high margin product. I’ve been seeing tons of corded sconces, boob light covers, organza cord covers, spiffed-up outlet covers, better LED bulbs… and more recently, two cases of ceramic lighting: Tung Chiang’s Stack wide table lamp for Heath Ceramics and Isabel Rower’s Medium Box Light at Marta.
Pals at Sight Unseen debuted a series of three doormats with Heymat, a Norwegian company who also produce what I believe is the platonic ideal of an outdoor mat.
MOS Architects out of New York designed a wool rug for Urban Fabric called Twice Woven—in essence, an amplified detail of a woven basket, a “collection of knots that creates a place.” (Personally, I cannot resist an object that threatens the definition of its own typology, in this case, a rug with holes big enough to see the floor through it.)
Rafi Ajl, who lives here in Berkeley and makes some of the coolest blown glass I’ve ever seen, just wrapped his first exhibition with The Future Perfect.
This 1986 kitchen (so High-Tech it hurts) courtesy of @soft_servings, with bonus plug for Ritterwork’s ribbed Toaster Volcano.
Noah Phillips has been making fun, irreverent, and undeniably appealing goods as part of his Foreign National project. (Perhaps you saw the custom dining table he did for Christene Barberich on A Tiny Apt.) Waffle baskets, anyone?
Two Chicago outfits—The Weaving Mill and 1733—teamed up on a bag that sold out in about five minutes back in June. Friends at the Mill tell me it won’t be the last design they produce together and to stay tuned…
Department of buildings
Only a few weeks left for the A’s to play in Oakland’s brutalist masterpiece, the SOM-designed circa-1966 Coliseum. Diana Budds wrote an excellent piece on its demise back in 2019; gorgeous archival Ezra Stoller photos here; and some information on the Arena (which is still in use and lookin’ sporty) here.
I spied this residential structure on Instagram, misattributed as a private residence designed by Marcel Breuer in Big Sur. According the Breuer archive at Syracuse, it was the Staff House at Esalen, designed by an associate named Herbert Beckhard. Reminder: Archival material can be delightfully bitchy.
Dying to know who bought Roman Coppola’s Hollywood Hills house…
…or the plywood house in Pasadena that everyone in LA was freaking out over.
Meanwhile, anyone in the market for a classical, Maybeck-designed temple?
Odds and ends
It’s been a searing year for fiction, but the book I’m most inclined to procrastinate for this fall is Frostbite, by Nicola Twilley.
Writer/critic Alexandra Lange once again reaching into my cranium to secure a book deal that promises to answer all my burning queries.
I’ll never not burrow into a Utopias theme, and I’ll never skip an issue of August Journal. Win/win!
Kim Hastreiter’s long-awaited autobiography-through-objects is coming out next year, and I hope you all love it as much as I do. Her outlook on life is hyper-relevant and hyper-inspiring. Do I sound like a fan girl? I am. [UPDATE: The pre-order is open!]
For anyone who’s spent time in Denmark and been tested on your terrible pronunciation of Danish… this one’s for you.
From this announcement on the Chicago Tribune’s new architecture columnist: “This new Sunday architecture column is generously supported by a grant from former Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin.” Note the distinction that this gig is as a columnist paid to write for the Opinion pages—materially different than a post with structural editorial support behind it. Also very curious that an outgoing critic donated money to fund his own (indirect) replacement.
Not all criticism is dead! Food is culture, RH is food, RH… probably aligns more closely to “American culture” than I feel comfortable admitting.
I binged the French show HPI a few weeks ago during a weekend bout with Covid, and am now considering a complete rewatch of Dix Pour Cent. I’ve already inhaled Le Bureau des Légendes. Quoi d’autre? Spiral?
Speaking of France, I am planning a trip—that may or may not coincide with a milestone birthday—with the sole purpose of achieving transcendence via buildings. Expect to see more on this topic (transcendence in architecture, not my birthday) in an upcoming issue. In the meantime, I am curious to know: What built environment experience blew your mind?
Until next time!
Kelsey
PS. Any Nice Try! or Articles of Interest listeners out there? If so, you won’t want to miss this:
Colline Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France, as it opened on a Sunday morning—with the bells chiming over the countryside calling congregants to Mass.
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