Dwell May/June 2017

This magazine’s point is not to fetishize design, but to explore how and why it works. When one learns to spot these things, it’s easier to understand how good design thinking is possible on any scale, on any budget, in any circumstance. Most people don’t get the chance to walk a factory floor to see how an object is made. They don’t see iterations born from relentless research and development, versions pushed and pulled to find the elusive bridge between quality and cost. Very few do. This is the purpose of Dwell—to show the “try” behind the “do.” Take, for instance, the young couple who decided to leave Brooklyn after eight years of trying, and succeeding, to build careers in the design industry. Garnering bigger and bigger commissions and partnerships,…

You have to drive a bit to find a bookstore these days, but after seeing someone else’s copy, I had to have it, @dwell!! Excellent issue! —@JadenAlexander3 on Twitter The new issue made me feel like reading The Unknown Craftsman again! (It’s funny that I am reading it in English). Wrapping Soetsu Yanagi’s words on the spine of the magazine was a nice touch— I agree that art is more beautiful when it suggests something deeper, something beyond its appearance. Great words. I also really liked the cabin on the cover. The article shows that a good house’s design should have a personal connection to the owner. The cabin was born from their lifestyle! Very inspiring. It reminded me of my grandparents’ house in the countryside of Japan, surrounded by…

Subway tile, reclaimed wood, and Edison bulbs. Lloyd DesBrisay on Dwell Midcentury modern. While interesting to millennials, not so much to those who grew up with it. Laura Davies on Facebook Brass—and soon, copper. It’s artifice. Britt on Dwell Chevron must go! @sean_ike on Twitter Painting brick houses white. Lynda Berry Weaver on Facebook Annual color forecasts. @designreloaded on Twitter Inspirational words painted in various whimsical fonts on barn boards. Please go away. Catharine Saunders on Facebook Rainscreen siding AKA wasp nesting grounds. @ma2_architects on Twitter Color-coordinated books. Gael Weber on Dwell To me, shabby chic has always been merely shabby. Dick Rehse on Dwell Bohemian. If I wanted to navigate a messy room full of overstuffed throw pillows, I’d live in a dorm. Michael Xavier on Facebook Stags and…

Georgina Gustin Hunt With the Hounds page 102 Georgina Gustin is a Washington, D.C., reporter who focuses on food policy, farming, and the environment. Her story for this issue, a DIY midcentury remodel in Wilmington, Delaware, was unlike her previous assignments for the magazine. “Most of the projects I’ve written about for Dwell began in someone’s imagination,” she says. “This house was already there, just ready for another owner who personalized it with a lot of hard work and persistence.” Georgina has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, and Gourmet. Stephen K. Johnson Hunt With the Hounds page 102 After studying at Brigham Young University, photographer Stephen Kent Johnson relocated to New York. For this issue, he visited Delaware to shoot George Marrone and…

Whenever I am asked to single out my favorite design trends, I often dither. What constitutes a trend? Conversely, whenever I am asked about my least favorite trends, I snap right back without a moment’s hesitation: taxidermy. In the last ten years, taxidermy has become cringingly ubiquitous, an international symbol of hipster glam. Opening an artisanal cocktail den? Hang a bison on the wall and toss a jaunty hat on its horn. Furnishing your rock star lair? A crouching tiger sets the tone. Need an Instagrammable selfie for your burgeoning lifestyle brand? Jet to Deyrolle in Paris and pucker up. Looks cool, right? Not to me—to me it’s a depressing ode to animal cruelty. So when I opened my March/April issue of Dwell, the sharing, caring, thinking man’s design magazine,…

For Japanese-American designer Isamu Noguchi (1904– 1988), using washi, or paper, was a way to sculpt with light. Noguchi had powerful memories of washi from a childhood spent in Japan, and he never forgot the lure of the material. During a 1950 trip to Gifu, Japan, a prefectural capital known for its mastery of paper techniques, the mayor asked for Noguchi’s advice on how the area could modernize. “It was a logical convergence of my long interest in light sculptures, lunars, and my being in Japan,” Noguchi wrote in his 1968 autobiography, A Sculptor’s World. “Paper and bamboo fitted in with my feeling for the quality and sensibility of light. Its very lightness questions materiality, and is consonant with our appreciation today of the less thingness of things, the less…