Solidarity

When I first started this blog, I expected to concentrate on the architecture of my city, New York. And I have diverged from that plan on some occasions. But I guess I wouldn't have expected that anyone aside from other New Yorkers would be interested in what I had to say, or at the most, it would be people from the northeast of the United States.

Instead I've learned that many of you reading these posts are from all over the planet. The UK, Russia, India, Indonesia, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Australia. You've all come to see what I had to say for one reason or another. I can't tell you how flattered I am by that. I just wanted to say how honored I feel to be a part of this world community of people like you who care about art and architecture, design and beauty. Thank you, my brothers and sisters. I hope you've enjoyed what I've written. Thanks to our technology, we are a family, and I hope our family continues to grow. Together, we can make our planet a more beautiful place to live, if we choose to do it.

Sincerely,
Ryan

Little Landscaping

The umbrella company here, Italy's Magis, makes contract furniture.  As you may have noticed, I'm not going to talk about contract on Architextures.  It's often very modern, beautiful stuff, but even in a corporate environment, I find it to be very stale and cold.  Company conference room is the only place I can think of where the businesslike character of typical contract furniture would be worthwhile, personally.

But Magis Me Too is their kids' line, and they have a couple of really fun things.  I think their "Alma" chairs are really beautiful, actually:

Great for outdoors, and totally childproof indoors.  They have this very pretty organic design growing out of the structural ribs on the back:

I think the colors are gorgeous, too, especially in combination.  They're so not goofy, tacky primary colors like companies always seem to think kids' stuff has to be:

Here are some kids' chairs called "Julian" that are just absolutely adorable:

Come on now, that's CUTE.  I'm sorry, but if seeing these guys standing around on the lawn didn't put a grin on your face, you'd have to have a heart of cold stone.

This is very cool, too.  A kid-sized living room set, "Piedras," made of (polyethylene) stones:

The great thing about this is how you could incorporate a place for your kids in your garden landscaping.  So listen to this: next to the garden, there's a patch of like white gravel with this furniture in it.  In the center of the gravel, an oval patch of grass mimicking an area rug.  You could even have like two little manicured trees on either side that look like floor lamps (and uplight them at night--awesome).  You could put up a little trellis with flowers, whatever, growing on it behind the couch, so it looks like a wall, gives your kids privacy, and blocks some of their noise.  Sure kids like to run around a lot, but I think kids would LOVE that.

It's a little bit Flintstones, but it also reminds me of Isamu Noguchi's Momo Taro (1978) at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY:

--Photo Tim Rice

Speaking of which, if you've never been to Storm King, please do go this summer.  It's a truly magical place.

Magis Me Too

info@magisdesign.com

©2008, Ryan Witte