My design work varies from the poetic to the pragmatic. With self-initiated projects, I tend to design for the domestic sphere, at the scale of the individual, and often without a lot of technology. My academic projects involve greater ethnographic research and participatory methods and tend toward systems-, service-, and strategic-design. The images below represents the "making" aspect of my design practice, often in collaboration with Stephanie M. Tharp and our studio, materious.
Inspired by the invective writings of Adolf Loos and his concerns for the economic and moral detriments of ornamentation, Adieu is a set of eight porcelain furniture legs from bygone eras. Cast from actual wooden chair components, they are to be placed in gas or unused fireplaces; for the ardent modernist, these “logs” offer a torrid farewell to our stylistic pasts.
FLASH JUMP
Porcelain gas fireplace "logs"
Slip cast porcelain
Assisted by Greg Bethel
2009–2011
While their placement in the fireplace symbolizes their rejection and destruction, they themselves are of durable porcelain; they resist and persist. They are a tricky form of contemporary ornamentation–one that scorns ornamentation itself, or at least previous promulgations. Acknowledging the complexity of aesthetics and cultures of taste, Adieu embraces its own irony in serving as the modernist’s anti-decoration decoration.
Originally created for exhibition, it was selected by the LA Times as one of the best designs at Milan Design Week 2009. The project later shifted to a small-batch venture, fabricated by a local ceramicist, Heath Bultman.
"To me, and to all the cultivated people, ornament does not increase the pleasures of life. If I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I will choose one that is completely plain…modern people understand this." — Adolf Loos
"We are pleased by a plain cigarette case and not having to wear red velvet trousers." — Adolf Loos
"If there was no ornament at all men would only need to work four hours a day." — Adolf Loos