Dine. Travel. Design.

Everyone should take a look at this site, storyofstuff.com. A great, simple way of exploring and explaining how we are all affecting and being affected by the consumer world we live in. Where does all this ’stuff’ come from? and how does it get here? Where does it go?

Really, how is it that we’ve become such a consumerist society. Just the other day, my co-worker and I had a brief conversation about what happened to the day when everyone knew their neighbors and knew what was going on- the gossip in the small town sort of feel. Today it seems like we’re locked up in our houses, often afraid to or too busy to talk to our neighbors, let alone strangers.

I’m off on a tangent. Just go ahead and take a look (and listen) to the site.

In reference to one of my earlier posts:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/suvs-without-wheels.php

I’m extremely disappointed that I probably won’t be able to visit London before the closing of the China Design Now exhibit in July at the V&A.

Instead, for my birthday last week, I bought myself a present: the book. I’ve only briefly flipped through it, but there is a lot of great background information on the influences of current Chinese design and how design has changed in 3 major cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzen. Needless to say China is the spotlight. Like many, I’m excited to see how design will continue to evolve and mature. Hopefully native Chinese along with those raised elsewhere, like myself, will continue to embrace their heritage and culture.

Exhibit review by Core77.

First off, Hulu is a site for streaming TV shows and movies.

Earlier this week, I checked out the site for the first time and decided to watch a movie, just to check out how ‘well designed’ this site really is. I’ll admit, not only is the simplicity great to navigate, but the streaming of video was nearly perfect. No commercial interruptions over 30 seconds- Probably about 6-10 throughout the whole movie. Not bad at all. There was no jumping or ‘buffering’ during the stream. Great new site to watch videos and TV shows!

check out some articles:
BusinessWeek
Wired

This weekend I saw the Raymond Lowey exhibit at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, MA.

To think that the father of my profession, industrial design, started as a graphic designer and was proud of being a ‘stylist’ as written on the stationary of his resume “Raymond Lowey, Industrial Designer and Stylist”.
Nonetheless, it was great to see the range and beauty of his work from graphics, advertising and logos to functional, decorative products and machinery. I was impressed to see the streamline style side-by-side with products that existed previous to Lowey’s influence and style. Lowey’s Rosenthal China Tableware was particularly interesting to me. The surface patterns used were just as beautiful as the simplicity in lines and plain color that Lowey used on various pieces of Rosenthal China. To imagine that one person could be successful in so many lines of work- advertising, graphics, cars, boats, household products and packaging. At this point in my early career, I could only dream of accomplishing a fraction of what Lowey did.

added: Wired article 1, Wired article 2

Welcome to the end.

My boyfriend and I drove down to Leesburg, VA back in December and again in February to visit his brother, who just bought a brand new house. This was on the way there. Doesn’t make you want to drive much father does it?

I’ll certainly admit the house was gorgeous inside with tons of space; the thing that urks me is the community that it’s in and all the communities that surround it. Houses are built on old farm land, that’s no longer used. But it seems that now, contractors are just farming houses, not crops.

On the side of the road we constantly pass by signs like this to get visitors in, to see the model homes and neighborhoods.

If there’s really a need for such housing, why not initiate greener buildings? There are so many houses and it doesn’t seem to be slowing. It would be a great opportunity to convert home owners to live in a greener abode…

I was shopping at the Natick Collection this weekend and was surprised by an art display right in the middle of the mall. The venue of The Dress Project is an interesting choice. The first thing that came to my mind was the mall environment, which brings attention to the commercialization of fashion meeting the expression of art through fashion. More interesting is the artist’s inspiration, drive, and thought provoking message of femininity within today’s society with the medium of found materials. On the other hand, these dresses were just awesome to see.