ideas

Elsewhere online another debate continues to rage. This one follows a panel from South by Southwest held a week from yesterday entitled "Is Spec Work Evil?" which featured David Carson, Jeff Howe from Wired and Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester. But most notably, and where the battle began and continues, also on stage was Mike Samson of the "global marketplace for creative services" crowdSpring and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless, who got into a bit of a sparring match over 1) the former repeatedly comparing their business model to the latter and that 2) crowdSpring is inherently a company that exists to foster spec work and Threadless doesn't enjoy being associated with them. Kalmikoff replied strongly on stage, day of, but if you're interested in the topic of spec, which will likely continue to be fought over until the very end of time, it's well worth reading his full, now cooled headed response on his blog.

We'll close out this St. Patrick's Day with one last green story. Tell your crazy relatives who keep threatening to start a mobile pet grooming franchise that you've got a better idea: Pizza Fusion. The eco-friendly restaurant chain (motto: "Saving the Earth, one pizza at a time") has just been awarded Gold and Silver certifications by the United States Green Building Council for its two newest restaurants. That makes Pizza Fusion the world's first LEED-certified pizzeria. The new restaurants—located in Palm Beach Gardens and Weston, Florida—will reduce water waste by approximately 40% and electricity consumption by 20% annually.

LEED certification is just one part of Pizza Fusion's eco-efficient approach. The company's 19 restaurants in 11 states also feature countertops made of reused glass bottles from other Pizza Fusions, bamboo flooring, 30% recaptured industrial concrete, non-VOC paints, insulation made from recycled blue jeans, low voltage lighting, and furniture made from reclaimed wood. Prefer delivery? Pizza Fusion will dispatch one of its company-owned hybrid vehicles (plus 100% of the company's power consumption is offset with the purchase of renewable wind energy certificates). And we hear the food is pretty good too. Don't even get us started on the hand-stamped and signed delivery boxes.

Remember "Depressiongate" of the early 2009s? Probably not, because we just made up that stupid phrase (if political pundits get to add "-gate" to describe every little controversy, why can't we?). What we're talking about here is that couple of days at the start of the year when Michael Cannell wrote the piece "Design Loves a Depression," Murray Moss responded with an angry retort, and then everyone with an electronic typewriter and/or publisher behind them started writing pieces one side or the other about the topic. Thankfully, we managed to get through this tense period in American history and now we can move on. For instance, we can read Alexandra Peers' feature in New York magazine, "Arte Povera: Why Recession Isn't Good for Art." Personally, we could tell you why in one simple equation: "no money = no payment for art = artists starve, the art world shrinks, and people try to find other professions." Fortunately, and despite our lighthearted whimsy, Peers has a much less reductive view of the world and it's a great piece that's more focused on art than creativity in general (like Cannell's original) and certainly doesn't forgive the industry for its past greed and miscellaneous transgressions. Well worth your time and eyeball/brain energy in reading it.

The NY Times' Pilar Viladas adds to the growing list of design writers talking about the original Murray Moss vs. Michael Cannell argument over "Design Loves/Hates a Depression" (we talked about the Guardian's Stephen Bayley entering the fray yesterday). Viladas makes some interesting points, talking about how the design-as-art movement was getting a tad absurd as we inched toward financial ruin, but going forward we shouldn't judge things that are genuinely beautiful just because they might be expensive. She says design will need to get more streamlined and innovative to work within this new economic crunch, for sure, but that's no reason to make general, sweeping negative remarks about the whole of design. What's more, she brings up a connection we hadn't yet made about how Philippe Starck has been saying all of this sort of "design is killing itself" since last summer (and, well, forever before that too):

Philippe Starck opined that nowadays, "to speak about the beauty of a chair or a lamp...seems a bit obscene...We must try to stop design for design's sake." Starck has been saying things like that for years, and still his designs, many of them looking suspiciously unnecessary to mankind's survival, keep on coming.

The Guardian's Stephen Bayley has jumped into the fray started between Murray Moss and Michael Cannell by offering his own take on the "is design benefited by a depression?" question. Although Bayley is infinitely more gentle about the topic than Cannell was, he seems to, in part, agree that financial hard times do sometimes help design get more innovative and focused. But he's certainly much less fixated on finger pointing than his predecessor, instead making an argument that can be badly paraphrased as: designers are great so they'll figure out how to keep doing good things in this rough times. What's more, he takes an interesting approach to the whole thing by looking at the interiors of new restaurants and how the economy is shaping how they're designed. Will Bayley's comments make Moss and his supporters mad or was this the piece that should have been written from the beginning? We wish we could tell you, but like we've said before, we have sworn never to use our soothsaying superpowers for anything but fighting crime. Sorry.

You don't write an article about how mass poverty will lead to better design without ruffling a few feathers, which surely Michael Cannell knew when he wrote his piece in the NY Times the other day entitled "Design Loves a Depression" (we discussed it here). Designer and entrepreneur Murray Moss took quite a bit of issue with it and wrote a response over at Design Observer called "Design Hates a Depression." To boil it down into just a few of his words, Moss argues that Cannell's "article is regressive and mean-spirited," and in short he believes that the writer wants anyone related to design to suffer, perhaps for these last couple of years of design-as-art inflation. We're certainly not going to pick sides, largely because we think there's a lot of value in each of the pieces -- but we do recommend checking out the comments, to get the whole range of discussion, some fiercely pro-Moss and the others strongly pro-Cannell, leading to what's becoming an interesting topic for your brain to digest.

Is the Obama household's preferred television network to blame for igniting the global financial crisis? Yes, writes Jim Sollisch, the creative director at Cleveland ad agency Marcus Thomas, in an op-ed published recently in the Wall Street Journal. So, how does empowering Americans to maximize their foyers and install unique tile backsplashes lead to the biggest money meltdown since before Dot Draper penned Decorating is Fun!?

As the viewership reached a critical mass over the past decade—HGTV is now broadcast into 91 million homes—homeowners began experiencing deep angst. Suddenly no one but the most slovenly and unambitious were satisfied with their houses. It didn't matter if you lived in an apartment or a gated community, one episode of House Hunters or What's My House Worth? and you were convinced you needed more. More square feet. More granite. More stainless steel appliances. More landscaping. More media rooms. More style. You deserved it.

Previously on UnBeige:

Speaking of hard times, but this time about the design industry for a change, Michael Cannel has an interesting piece for the NY Times entitled "Design Loves a Depression." Cannel believes that, if history is any judge, that great design and innovation flourishes when there are fewer means out there among the masses. Which makes perfect sense when you think of inventions made by clever prisoners in jail or the early career of Charles and Ray Eames. What's more, he thinks design could use a little wake-up call following the recent design-as-art boom whose auctions figures were getting a little too close to the absurd for his liking. Here's a bit:

Looking back, those of us with front-row seats might have known that this design surge would not sustain itself. Two years ago, at the Milan furniture fair, Marcel Wanders, a Dutch designer known for arty provocations, held a thumping party to show off his 15-foot-high lamps and other furniture of distorted Alice-in-Wonderland scale. Never mind that his work was upstaged by his girlfriend, Nanine Linning, who hung upside down half-naked while mixing vodka drinks from bottles affixed to a chandelier. Form followed frivolity. Function was left off the guest list.

By way of PSFK we were pointed to Alice Rawsthorn's part-history lesson, part-advice for designers who are facing this economic mess we've suddenly all found ourselves in. While she believes things aren't going to be entirely pleasant, she's optimistic in seeing that the profession has historically been able to adapt on the quick and not just survive itself, but also wind up helping people in the throes of hard times. Rawsthorn offers up a few bits of historical lessons, briefly touching on what happened with design in the US in the 1930s and in Europe in the 1940s, while also showing off what firms like IDEO and Live|Work are doing or have done to help weather the storm. However, she ends with a gloomy forecast, joining a growing rank of other critics and writers, declaring an end to design-art:

Resilient though some areas of design will be, others have already been hit by recession. One is "design-art." Half of the lots at Sotheby's design auction in London last month were unsold, and dealers are nervous about the prospects for next month's Design Miami fair. But what's the most exciting role for design? Developing new business concepts and cracking social problems, or making expensive, uncomfortable furniture?

Somehow the people in charge of buying us birthday gifts missed the boat on this one: artist Carsten Höller—whose upside-down mushroom room still has us swooning—is getting into the hotel business, kind of. As part of the Guggenheim's upcoming group exhibition "theanyspacewhatever" (its title is a shout-out to Gilles Deleuze), Holler's "Revolving Hotel Room" (pictured above) will welcome overnight guests to the museum beginning on Saturday.

Funded in part by Waldorf-Astoria, the installation consists of sleeping, dressing, and working areas mounted on top of four glass discs that all turn harmoniously at a very slow speed. During the day, the hotel room is open for viewing, but at night, it's strictly for paying guests—in groups no larger than two. At rates ranging from $299 to $550 a night, the room is already fully booked through January 6 (we can't help wonder about the identity of the lucky Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve occupants). But don't feel too bad about the sell-out: checkout time is an unusually early 8:30 a.m., and aside from a breakfast of croissants and coffee served in bed, there is no food allowed.