Wim Crouwel; "Helvetica"

A talk in The Sugar Club given by Wim Crouwel about his life work mostly in poster design. Good. Interesting. He was also director of a museum at the end of his career.

Followed by a film by Gary Hustwit called "Helvetica". A film about a font (colleagues at work couldn't believe me!). Very unbiased, historical celebration of a 50 year-old typeface that still has a life.

Yeats Exhib in National Library (& visit to RHA)

The Yeats exhibition in the National Library is fantastic! Amazing info, amazing exhibition design/layout, very interesting. More than I could take in on this first visit. I'll have to go back. Martello Design did the exhibition: http://www.martellomm.ie/index.html .

Also popped into the RHA to see it's annual art exhibition. Maybe art is not my thing - didn't enjoy much of what was on display, and there was tons on display, the gallery is huge.

"Who Do You Think You Are?"

Just watched re-run of "Who do you think you are?" with Jeremy Clarkson. Very entertaining (I think JC is great!) but also informative. His mother's mother was a Kilner. Of the Kilner Jar fame. He traced his family back to the begining of the industrial revolution and to glass manufacturing.

Made an interesting point about the rise in choice of alcoholic drinks and therefore the need for a recognisable bottle for each new drink. Designers or whoever decided on the shape of objects in glass factories had to come up with variations on the glass bottle.

I watched the programme while munching on walnuts stored in... a (variation of the) Kilner jar!

Codex Leicester

Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester (now owned by Bill Gates) is on exhibition in the Chester Beatty Library.

The manuscript consists of 18 sheets, folded and slotted into each other to form a book but it has been taken apart for exhibition purposes. There were two rows of glass panes in the room to display the manuscript and it was possible to walk down both sides of the row to view both sides of the sheet of paper. I assume the two rows were necessary because of the room dimensions but I thought it was a pity that all the sheets weren't displayed in one continuous row, maybe even with breaks between each sheet/pane of glass to enable the viewer to swiftly see both sides of the paper. (I need a sketch to explain the existing layout and my suggestion!!!) I didn't get a proper understanding of whether da Vinci wrote the treatise in booklet form or on sheets back and front, then lobbed them together. Does each page stand alone or is there continuation of idea from page to page / sheet to sheet? Maybe I needed to spend more time on the computer to figure this kind of thing out, but I didn't have the interest and it would require studiousness.

The computer was useful in that it had a facility for looking at each sheet, zooming in, reversing the writing, and some even had a translation of the text.

The text that I read spoke of water on the moon and why this had to be the case. It was reasonably convincing! Though not particularly well-written in terms of language or structure of argument.

I was expecting to come away feeling in awe of Leonardo da Vinci and his ability to scrutinise and draw conclusions from personal investigation, and maybe also to be amazed by his sketches. I didn't come away with this feeling at all.

The Frankfurt Kitchen

The "Frankfurt Kitchen" was designed by Grete Schütte-Lihotsky, Vienna’s first female architect and a socialist, in 1926.

About 10,000 of the units were craned into position in Frankfurt social housing schemes. It is the fore-runner of the modern fitted kitchen.

I first heard of this kitchen and this architect in a Hugh Campbell lecture on History of Architecture. I read an article about it a journal [Krausse, Joachim "La Cucina di Francoforte" Domus no. 695 (June 1988) pp. 66-73, xxi-xxii].

It's an efficient, hygienic fitted kitchen which can be closed off from dining/living area.

Dimensions: 6.5m² - 1.9m x 3.4m

"At the time [when the Frankfurt Kitchen was designed] all the things which by today’s standards make a kitchen really clean and hygienic didn’t exist... the filth, the dirt, the vegetable cleaning, the peelings, the refuse, was all in the living room. That made it a lower form of living. And so we thought about this in Frankfurt and it seemed to us that a higher form of living would be created if... we also make a sliding door so that we can close off the room. Then we have combined all the advantages of the kitchen/living room with the advantage of a separate room for the dirt/kitchen refuse etc. And that was the point of departure for the Frankfurt Kitchen."

Context of the Design:

• Taylor’s theories: scientific organisation of work

"We must recognize that for every job there has to be a simplest and best way of doing it which is therefore the least tiring."

• models: laboratory and pharmacy

"A kitchen is actually nothing other than a laboratory and it would be much easier to work in if it was considered as such and fitted out in a similar fashion. It has to look something like a pharmacy where every phial and every little thing has its own place or its own drawer, with a precise label, everything as fas as possible the same size... The fitted cupboards should have glass doors, and all spices and other things such as tea, cocoa etc., which one keeps in boxes should be put into glass jars with a label just like in a pharmacy."

• Socialism post World War War: housing for all
• Tenements/public housing ridden with disease (cholera, tuberculosis), bad hygiene
• Greater respect for women’s rôle in society
• Kitchen = food: cooking, eating, washing, heating etc.
• Adolf Loos "Raumplan" (volumetric plan), Oskar Strnad, Josef Frank "Raum als Weg" (space as distance)
• Christine Frederick The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management (german trans. by Irene Witte published in Berlin, 1922) - bible of household rationalization and kitchen reform
• attempts by manufacturers to design a new kind of kitchen furniture and household appliances (e.g. Otto Haarer)
• 1927: The Frankfurt Spring Trade Fair. This fair brought together architects, industry and women. The Frankfurt Housewives Association exhibited "The modern household". Also exhibited: The Mitropa dining car (2.9x1.9m), in which, during a 15-hour journey, meals and drinks for over 400 people are prepared.

Resulting features:

• Layout is fitted/fixed
• long, narrow shape (optical illusion of bigger space achieved by cupboards only on one side, only sometimes with wall cupboards above, upper part is white plasterboard, white extractor hood, light-coloured tiles, large window, black horizontal floor surfaces)
• Fold-out ironing board (1.5m long, no leg)

• Overhead presses
• Cupboards with sliding glass door

• Shelves with graded heights and depth
• Food cupboard ventilated through outside wall
• Sliding shelves
• Drawers for cutlery
• Pans arranged according to size on sloping slatted shelves with metal rack for frying pans at bottom
• Everything can be removed for cleaning
• Adjustable lamp

• Kitchen separated from dining area (controversial) by sliding door
• Labelled containers for food
• Stool
• Window above sink
• Rubbish chute in a drawer
• Cooking box
• Optimum working-distances in the kitchen
• distance from dining table to cooker & sink: not more than 2.75m
• Aesthetic: linked to hygiene and labour-saving = smooth surfaces, clear cubes; glass, aluminium, nickeled or enamelled metal, tiles or xylolite, linoleum, ultramarine woodwork (flies avoid blue)

I suppose I'll have to make a visit to Frankfurt!

NCAD Dilemma

Trying to make decision regarding going back to NCAD to study History of Design & Visual Culture. I'd started the course before - extremely interesting but I'm so conscious of the stress and pressure of assignments and then thesis. I've sought advice from loads of people but now just have to decide on my own for myself! Maybe starting this blog will fill the void. Give me a target for book reading/research that would interest me without putting me under pressure. After all the job prospects don't seem great. The museum tend towards people with Archaeology degrees. My primary degree is in Architecture.