Why Travelators Still Trundle On

"It's 50 years this week that the first travelator opened in the UK, prompting visions of a future where walking would be superseded by standing on a moving walkway.

They belong to an age of hovercraft and monorails, a Tomorrow's World imagining of the 21st Century rooted firmly in the past.

Even their name - travelator! - evokes the sci-fi innocence of a post-war world which had not yet learned to be cynical about the transformative power of technology.

Once, the idea of automated moving walkways may have been bound up with gleaming, modernist idealisations of the future.

But after 50 years in the UK, most of us must now surely associate them with a brief moment of respite as we trudge from one end of an airport to another.

It was a very different story when the UK's first travelator opened in September 1960 - a time when the confident consumerism of Harold Macmillan's "never had it so good" era was preparing to give way to Harold Wilson's faith in the white heat of scientific development."

To read more of this content at BBC News Magazine, click here.

Trendwatch: Dollhaus Movement Sweeps Basements Everywhere

"Just days before the Operation Dollhouse deadline, Fast Company's Co.Design reports on Brinca Dada, a New York-based manufacturer of modern dollhouses. Let's put it this way: LED lighting, cut-stone walls, solar panels—all the hallmarks of fine adult living, signs that one's made it, right? Not anymore, actually—now they're within reach of the toddler set. Aspirational parents can finally eschew Barbie's Dream House for a more modernist-inclined abode, complete with equally streamlined miniature furniture. Hey now, it's never too early to teach the youngsters about the De Stijl movement. And here's looking at you, Dwell: pressure's on."

(source: Curbed National).

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What's wrong with Barbie's Dream House? It can be pretty modernist, too.....(see the picture of the 'Dream House' bought for my daughter's sixth birthday).

The Ikea Revolution

"Ikea is not so much a store as a cultural phenomenon. It's the land of the Allen key, where the product names make us laugh (do I really need a lamp called Knubbig?) and the missing pieces make us groan. We joke about the confusing layout but we still flock to the company's outlets.

Ikea is the best-known mass-producer of home products in the world. About 30 per cent of households in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane contain something bought there in the past year. This week, the company announced six more stores would be built in the next decade.

Some items are more than just furniture. The Billy bookcase is a rite of passage, a symbol of the proud, just-left-home renter. With its flat-pack, sustainably grown timber, low price and modular form, Billy is a contemporary furniture icon, a bestseller here and overseas. And, in truth, you're just as likely to find it in the home of the first-time renter's parents. If anything sums up Ikea's contribution to the way we live, it's this modest book-holder.

Even museums have recognised the company's impact. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has pieces in its permanent collection. The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Vienna's Imperial Furniture Collection and Stockholm's contemporary art museum, Liljevalchs konsthall, have mounted exhibitions on Ikea in the past year.

These retrospectives coincide with the 60th anniversary of Ikea's catalogue. The launch of this clever marketing tool in 1951 marked a turning point for a company whose founder, Ingvar Kamprad, began as a 17-year-old peddler of pencils, stockings, matches and household items in Sweden in 1943.

To read more of this content at The Sydney Morning Herald, click here.

Sneak Peek: George Nakashima and the Spirits Within

As the proud owner of a much-cherished Nakashima-inspired burlwood slab coffee table, I am determined to write an overview of the marvelous Japanese-American furniture maker's work at some point in the very near future.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this little "teaser" to whet your appetite.

george nakashima (1905-1990) was born in spokane, washington. the first son of a newspaper reporter of samurai lineage named katsuharu nakashima and his wife suzu. he graduated from the graduated from the university
of washington in 1929 and from the M.I.T. with a master's in architecture in 1930 and then worked as a mural painter and architectural designer in the new york area.

in 1933 he moved to paris, and the next year joined the tokyo architectural offices of antonin raymond. in 1937 he volunteered to design and supervise construction at a religious sanctuary in pondicherry, india. because of his deep transformation of consciousness at the sri aurobindo ashram 1937-39, - and was given the sanskrit name 'sundarananda' (one who delights in beauty) by sri aurobindo himself - his work thereafter was propelled by a religious fervor.

he believed that it is necessary to remove the desire to promote one's individual ego from the creative process and to devote work each day to the divine, a concept quite contrary to mainstream western culture.

Read more at designboom. Click here.

Gallery: Giants of Modernist Art

From top:

Take Your Time, an exhibition by Olafur Eliasson in 2008 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Eliasson changed the gallery lights, mirrored the ceilings, filled a room with a pool of water and a fog bank, and turned a skywalk into a kaleidoscope, all in an effort to tinker with the way we experience space and light.

A painting by Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye, exhibited in the National Center for Modern Art in Roppongi, Australia. Kngwarreye, who died in 1996 started to paint in her late 70s, after living her entire life in Utopia, an outpost in the blistering Western deserts. Her abstract, colorful works broke all sales records, and she became the first Aboriginal artist to sell a painting for over a million US dollars.

Richard Serra sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, 2008. Serra’s early work focused on the industrial materials that he had worked with as a youth in West Coast steel mills and shipyards, but in his maturity, his work became famous for coupling that physicality with breathtaking size and weight.

Jack Bush, December (C65), 1961. Bush was part of the group Painters Eleven, which was founded by William Ronald in 1954 to promote abstract painting in Canada. Starting as an Abstract Expressionist, Bush simplified his composition by using an all-over coverage of thinly applied bright colours inspired by his watercolour sketches. Bush was thus an early proponent of Color Field Painting and Lyrical Abstraction.

Emily Carr, In the Forest, 1935. Fascinated by the strength of the natural world of her native British Columbia, and deeply inspired by the culture and art of the indigenous people of the Pacific North East coast, she expresses Nature with transcendental qualities. Air, trees, leaves and soil are intensely reproduced in open brush strokes and rendered from particular viewpoints that conceive an idea of intense immersion in the mystery and soul of the silent forests.

Photo-Essay: Random Icons, of a Sort - Unsorted

A modernist photo-essay consisting of five totally random snapshots uploaded from my iPhoto storage.


Clockwise from top-left (all photos copyright Clifton Bertram):

The breezeway of a the University Hotel Lodge on Route 66 in New Mexico. I was meant to stay just down the road in the only slightly more funky Hiway House Hotel, but unfortunately the management there proved to be more than a little more prick-tastic. The owners of the University Lodge were fantastic, room was fine and the Nob Hill location is absolutely premiere, smack dab in the middle of one of the best vintage scenescapes in the southwest.

My single and only example of Blue Mountain Pottery. While not blue in this particular case, the green with which this piece is painted is certainly an authentic 1960s colour. Its shape, that of a pituitarily challenged art glass genie bottle, would make it very much at home in Maxwell Smart's apartment.

A modernist church in Red Deer, Alberta. Given the degree to which churches are one of the most single-minded reprentatives of a certain conservatism (and I mean that in the best sense of the word), isn't it intriguing how, architecturally, many of the most Modernist buildings we see in most towns are, in fact, places of worship? This pic is a bit of a teaser for an upcoming photo-essay I plan to do solely on Modernism in Church Architecture.

Eastown Bowling in London, Ontario. The utterly awesome vintage bowling alley sign juxtaposed with the much less artistically inspired Rent-to-Own sign sums it all up concerning this part of London - despite signs of impending gentrification, it's still very much a threadbare, "wrong-side-of-the-tracks" kind of place where a cold October wind seems to barrel down the sidewalks all year round. The kind of place where a barbershop with a 30-year-clientele and a revolving candy-striped pole is joined at the hip with a Value Village, and the Dundas Street traffic sings the blues in the background.

Dashboard of a '51 Pontiac. While it's a couple of years older, and a slightly different model than the first car I remember riding in, the interior is the same - especially that borderline-gaudy dashboard: a literal expression of the ebullience and confidence of the 50s, dripping with chrome and flaunting the latest (for 1951) high-tech gadget, a dashboard clock the size of coconut. The perfect ride to Club Morocco on a Saturday night.

Retro a Go Go

Dancefloor scene from the movie 'Beat Girl aka Wild for Kicks'



Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie, song and dance number from the Dick Van Dyke Show:



Go Go Miami airline commercial



Intro to the Avengers tv series (in colour!)



Fifties Cheesecake Dance No. 1



The Zodiac Club from the Kim Novak film 'Bell, Book and Candle':

Vancouver's Iconic Waldorf Lounge Will Remain Polynesian; Tiki Lounge Created in 1955

The architect in charge of renovations to the 63-year-old Waldorf Hotel on East Hastings Street says the iconic tiki lounge housed in the basement will remain true to its original Polynesian theme.

“What most people don’t understand is that except for the lounge, the hotel doesn’t have much tiki,” said Scott Cohen. “We plan to keep all of the tiki elements in the lounge and about 70 per cent of the renovations will be tiki style.”

Cohen is working with restaurateur Ernesto Gomez and musician Thomas Anselmi, who recently took over management of the Waldorf. In the 1980s, Anselmi belonged to the Vancouver punk band Slow and later the alternative-rock band Copyright.

Cohen is an award-winning architect responsible for the design of several popular Vancouver restaurants, including Gastropod and Les Faux Bourgeoisie, while Gomez is co-owner of Nuba restaurants. Also coming on board is Neil Bell, chef at Cabana in Kelowna, and until recently a host on the Food Network program Cook Like a Chef.

Cohen said plans for the hotel, which is scheduled to re-open in October, include an affordable café where the pub was located, as well as a slightly higher-priced European-inspired restaurant.

“When I say higher priced I still mean under $20,” said Cohen. “We want it to be known as a destination place that serves great food.”

The Waldorf was built in 1947 by architects Mercer and Mercer, who designed the building in the style of the modernism movement of the day. In 1955, as Polynesian culture caught the attention of the world, the architects cashed in on the craze and the hotel was transformed, including the creation of the still popular tiki lounge downstairs.

Cohen said one of the beauties of the building is its mix of minimalist modern architecture, including plenty of curving lines, with exotic Polynesian culture and art.

“It’s tiki with a kind of streamlined flare,” said Cohen. “Tiki meets modernism.”

To read more of this content at the Vancouver Courier, click here.