TROPOLISM

Platform Furniture and Fabrication's Occasional Tables: Shaker-simple design, with all the zen freshness that that reference implies.

Tropolism means design by doing it yourself.

Materialicious gives us a great coffee table makeover, inspired by Tropolism favorite Gio Ponti's Paolo console table. It's not in screen-printed leather like the original, but it's an inspired idea regardless. Stay tuned with them for how-to instructions.

In February the 1960 stained glass window at JFK's terminal 8 was demolished. The window was over 300 feet long and 23 feet tall; it was designed by Robert Sowers for the 1960 American Airlines terminal. Our picture is of the terminal when it opened.

What the articles at the time neglected to mention is that most of the window was salvaged by Olde Good Things in Manhattan. That link has lots of juicy demolition details. We happened to spot one of the pieces in their store window while passing by. Some of the window was destroyed before OGT jumped in and took the remaining window to their warehouse in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They numbered the sections and it is now possible to buy large sections of the window for reassembly elsewhere. So while the window did not find a permanent home, and it will undoubtedly be broken up, at least it's in good hands. And it's possible to put large swaths of it back together, if you have the spot for it.

Oobject gives us this gem: "Five or so architects have produced much of the most famous modern furniture." They present 15 architect-designed chairs and ask us to vote on them. Of course, there are some glaring omissions, but to me the most interesting is the wacky lounge chairs by Oscar Niemeyer, found over at Wright20.

In the venerable tradition of naming your funiture designs with your initials and a number, Matthew Hilton gives us the MH005 Coffee Table. The profile reminds us of a lot of Latin American architecture, starting with Gio Ponti's Villa Planchart in Caracas. But this table is from Brazil, not Venezuela, and carries all the gorgeous hardwood craftsmanship any collector of modern furniture would expect from that country.

Mid-Century Modern Interiors describes the Stingray Chair best:

It's derivative as hell, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.

We are specifications junkies. We admit it. See the recent book review. And we would never have posted about the city colors if they hadn't included the exact pantone numbers.

And so this article about how to build your own Apple store, over at Oobject, which includes exact specifications, was destined to excite us. Add it to the list.

One of the things we like to celebrate is color. Certain design professions have more sophisticated approaches and dialogues about color than architects: interior designers and graphic designers, to name two. The latter category, in the person of Todd Falkowsky, has created a series of color strips for each of Canada's provincial and territorial capitals. The result is interesting, particularly the observation about how intuition informs the process. What we'd like to see is a whole color pallette, not just a test strip of three, for each urban area. Huge samples that would represent each city.

Via Brand Avenue.