read

le corbusier – his true colors


amazing article by alice rawsthorn in the new york times about le corbusier’s wall colors, must read here, a couple of lines for lazies:

“by 1931, le corbusier had settled on a palette of soft pastels and brights to accentuate white, and arranged for them to be reproduced on wallpaper swatches by the swiss manufacturer salubra. esver the control freak, he specified exactly ho salubra should group the colors together to indicate which ones could be combined.”
…
“a book of all of the swatches made for corbusier by salubra from 1931 to 1959 was published by birkhäuser in 1997. a young chemist, katrin trautwein, the co-founder of kt color, then started to explore the possibility of manufacturing the paints and secured a license to do so from the fondation le corbusier.”


by ar+pp.

CATEGORIES: design, musings, perfect gift, read

bill willis – marrakesh




bumped into this extremely interesting article about the late marrakshi legend, decorator bill willis.
it’s in the new york times ( of course) and very well written by christopher petkanas for his column called “fabulous dead people”… how witty is that?
i could certainly tell you about mister willis but you should really read the article instead.
just to lure you a bit, mister willis lived the morocco of the 70’s around mister saint laurent, the stones, the getty’s and so on. he’s truly one of those larger than life character.
strange enough it’s rather difficult to find anything about the man on the net… so images are the same than nyt.
there should be a lot of documentation about his work in the great ivan terestchenko’s book about ysl and berge’s estates (pictures above are ysl’s marrakesh home) but i’m not sure which one can be credited to willis and which one can be credited to grange. by pp.

CATEGORIES: eye candy, read

is your iphone stealing your content and sharing it?

oooouch!! no one told me about that. “your smart phone applications are watching you – much more closely than you might like. lookout inc., a mobile-phone security firm, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for apple inc.’s iPhone. it found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off users’ phones and ship them off to third parties without notification. the data can include full details about users’ contacts, their pictures, text messages and internet and search histories. the third parties can include advertisers and companies that analyze data on users. the information is used by companies to target ads and learn more about their users. the danger, though, is that the data become vulnerable to hacking and use in identity theft if the third party isn’t careful about securing the information”. read more. by xy

CATEGORIES: musings, read

interview magazine


was zoning on some blogs and found this (very nice) image on rbpm fanzine and was wondering if interview magazine was still good? i was totally thrilled when it was reshaped by fabien but got bored after the back and forth with m/m and everything. for some reason i felt that the edgy thing from the first new issues was gone. should i check it again? by pp’

CATEGORIES: read

brian eno’s oblique strategies cards



was listening to a re-aired jim jarmusch’s interview on french radio and remembered that he was talking about this oddity that is brian eno’s “oblique strategies” deck of cards. that sounded pretty fun on the radio but the truth is that it’s far beyond that, that is pure genius!

“the deck itself had its origins in the discovery by brian eno that both he and his friend peter schmidt tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure – either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you’re running up a big buck studio bill. both schmidt and eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. the strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking – to jog the mind.”

let’s imagine a deck of cards that is giving you advise on a daily basis. in the interview, writer jean jacques schulh was telling jarmusch’s fortune. the instruction was “do something boring” great piece of advice! i ordered a set, next posts will be defined by the cards… by pp’

CATEGORIES: mind candy, perfect gift

jack kerouac: the original scroll

read somewhere that kerouac’s original scroll of “on the road” had been released and re-published recently. on the cover it says “rougher, wilder and racier than the 57′ version” which is funny and a bit over the top but anyway, the cover is gorgeous, blind embossed and so on. i got it, read it in english for the first time but now, i need the scroll itself! so if any publisher is reading this post and wants to make millions i suggest that he pull the strings that need to be pulled in order to propose it for the next black friday… by pp’

CATEGORIES: perfect gift, read

africana

pop’africana is an independent magazine based in new york, led by a team of creatives who pride themselves on delivering a rejuvenated image of africa. the first issue is due in out in april 2010 (almost there), but for now you can enjoy the editor oroma elewa’s blog. by kv

CATEGORIES: fashion, read

scorcese 10 favorites movie posters

i’m not very proud of my source here but a certain magazine is featuring the 10 favorite movie posters of martin scorcese as well as an interview of the man to go with the release of a coffee table book celebrating hollywood’s vintage movie posters.
here is an extract “For me, and anyone who grew up before a certain time—sometime in the 1980s I’d say—posters were a key part of the moviegoing experience. You’d walk through the lobby, and you’d look at the poster, usually accompanied by lobby cards and often by stills and promotional language, of the film you were about to see, and the one that was coming next. You’d hold and absorb the image in your mind’s eye. Part of the excitement then was in watching the actual film and comparing it with the possible or likely film you’d conjured up during the few seconds you’d looked at the poster.” the rest is here and the book is here. by pp’ 😉

CATEGORIES: eye candy, read

4 interviews

it’s basically another fashion thing but of the interesting kind. it was posted on style.com over the past few weeks and it’s about the future of fashion, naysayers will say that fashion deserve to die, ok we got it…
whatever, asking about it’s future to 4 insiders on a commercial, photographic or trends point of view seems relevant.
there is 4 interviews including, robert duffy, olivier zahm, hedi slimane and cathy horyn. and it worth having a look, some interesting things are said. by pp’

CATEGORIES: fashion, read