Dwell Jul-Aug-12

Industrial designer and adjunct professor at Pratt Institute This is an issue that highlights women in design, both past and present. That’s a true statement, but here’s an even truer one: This issue promotes good design by people who also happen to be women. We’ve been careful to acknowledge the distinction between the two throughout the process of building this theme—a first for us—because we feel it’s better to recognize excellence than it is to assign merit based on arbitrary conditions. Of course, the path here has been long. In the summer of 1959, Lucia DeRespinis joined a team of her colleagues from George Nelson & Associates to take part in the American National Exhibition in Moscow. As the only woman in the group, she faced inevitable assumptions about her…

Thanks for publishing examples of “good design” and the updates on environmental strides being made in both construction and product (“Coming into Views,” April 2012). Seeing everything come together in a pleasing project is why I subscribe. David Ruud Posted on dwell.com What a great house (“Grateful Shed,” April 2012)! The wingless plane in the backyard is a cool element. David Reamer Posted on dwell.com There are many things I love about this space (“Hygge House,” April 2012), but it desperately needs color! The shots of Maja’s room and those with family (who are wonderfully colorful) add warmth it otherwise lacks. I’m all for clean white spaces, but it just seems to make this space look barren. Ann Posted on dwell.com While I thought the photo accompanying “Back to Nature”…

Sarah Amelar Sarah Amelar Los Angeles writer Sarah Amelar trained as an architect and was a longtime editor of Record Houses in her native city of New York. In covering the “The Homemakers,” (p. 70), she joined owners Laura Purdy and Juan Devis, their architect Linda Taalman, and landscape designer Laura Cooper around a backyard table: “With our glasses clinking, the group shared fond recollections of this renovation experience—and, let’s just say, the conversation flowed.” Hotze Eisma Photographer Hotze Eisma was born and raised in Amsterdam. “I was named for my grandfather, who lived in a small village in Friesland, which is a northern province of Holland that has its own language. Even for the Dutch, my name is uncommon,” he says. “While shooting the Friesland residence of Paula Leen…

Under the tutelage of a Bauhaus master, Margaret De Patta trailblazed the American studio jewelry movement with wearable art. Margaret De Patta (1903–1964) followed a circuitous path to becoming one of the 20th century’s seminal figures in jewelry design. She was trained as a painter in her native California, only turning her focus to jewelry after she made her own modernist wedding band in 1929. A few years later, while tinkering with the lively forms that would become her hallmark, De Patta studied under the Hungarian-born constructivist László Moholy-Nagy during a yearlong sojourn at the New Bauhaus (now the Institute of Design) in Chicago. Channeling the school’s principles of art and industry, she helped to redefine jewelry for a design-cognizant audience. The resulting pieces were both carefully crafted and inexpensive,…

A Martha’s Vineyard retreat surpasses the traditional boundaries of Cape Cod architecture with a contemporary design by Harvard professor and practicing architect Toshiko Mori. After years of renting a modernist Martha’s Vineyard summer house by famed Harvard Five member Eliot Noyes, Kathy and Jerry Kauff wanted a place of their own, one that would be both a pleasurable à deux retreat and a kids-and-grandkids magnet. So when a rare four-and-a-half-acre property with magnificent sunset views across Menemsha Pond became available, the Kauffs jumped at the opportunity. “They’re very athletic, very outdoorsy,” says architect Toshiko Mori, yet the Kauffs wanted to be able to live entirely on the ground floor if time’s march made stairs a burden. At the same time, says Kathy, “we didn’t have the means to build a…

We cast the net far and wide to find the next generation of iconoclasts: five industrial design products—from the craft-influenced to the machine-inspired—destined for tomorrow’s museum collections from up-and-coming female designers. @ Extended slideshow at dwell.com/magazine Pauline Deltour Paris-based Deltour was a designer and project leader at Konstantin Grcic’s office in Munich for three years before branching out on her own in 2010. Current clients include Alessi, Tacchini, Muji, Bree, and the city of Munich. paulinedeltour.com Carousel table for Kvadrat (limited edition) kvadrat.dk Deltour designed this low table with a revolving bookrack to display bound ephemera in polychromatic fabric compartments. Tanya Aguiñiga The Los Angeles furniture designer and maker was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Her highly emotional, tactile, and colorful work combines furniture design and community activism. aguinigadesign.com Rope lights…