Dwell Jun-15

When we laid out this issue celebrating the outdoors, it seemed as if winter would never leave New York City. Gazing at the lush greenery on each page was on one hand a much-needed balm and on the other, a kind of torture—the green expanses, sunny skies, verdant courtyards that one could traverse sans snowboots or parka seemed a million miles away. There’s a haunting short story by Ray Bradbury called “All Summer in a Day,” which takes place on a distant planet, where the sun only shines for one hour every seven years. The story centers around a group of schoolchildren that had heard of this momentous occasion all their lives but had yet to see it for themselves. The defining moment comes when the classmates lock one of…

EVERNOTE RUCKSACK This is the ultimate bag for everyday journeys. Dual compartments make space for devices, notebooks, and important documents, while still having space for your gym clothes or bike helmet. The Evernote Rucksack features a durable yet stylish EcoYarn fiber, metal zippers and pulls, and an ergonomic fit, combining beauty and purpose. As Evernote Market expands beyond the app and into physical goods, this rucksack embodies our commitment to life and work, balanced. DESIGNED WELL evernote.com/market FITBIT ARIA Simple. Clean. Contemporary. But the beauty of the Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale goes beyond aesthetics. With a single step, measure your weight, BMI, lean mass and body fat percentage, and start tracking your results. After wirelessly syncing those stats with your Fitbit dashboard, Aria creates easy-to-read graphs that identify trends in…

While I normally love the aesthetics of your magazine I was disappointed that no top designers could be found in the entire continent of South America and that the only designers of note in Africa were a white couple from Cape Town. Surely, if you cared enough about diversity as you do about beautiful design you could have found someone. Carmel Lombardi Sent via Email Editor’s Note: We base our decisions on the caliber of design, which includes the concept and final execution. In our research and vetting process, we consider numerous pieces from all over the world and felt that this selection represented the strongest work from around the globe. For the 2016 edition, we will continue to dig deep to find the best. If you want to be…

Rest in peace, Michael Graves. He was an icon and an inspiration to us. @RunDogArchitect Posted to Twitter Michael Graves championed design for the masses in one of the clearest ways possible—public buildings as well as design of household items. We owe him a huge thank you for bringing his sense of balance, function, and manufacturing into people’s everyday worlds. Thanks to him, design education has moved to the consumer, something that we will all benefit from in the future. Ellen Bynum Posted to dwell.com Graves brought design to a level where so many could enjoy and appreciate it. @lawyer1mom Posted to Twitter “Don’t build for the moment…make a classic.” –Michael Graves @mohawkpaper Posted to Twitter Every great architect leaves a piece of their soul in every building. A sad…

Iain Aitch A longtime Dwell contributor who grew up near the sea and now lives in London, Iain Aitch covers the point where art, architecture, and people meet. Writing about a Swedish surf shack (Focus, p. 108) inspired him to dig out the 1963 movie Beach Party, and wonder if his own Swedish great-grandfather ever conquered the waves. Most-admired landscape designer: “Nek Chand, who built the eccentric Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India, from the rubble created as Le Corbusier’s designs were built in that city.” Charles Birnbaum The founder and president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, Charles Birnbaum analyzes how landscape architect Lawrence Halprin created public spaces that galvanized cities (Modern World, p. 33). “There are many practitioners I am fortunate to count as friends,” he says. “The person I…

The closest many city dwellers come to traipsing through a jungle is visiting a botanical conservatory. These idyllic, man-made gardens speak to artist Naomi Reis: “Our vision of nature has become increasingly abstracted,” she says. To create her Borrowed Landscapes collages, Reis photographs plants, digitally alters the images, and recreates the scene using cutouts of mylar and hand-painted rice paper—a commentary on how perceptions of nature in the modern world are fraught with facsimile. naomireis.com…