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| My
Five Favourite Designs
By
Grant Gibson
Journalist and former editor of Blueprint
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Aeron
Chair: Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf |
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| Now
there are loads of designers willing to tell you
exactly what's wrong with this chair. It's over-engineered.
It's expensive. It's aggressive and military. If
the President ever presses the button he'll do it
sat on an Aeron. And they have a point. However,
there can be absolutely no denying it is extremely
comfortable and absolutely fascinating. Yes, it
has become a cliché for over-priced City
offices and, yes, in the original models the lumbar
support had the unfortunate habit of snapping, but
it remains the office chair against which all others
should be judged. |
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Habitat
dining table: Simon Pengelly |
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| I've
never understood why Simon Pengelly's media profile
isn't higher. As one extremely well known and successful
designer said to me recently: 'The thing about Simon
is that he's a proper designer.' What he meant by
that was that he sees problems and always tries
to find an elegant, economical way out of them.
At the moment he has been helping a number of British
furniture manufacturers reinvent themselves but
it can only be a question of time before the rest
of the world catches on. I could have chosen any
number of products - to my mind his table for Isokon
Plus was the best thing at last year's 100% Design
- however, ultimately I plumped for his magnificent
dining table for Habitat. It's very simple, it is
well priced and combined with its benches it is
very, very beautiful. To my mind it sums up what
good design is all about. |
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The
National Museum of Australia: Ashton Raggatt McDougall |
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| I'm
never certain if I should love or loathe this building
but it is extraordinary. Is it subtle tribute or
clumsy pastiche? And does anybody outside the architecture
ghetto really care? The architecture has so many
layers it makes an onion look simple. The idea behind
the scheme was to extend the axes originally used
by US architect Walter Burley Griffin to create
the city of Canberra and then tangle these lines
into a huge three-dimensional knot. The notional
knot weaves its way across the site, occasionally
bumping into the museum. When this happens it tears
a section out of the building's notional box. It
sounds complex and over-intellectualised and, in
truth, it probably is. However, it doesn't stop
there. The architect, Howard Raggatt, employed a
wild colour palette, used huge (and unreadable)
Braille lettering on the buildings fascia and referenced
(or stole depending on your point of view) various
iconic architectural forms. Most controversial was
his borrowing of Daniel Libeskind's 'zig-zag' used
at the Jewish Museum in Berlin for the section devoted
to Australia's native population. Needless to say
Libeskind was less than happy. The question remains:
it is a tribute to or a satire on statement architecture? |
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The
Dark Knight Returns: Frank Miller with Klaus Janson
and Lynn Varley
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| A
very personal choice this. I loved comics as a young
child but returned to the media in my late teens
thanks to Frank Miller who revolutionised the form
and inadvertently created a Hollywood franchise.
His idea was simple: how would his favourite superhero,
The Batman, behave when he reached middle age? More
to the point, what would he do when the certainties
of the post-war era were stripped away from him?
How would he cope with the eighties' media proliferation
and Reaganomics, never mind a cult following of
vigilante mutants? The writing was genius and it
got the illustration it deserved. Gotham City was
suitably grim and The Joker's murder at the hands
of a vengeful Caped Crusader was deeply unsuitable
for the children's section of the bookstore where
the Dark Knight was largely sold. Without Frank
Miller, Warner Brothers would never have produced
the Tim Burton-directed Batman. And the book also
spawned a number of even darker follow-ups, including
the deeply disturbing Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison
and Dave McKean. The beauty of both novels is that
they prove quite how powerful the written word can
be when combined with provocative illustration.
It's communication at its finest and they remain
inspirational. |
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It went out of production in 1974 yet in terms of
car styling the E-type remains unsurpassed. As Jaguar's
current styling director Ian Callum once told me:
"The E-type is still second to none in terms
of aesthetics. It was the perfect sports car and
yet it was affordable." There was something
a little rough and ready about the E-type. It was
basic but incredibly beautiful - the company is
sill retrying to rediscover that formula today.
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