Hello everyone. I am happy to have found a place to talk about my love for modern design. I am a big fan of the less is more theory, I think I must be the only person on the planet that could walk into a room that has big windows,lightwood floors and white walls and consider it almost finished. I have softened a bit on that idea,just a bit though. 🙂 I just love the clean uncluttered beauty of a room before people "ruin" it with too much stuff. I love to see the way the light outside influences the color of a white wall and the different shadows that the sun casts on them at different times during the day. I also like to look out at night and see the lights that make the city sparkle but we do have to have somewhere to sit and sleep lol so I am very interested in the ways that everyone is interpreting modernism. Thanks for reading this and I look forward to talking to everyone.
I love to "ruin" my home...
I love to "ruin" my home with too much stuff.
I love to clutter my life with very interesting items.
I'm very much more of the 'Eamesian' school than the 'Miesian.' However I love both. I just find the Eamesian way more in lone with my constant desire to aquire items. I am not just talking about furniture or even neccessarily modern things. Some of the things that clutter my home are wooden shoes, books, records, kokeshi dolls, drawings, figurines, ceramics, dried plants, many lamps, etc. I like my modern furniture to be worn in and displayed among the other things as simply furniture I use. To each his own. I tend to prefer this way of living, complete with low lighting and good music. I would not mind, however, obtaining the Farnsworth house as my vacation home!
I love all of the things you...
I love all of the things you mentioned too. The things you have mentioned are beautiful and make a house a home! 🙂 I love my books and my music and my art and plants. They aren't ruin at all. I mean old junk that needs to go in the trash not things that make out lives special! I love to ruin my house too then lol.
"Pack-Rat"
My wife considers me the best organizer of space- at hiding clutter. My mother always called me a "pack-rat". I've learned to collect small things (for instance, 1920s art-deco cufflinks). I'm also a magazine/book junkie. As an Art Director/Designer with an Architectural education, I apply all my skills towards concealing the fact that we've got a bunch of stuff.
You might be able to make a career of this...
if you begin to consult with cities and burbs about what to do with their public spaces in commercial areas. These places are all irrevocably cluttered and the question is not how to simplify them but rather how to conceal the clutter. Go for it.
Thanks but, I don't have a license...
I never finished my Architecture degree... or any other degree, for that matter. I have more credits that your average Bachelor degree holder, but I changed my major and my college too many times. My collection of credits doesn't amount to any specific degree from anywhere. Besides, while I thank you for what sounds like a compliment, the work description seems like a rather bureaucratic, public sector application of my skills. Until somebody offers me the honorary Architecture degree, I'll stick advertising.
Simplify!
Interesting thread, this. The folks who know me here, know my background is the sciences. I am a biochemist by education, a marketeer by application and a neatnik by vocation. Over the last 1.5 years I have been trying to develop a business as a professional organizer. Laugh if you like, but it's a fast growing service-sector profession. Americans have way way too much freakin' stuff and even their McMansions can't hold it all. And our acquisitive society is constantly sending cues to us to buy more more more.
I kind of like dcw's term 'baroque modernism', but what Americans truly need is a better sense of how they live in their space. I enter homes where clothing is kept in the living room, food in the bathroom and motorcycles in the front hall. It's insane. So many people have no systems for mananging their lives. The LeCorbu idea of the home as a machine for living is totally absent in many spaces I see. But modernists 'get it' better than any ideologiacl group as far as I've been able to determine. Clutter is controlled more or less and the 'home as machine' concept is understood. Many of the other professional organizers I've met are also modernists, they need their white space. I do too.
I don't think I could live as intentionally minimalisticly as skyblue does, but I think whitespike's joyful/interesting clutter would wear on me. I think I am most like ChrisG although I really don't collect much and what I do collect, I use (asian teapots). I find objects with no function to be nothing more than clutter.
But, in the end, until our society learns to acquire less and enjoys living with sans junk in a simpler way, professional organizer will be a good career choice.
that's life
When I sit in my room full of things two things happen. One, I dream about what it would be like to throw everything away and reduce my living room to about 4 pieces. Two, I then look at each item and each one holds a specific meaning for me. When I come to one that does not, I rid of it. So ultimately I could not rid myself of clutter for good. I feel like that would be ridding of my history and my personality. BUT - I do rid of totally unecessary clutter. Just because an object is not useful like a teapot or lamp might be does not make it useless. Enjoyment is a function. It is wasn't then fine art would not exist, unless you reason it to function as historical reference.
Oh, absolutely,
I speak only for myself. I (please note the "I") find non-purposed objects as clutter. I would never impose that stricture on anyone else. I would never wish fine art to vanish, I am just happy visiting it in a gallery/museum, rather than living with it. I find beauty in many things in my home, but I try not to own that which I do not use. A personal manifesto.
it's a great one
That's a great manifesto to have. Good that you are open to different manifestos as well. I think a strict minimalist (which I understand you are not) imposing that lifestyle on others would be akin to a southern Baptist imposing his/her denomination. I use that as an example only because I am southern and well acquainted with it.
I would be interested in a list of all the different dsifferent types of modernists. I think it could be humorous. It is much like denominations to essentially one religion.
I do think all of us go to great pains to make our spaces/designs satisfactory to us and in line with our design ethics. Mies would go to great lengths to leave his spaces bare, while Charles Eames quite the opposite. I get the feeling some think the Eameses picked up everything little thing and threw it in their house. I think they went to great pains to have what they considered the "right" kind of clutter ... strategically placed to resemble natural acquisition.
object-oriented modernism
I guess that's me. I have an Eamesian approach to interesting objects, and I do have a few sculptural objects that do nothing more than delight me, but mostly I have things that have a utility. Not utilitarian, mind you, but functional. I drive my spouse to distraction with my quest for the "perfect _______". I have given away, sold and disposed of many things I thought were perfect until I used them. Drives him nuts.
On the other hand I am Meisian. I have a need for the quietness between objects. I am lucky that I have plenty of space and a not a ton of stuff so I can do that. For example, my bedroom contains a bed w/ attached shelves, a bench, a chest of drawers and a plant. That's it. There is one painting on the wall that I love and I see as I wake up. I am grateful every day that I can wake up to such peaceful emptiness. It never feels empty to me.
A
museum is a place which harbors a collection (or collections) of objects thought to have some meaning or value. Many museums cannot exhibit at any one time all the objects in their collection(s). Such museums typically rotate what is on display, so that fresh views and interactions can take place, from time to time.
How many homeowners take this approach, storing the majority of their "stuff" and displaying (ie, enjoying) only a few objects at time ? Not me. . .but it seems like a plausible option, doesn't it ?
Rotation
Yeah, I do that quite a lot. I have chairs the move from TV room to fireplace, a insulative drape over the sliding door to the porch in winter and other seasonal practicalities. But I also move art objects around a lot too. To use David Hicks' coinage... I 'tablescape' according to whim and season. It is a good way to conctrol clutter and vary one's environment.
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