We tested my Greens Chair at Greens Restaurant over a four course dinner

On the eve of our first full week home after six weeks of travel, Ene, Aili and I celebrated with a prix fixe, four course dinner at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. Mike Hale, Greens’ manager, generously comped the meal as a gesture of thanks for the chairs I recently designed that now populate the restaurant’s expansive interior.

My lovely ladies enjoying a delicious dinner, as the sun set over the Golden Gate

By all accounts, the chairs are a tremendous success, adding a touch of structure and formality to the dining experience without detracting from its casual simplicity or bohemian legacy. More importantly, we got to test the chairs over an elegant, beautifully prepared and presented vegetarian feast, and they proved to be perfectly comfortable all the way through coffee and dessert. The Greens Chair is the first furniture commission at this scale where I have not actually made the furnishings myself, hadn’t touched and shaped each piece of wood with my own hands, yet I was pleased to feel the same pride of authorship as if I had.

Most of the Greens Chairs are made of maple, with just 16 in walnut

As we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on our way back up the coast in the lingering twilight, while Ene snoozed and Aili surfed her iPod, I began to reflect upon the relationship between craft and design, content with the fruits of my labor. I’m called more and more frequently to shift roles between maker and designer, and I find it helps to make a smooth transition by keeping a foot in either world.

the view from our table at Greens, looking West towards the Golden Gate

‘Craft’ is too broad a term for consensus on its meaning, which can range from implying a level of skill in handiwork, to standing in for pre-industrial technologies, to being a kind of hobby or therapy. For the sake of clarity, I think of ‘craft’ more as an artisanal production model, connoting things made using local resources- material, knowledge, and energy. In such a craft-based production model, ‘design’ is often an afterthought. The final thing more or less emerges from the constraints of tradition and the limitations of resources. Most products of this system live in the past- the Windsor Chair, basket-making, vernacular architecture in general- but they still influence the visual culture of design. From this perspective, ‘craft’ and ‘design’ are mutually exclusive.

While craft is a bottom-up strategy, design is a top-down one. Design most often begins with a visual representation of a thing to be made, but exactly how it is made is incidental to its final manifestation. When called to design something made at an industrial scale, I begin the process by thinking as a traditional artisan might, given the resources of labor and technology in today’s world. I don’t have any preconception of how anything will look, but trust in an ethos of Exuberant Frugality. I try to optimize material and structure, nest functions and eliminate waste, knowing that this will make room for quality to emerge at all stages of a design’s development, and that the ethos will resonate with anyone who works with their hands.

Tagged: aesthetics, chair design, craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, greens restaurant, innovation, scott Constable, slow food, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, windsor chair, woodworking

The following text accompanies an installation I made as part of the NOMO Exhibition we’ve designed and curated as the culmination of our residency at Kohler Arts. Over the past few weeks I’ve made fictional, yet plausible sculptural elements that support the idea that surfing has origins on the Great Lakes. I will provide more detail soon about the NOMO Exhibition, but here’s a preview of my “Legend of Lumberjack Surfing” installation:

The Legend of Lumberjack Surfing

“There is a little known legend that surfing has early 19^th century origins on the Western shores of Lake Michigan, separate from its more ancient roots on the islands of the South Pacific.

When timber rafts were floated down Wisconsin’s rivers to be shipped to far off urban centers, large slabs of wood occasionally broke loose along the lake and washed ashore. Enterprising lumberjacks and boat-builders often rescued the timbers by drifting them offshore, standing atop them and paddling them to beachfront workshops, occasionally attaching sails to ease the journey. When the surf was heavy, the maritime lumberjacks beached the timbers by riding waves to shore, steering with a long wooden paddle. Over time, the activity of riding waves became an end in itself, and the ‘lumberjack surfers’ learned to shape the rough sawn planks for better performance in the waves.

By the early 20^th century, the ‘lumberjack surfers’ adapted wooden boards to ride on land by attaching crude wheels to their undersides, thus inventing an early form of the skateboard. Many of these ‘trapper’s skateboards’ were made from stretchers originally used to tan wolf hides. By the middle of the 20^th century, experimental skateboards were commonly made from discarded, wooden alpine and water skis, which were rapidly being replaced by fiberglass.”

Another part of the NOMO Exhibition at Kohler Arts features longboard skate graphics I designed collaboratively, like the Northern Pike Longboard (above) drawn by Mary Whitehall and Zak Worth. The burnt/etched deck is part of a series depicting fish native to Lake Michigan

Tagged: appropriate technology, bike culture, contemporary art, craft philosophy, deep craft, DIY, furniture design, green design, innovation, kohler arts, longboard, public art, scott Constable, skateboard, slow design, surfing, sustainability, tall tale, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, woodworking, wowhaus

sometimes I make up songs during a long walk

There is no better design tool than a good long walk. It may not always lead to creative breakthroughs, but does reliably clear the noggin and put things in perspective. Before I begin to think about a particular project during a walk, I usually find myself simply getting into the cadence and breathing of walking, sometimes making up phrases and melodies to help me focus. Whether or not I make progress with the project at hand, I always return to the studio feeling relaxed and optimistic, eager to field the inevitable challenges of the day.

Tagged: craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, scott Constable, woodworking

These elegant ’sand trees’ are unique to the low tide conditions of Doran Beach

As Ene and I begin to fabricate our relief sculptures for a system of watershed markers we’ve been commissioned to design for the City of Oakland, we’ve been returning to our local beach at low tide for research and inspiration. The way the sand behaves at a certain angle of incline, at very low tides, makes a lovely tree structure that micro-cosmically mimics the contours of drainage patterns constituting the local watershed.

mussels cluster on rocks alongside barnacles, starfish and anemone

The Beach Fleas (Orchestoidea) are everywhere along Doran

To follow the progress of this wowhaus public art project, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: aesthetics, california coast, deep craft, innovation, phenology, public art, scott Constable, slow design, sonoma coast, watershed, wowhaus

‘Adams Angling’ is my favorite catalog for thinking about planning an expedition

The transition to fair weather from a long and gray, chilly wet season always has me dreaming about excursions to the wilder reaches of Northern California, testing my wits in the face of a more bare mode of survival. While it’s been years since I’ve acted on the impulse, I consider myself well-prepared for the opportunity should it present itself, hopefully when I am not so (gratefully) burdened with Projects.

Meanwhile, I’m content with the vicarious thrill of thumbing through the pages of Adams Angling, my favorite catalog of antiquarian books and gear related to hunting, fishing, wilderness survival and Natural History. Somehow, the act of reading the catalog is almost better than the books themselves, and brings me closer to the actual experience I desire. Just knowing that this obscure body of knowledge exists and is accessible placates my wanderlust, and I can shift my focus from ‘thinking about planning an expedition‘ to the demanding tasks at hand.

Tagged: adam's angling, appropriate technology, california coast, craft philosophy, deep craft, fishing, scott Constable, traditional craft

sketch of my original concept for a stair tower within a mock, old growth redwood trunk

I still think of the new cabin I’m designing as a treehouse, even though it will be more of a house on stilts nestled in a fairly dense, second growth redwood grove, making no attachment to any tree. My original idea was to camouflage the structure by making the stair tower resemble an old growth trunk, consisting of coopered redwood timbers housing a spiral stair (see above drawing). For practical and economic reasons, we’ve opted instead for an open, timber framed stair tower, more like a fire watch, with more emphasis on the the interior experience of the perched cabin itself.

I’ve enjoyed researching watch towers and houses on stilts, and appreciate my client’s focus and resolve to keep the program as simple as possible. It’s been a wonderful collaboration and we’re close to having a design ready to permit and build. I’m especially thankful to be working with Scott Hunter, Ph. D. P.E., whose design recommendations have added to the minimalist/maximalist ethos of the project. Continue Reading »

Tagged: california coast, deep craft, heidegger, hut, scott Constable, treehouse, vernacular architecture, watch tower

Lake Michigan shoreline along the Kohler-Andrae State Park, south of Sheboygan

The remainder of our week continued to be full of surprises as we mined Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and its environs along the shores of Lake Michigan for activity relevant to our NOMO project. As Ene and I process our research and  interactions and begin to shape it into an exhibition/exposition to be staged at Kohler Arts Center this summer, I wanted to share a string of images and some rambling commentary below:

Continue Reading »

Tagged: deep craft, james tellen, kohler arts, scott Constable, skateboard, surfing, vernacular, vernacular architecture, zanzi