Cabinets of Curiosity
28th Jun. 2003
Having started but put on hold the design of my new soho workspace this seems like a timely article. I'm not sure whether I am a collector or a minimalist. I like my workspace to be sparten and clean but this aim conflicts with my real tendency to srround myself with mountains of artifacts and paper. The fact that I never throw anything out contributes to this conflict.
From the article: "Each workspace reproduces its designer's world in miniature, through both the items it contains and the way they are organized. Objects often relate to each other in an intuitive way rather than following any strict principles of reason: Kalman displays a pair of Comme des Garçons shoes next to an old-fashioned tin lard bucket; Milton Glaser has pinned a paper cut-out of an ampersand above a Korean fan, next to a large dried leaf from Hawaii. The items are not fixed and can be rearranged and moved at any time into ever-changing configurations. Kalman curates a table-top display for her current project and saves past inspirational objects in a highly organized system of boxes (with labels like "Mosses of Long Island"). "Usually when I'm finished with a whole set of things for a book or an assignment, I clear out the space and make a clean slate for the next one," she says. "Ideally it's blank for a minute--and then I start bringing stuff out or people bring me things. I want everything in my life to be completely insane but totally organized."
Link: Cabinets of Curiosity | Metropolis Magazine
Categorized: Design