Easy Edges

We have a set of Easy Edges nesting tables designed by Frank Gehry and manufactured by Vitra. These tables are part of the series of furniture Gehry designed in the early 70's. The pieces are made of layered corrugated cardboard with a hardboard facing for durability.

When we bought the tables, we thought they would take the place of a large coffee table in the middle of the living room. Most of the time the tables are placed next to the sofa as a side table to free up the living room floor as a play area for the kids. The tables are moved out only when we have guests over to our apartment.

The tables are actually quite child-friendly and Ava likes to crawl under them to play hide and seek.

Salon

We finally had some time to hang the artworks in the kids' room. Instead of hanging the pictures individually as we always did before, we decided to try the salon style. One advantage of the salon style is we can just keep adding pieces to the wall. We inevitably will have more and more things to hang because the kids keep producing new works of art.



Currently the wall consists of only five things, clockwise from the top left: Warhol reproduction from Vera's 乾媽, Yoshitomo Nara reproduction purchased at the MoMA store, original score by James Fei that we commissioned for Vera's first birthday, and two pictures by Vera.

.03 and A

Since we left our round Aalto table and Aalto 66 chairs (bought when I was still in college) in New York, we needed some new furniture for our dining area. Luckily we found an A-Table and several .03 Chairs designed by Maarten van Severen at Vitra's sale in New York.

Van Severen is one of my favorite designers. He was born in 1956 in Antwerp, Belgium. He studied architecture and started making furniture in 1989. I came to learn about his designs slowly. The first time I heard about him was probably in the early 90's when I read that he was a collaborator on Rem Koolhaas' Villa dall' Ava; Van Severen's role on the project was quite vague. Later on I would occasionally see his designs in publications. I certainly admired his large aluminum table designed in 1988. However, at that time I knew very little about him, partly because all his pieces were handcrafted in his studio in Belgium and not really available to the general public.

In the late 90's van Severen's work became more prominent. He collaborated with Koolhaas again on the Bordeaux House and the results were extraordinary. I was fascinated by all the elements in the house, such as the translucent bookshelves around the vertical lift, the plexiglas sink in the bathroom, and the burners on the concrete slab in the kitchen. I found the designs to be simultaneously minimal, technical, innovative, and sensual.

During the late 90's Van Severen also began collaborating with Vitra, and finally made his design available to the general public. The first design was the .03 Chair, which was a further development of Van Severen's Chair No. II designed in 1992. The idea for both chairs is a continuous surface that forms the back and the seat. The geometry of the surface flows down to the front legs of the chair. The back legs are treated as a secondary support system and expressed differently with round profiles instead of the rectangular ones of the front legs. The difference between the two chairs is, with the .03 Van Severen eliminated the exposed frame and cladding of No. II and replaced them with polyurethane foam. The construction of the .03 Chair is less obvious as steel springs are hidden within the foam, making the surface both rigid and pliant. When the chair is sat on, the foam at the seat and back areas will bend and conform to the body. The foam returns to the original shape when the forces are released.

The .03 Chair comes in a variety of colors. We have a total of ten chairs: four in red, three in dark green and three in black.

The Vitra A-Table was produced in 2005. This is also based on an earlier Van Severen design with the same name. The name A-Table refers to the two pairs of satin-finish legs of the table that are A-shaped. The original A-Table was designed in 1992 and constructed at Van Severen's workshop. The table has an aluminum structure with a rectangular bakelite top. For Vitra's version Van Severen made some modifications. Instead of aluminum, the legs are made of polished stainless steel. The bakelite has been replaced with a MDF top coated with rubber lacquer, which has a warm and soft feel and will be patinated with age.

This is the first time I am using a rectangular table for dining. I suppose I am always going against the grain. In New York where most people have a rectangular table, I have a round one. In Taipei, where most families still share a round table with a Lazy Susan, I have a large rectangular table.

So far Ava seems to like the chairs and the table as she sometime uses them as an obstacle course or support in her self-guided training to walk.

With the .03 Chair and the A-Table our dining area has finally taken shape.

It would have been nice to have a cupboard designed by Van Severen, especially since a large portion of his designs consist of cupboards. We have settled for the Grimle from Ikea, which holds many glasses, placemats, and snacks inside and provide a space for our old Francis Francis X1 espresso machine. The green plastic Puppy by Eero Aarino serves as our guard dog.

Van Severen died of cancer in 2005. His untimely death is a great loss for the design world. I deeply regret not ever meeting him or conducting an interview with him. Nevertheless, I am happy we have some of Van Severen’s designs in our apartment and they are an integral part of our daily life.

Study

The apartment in Taipei has a small room, roughly 3.3m x 2.8m, which we use as a study. We have furnished the room very simply with several items from Ikea: Billy bookshelves line the two walls and contain roughly all of my books on architecture; a Jorun area rug, around NT$1695; and a white Kulla ceiling lamp with a 23w warm white (2700k) compact fluorescent bulb. The metal table is from Jean Nouvel's Less collection for Unifor, which we had for several years now. The chair is the Ply-Chair by Jasper Morrison for Vitra. I spend quite a bit of my time in this room, mainly to use the white HP laptop to surf the web, email, blog, and skype.



http://www.ikea.com/
http://www.unifor.it/eng/prodotti/less/ico.htm
http://www.vitra.com/en-lp/home/products/ply-chair/

Foggy Cloud

In New York, we always rely on floor lamps to light the space of our apartment for two main reasons: the ceiling height is low (I can touch it if I stretch) and no labor cost to install (plug and play); the Toio floor lamp by Achille Castiglioni remains my favorite. In contrast, the apartment in Taipei has relatively high ceiling and each rooms comes with a mounting bracket for a single ceiling lamp and wires connected to a wall switch. Given the setup, I decide to go with the flow and use some ceiling mounted lamps.

For our dining area I am using the Cloud lamp designed by Frank O. Gehry in 2005 for Belux. The Cloud is a voluminous and paper-like shade with a steel bracket for the light bulb inside. The shape of the lamp shade appears irregular and sculptural but is actually produced by modular folded sheets buttoned together. The number of sheets determine the size of the lamp which comes in four varieties: 5 (#30), 7 (#32), 10 (#34), and 14 (#36) sheets. The modular sheets also allow for some customization in size. The material of the sheets is a flame-resistant polyester membrane that is very durable and tear-free. Therefore, while each lamp has the same structure and predetermined shape, the user can still alter the shape of the lamp by bulging it out or pressing it in.



Instead of the typical setup of one lamp per room, I decide to make things a bit more interesting by having three. This actually requires a bit more work because the ceiling bracket is set up to only take one lamp. To keep things simple and cheap, a 180mm x 500mm stainless sheet panel is made to serve as a cover and mounting plate for the three lamps. I have one Cloud #30 and two Cloud #32.



The lamps are hung in a triangular formation in plan and at various heights. They are very light and are only supported by the wires. Cloud #30 is placed in the middle and hung closest to the dining table. Below are two views of the lamps as installed.





Note: Gehry is sometime known as "Foggy", a play on his initials F.O.G. The O. is for Owen.

The Long Journey

Last Friday our 20-foot container was finally delivered to our apartment in Taipei. It was a two months long journey that started in New York in early January.

A crew of six, including the driver spent a whole day packing and moving our things, which almost exceeded the space of the container.

The container was then driven to Newark and loaded on to a ship a week later. The ship traveled on the sea for about 10660 nautical miles and arrived in Keelung after around 33 days.

After clearing custom, the local mover drove the container into our small alley in Taipei and parked it in front of our apartment building.

The custom in Taiwan did open the container doors but didn't seem to move any of the contents inside.

A crew of five moved everything in the container into our apartment in half a day. Now we probably need to spend two weeks to put everything in place.

TV

We purchased a 42" LG flat screen TV (42LG50FD) at BEST 電器 for around NT$44,900. The Wii is now hooked up.