EVENTS: NY's Architecture & Design Film Festival opens Oct. 15!

 from 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture

Running today through Sunday, Oct. 19 at the Tribeca Cinemas, the NY Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) will feature the U.S. premieres of new 3D films by Robert Redford and Wim Wenders, as well the long-awaited world premiere of Gray Matters, a documentary about designer and architect Eileen Gray, which will both open and close the 5-day event. (To read more about Eileen Gray's extraordinary life and output, link to my article "From Shadow to Light" in Modernism magazine.)

The festival includes 25 international films, including Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture (USA), In the Midst of Things (Portugal), Telos: The Fantastic World of Eugene Tssui (USA),  and Who Dares Wins: Zaha Hadid (UK). Four panels of distinguished commentators will speak, lively Q&As will take place after many of the films and, of course, there will be great parties.

 from Telos: The Fantastic World of Eugene Tssui 

The film presents the vision of a maverick architect inspired by nature’s 

form and function, and emphasizing sustainability. Tssui says that he  is 

"trying to do no less than to change the world.”

from Who Dares Wins: Zaha Hadid 

Hadid is now "one of a handful of global superstar designers who have changed the way people think about the world through buildings." This singular woman -- by turns charming, arrogant, and visionary -- has brought the seemingly impossible to fruition.

Scheduling and descriptions of films can be found here, on the ADFF website.

EXHIBITION: Matisse cutouts opening Sunday 10/12 at MOMA/NY !

A show of exuberantly colorful Matisse cutouts will run at MOMA NY from October 12 - Feb. 8. This exhibition, which just was shown at the Tate Modern in London and drew huge crowds, is the largest and most extensive presentation of the artist's cutouts ever mounted. 

It includes approximately 100 pieces— some of them mural-sized -- borrowed from public and private collections around the world. A selection of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles will also be on display.

For more info, check the MOMA website here.
For a NY Times review, link here.

Memory of Oceania, c. 1952


The Snail, 1953


Video from the Tate Modern here

ODD BITS: Tearoom glamour in Glasgow

I recently came across these photos, published in the early 1900s, of the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow. They were the brainchild of visionary entrepreneur Kate Cranston, intended to be a comfortable, inviting place for women to socialize outside the home. Miss Cranston commissioned the great designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh to create every aspect of the rooms' decor, including the menus, utensils, and waitresses' outfits.

Pretty futuristic for the fussy Victorian era!

Photos of Salon de Luxe from 

Dekorative Kunst magazine, (April 1905 issue)

Below are photos of the building and

room de luxe as they look now.