MAGAZINE FOR ARCHITECTURAL ENTERTAINMENT

ISSUE 21POWER

Fall Winter 2016/17

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dreamlike crepuscular unreality also adds a cinematic char-acter that invites the possibility of imagined narratives, transporting the viewer into the drama of the Hollywood playground past that this architecture now represents — perhaps a 1960s pool party hosted by Frank Sinatra, or a cocktail do at Zsa Zsa Gabor’s. If there is also a certain voy-euristic quality to his work, it’s because Blachford started taking photos of these private homes clandestinely. Only

later in the project did he work closely with the Palm Springs Modern Committee to capture the gems designed by the likes of Richard Neutra,

Donald Wexler, or E. Stewart Williams. But whether they’re architectural icons or more generic expressions of mid-century Modernism, the houses in Blachford’s photographs all have one thing in com-

mon: despite the glass and high ceilings, they feel oddly closed off. Curtains are drawn and they appear unoccupied, devoid of life, more like objects than spaces. These photographs effectively make strange the tradition of doc-umentary architectural photography, and in

turn estrange the viewer from the familiar domesticity and luxury that these houses so often epitomize.

There is an inher-ent nos-t a l g i a a b o u t

photographing symbols of Southern Californian mid-cen-tury Modernism. Maybe it’s the bygone cocktail-party luxury they evince or by virtue of being the backdrops for so many Hollywood movie classics, not to mention the subject of Julius Shulman’s iconic images which are now so familiar to us. But in his Midnight Modern project — which will be published as a cof-fee-table book next spring — photographer Tom Blachford examines these homes’ present as much as their past. Working in Palm Springs over the course of a three-year period, the Australian inverted the optimistic-to-a-fault sun-niness of Southern California using just the light of the full moon. The results are uncanny, and it’s often only the trailing stars that give away how these photos got their unusual character. If architecture usually starts as representation before being realized, through Blachford’s lens these very real buildings seemingly trans-

form into a form of digital sur-realism — they look too good, too hyperreal, to be true. This MOON

BOOK CLUB II

— DREW ZEIBA

STRUCK

Midnight Modern, by Tom Blachford (powerHouse

Books, 2017)

Edris House1030 West Cielo DriveArchitect: E. Stewart Williams, 1954

A perhaps surprising sight at the most recent Salone del Mobile in Milan w a s the comedy and action star Terry Crews, Hollywood’s intellectual mus-cleman who is all kinds of awesome. A former NFL player, Crews is best known for his

roles in TV series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Everybody Hates Chris, and the film series The Expendables (not to forget the 2004 movie White Chicks, which has a deserved cult follow-ing and should be required viewing for humanity). But Crews wasn’t in Milan as a celebrity dilettante. “I’m a design junkie,” the 48-year-old actor says. “I get excited when I see a beautiful font. I get into every aspect of beautiful things.” His keen interest in furniture, he says, goes back to his childhood. “We had a big gold, black, and white sofa. It was a monster with French curves. I remember always attacking it, thinking it was this lion that was going to eat me. I would anthropomorphize every-thing that was in my life. That's the essence of design: anthropomorphizing things to the point where you can relate to them.” Crews wasn’t in Milan just to get his design fix, but also because his fledgling company Amen&Amen (co-founded with Nana Boateng) was presenting a capsule collection by recent design graduate Ini Archibong. Called In The Secret Garden, it consisted of four pieces — a settee (Cheshire), a side table (Orion), a coffee table (Galilee), and a chandelier (Jadis) — all handmade in Switzerland and all, bar the sofa, featuring hand-blown glass. Crews and Archibong met over a decade ago when the action star was a frequent customer at an L.A. clothing store where Archibong was working part time, after dropping out of business school. The two used to have long conversa-tions about design, but eventually lost touch. In the years that followed, Archibong graduated from Pasadena’s ArtCenter and got his advanced-studies master’s degree in design for luxury and craftsmanship at the prestigious ECAL in Switzerland. When, on a whim, Crews looked him up on LinkedIn, he discovered that Archibong, who is now 33, had fulfilled all of his dreams. And he was struck by his work. As Archibong recounts, “He was very much like, ‘There are certain things that need to be seen, that need to exist in the world.’ He wanted to be a catalyst for the world to see more of what I could do.” In response to Archibong’s concerns about the potential return on such

an investment, Crews recalls exclaiming, “I don’t care. Sometimes shit just has to get made!”

BACKERLINE

— WILLIAM VAN METER

The In The Secret Garden

collection, conceived by industrial

designer Ini Archibong and

supported by Hollywood star Terry

Crews, is meant to evoke childhood

fantasies and the surreal

impossibility of bringing a

dreamworld into the home.

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Jadis chandelier (2016); Crystal glass, brass.

Orion table (2016); Carrara marble, colored glass, brass.

Galilee table (2016); Carrara marble, colored glass, brass.