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Lectures, Talks & Readings

Insights 2012 Design Lecture Series

The Insights series brings leading designers and critics from across the country and around the world to the Walker to share the thinking, methods, and processes behind their work. This year, we welcome Aaron Draplin of Draplin Design Company, Portland, Oregon; Khoi Vinh, cofounder of Lascaux Co., New… More

Featured Article

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Paul Schmelzer

Design’s “Dark Lord” Discusses the Walker Art Center Black Metal Logo

Christophe Szpajdel, who has created some 10,000 brand marks since the 1980s, may be among the more prolific logo designers anywhere. He may also be one of the most unusual: he creates identities for bands such as Pyre, Vomit of Torture, and Godrot. When… More

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Paul Schmelzer

Ice Land

Uncharted territories, even in a relatively sparsely populated state like Minnesota, are few and far between. But each January, when the average temperature lingers around 7 degrees Fahrenheit, one such place comes into being, briefly, on the frozen surface of… More

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Paul Schmelzer

Design’s “Dark Lord” Discusses the Walker Art Center Black Metal Logo

Christophe Szpajdel, who has created some 10,000 brand marks since the 1980s, may be among the more prolific logo designers anywhere. He may also be one of the most unusual: he creates identities… More

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Andrew Blauvelt

“Unmediatized” Architecture: VJAA Wins AIA’s Top Prize for Firms

What makes the work of Minneapolis-based VJAA’s architects so receptive for recognition? We can can safely rule out a few of the more obvious possibilities: they do not project the celebrity aura… More

• Gehry Backlash?

  Via guardian.co.uk There’s a backlash against architects who are making “buildings that have movement and feeling,” says Frank Gehry. “The notion is that it is counterproductive to social responsibility and sustainability.”

• “Ugly Sexy” Type

  Via eyemagazine.com Despite its “bizarre” proportions and serifs that are “some crossbreed of whale and polar bear,” there’s lots to love about the “sexy ugly” typeface Cooper Black, writes Armin Vit.

• Wright’s Doghouse

  Via architizer.com The house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Eddie the black lab was triangular with Phillipine mahogany and cedar details and Wright’s trademark low-pitched roof. Built in 1963, the house never appealed to the dog, though, and was dismantled 10 years later.

• Cat Break

  Via coadaptive.co Co Adaptive Architecture won December’s Architects for Animals contest in New York for structures that both shelter homeless cats and wirelessly beam data to base stations about the population, which is estimated at 20 million cats nationwide.

• Housing Design Fix

  Via nytimes.com“Better design is precisely what suburban America needs… Designers and policy makers need to see the single-family house as a design dilemma whose elements—architecture, finance and residents’ desires—are inextricably linked.”

• Kelly in Circulation

  Via burningsettlerscabin.com

  Sean Adams finds inspiration from the German newspaper Die Welt, which, under the urging of culture editor Cornelius Tittel, paid homage to Ellsworth Kelly recently by replacing all news photos with the artist’s iconic shapes.