Waves Puzzles by Moda

It has been some time since The Operable Window has covereda product. It seemed about time that we jump back into looking at some beautiful design objects.

Founded by two architects Benny Sachs and Eric Hoffman, Moda is working to bring tactile play to an over-worked world. With the help of a (now successful) Kickstarter campaign, the company is on its way to achieving just that. For its first offering, California start-up has introduced the Waves puzzle series, maybe the most aesthetically pleasing puzzles you will find anywhere.

“Moda originally grew out of our interest in model-making,” said Benny Sachs, co-founder. “We wanted to make something fun and engaging for a broad audience to play with shapes, geometry, and materials.”

The 49-piece laser-cut transparent acrylic puzzles currently come in four colors blue, grey, yellow, and iridescent. This is to say you don’t have to live with an unfinished Thomas Kenkade puzzle out on our dinning room table when guest come over. Instead the eight-inch-eight-inch Wave puzzle will fit into any tastefully decorated room. The individual pieces themselves are a pleasure to hold and play with. A bonus is that since they are not made of cardboard, like a normal puzzle, they are hardy enough to travel with or take along to a night in with friends.

“As the world becomes ever more virtual, we all spend so much of our time in front of screens,” said Eric Hoffman, co-founder. “Our puzzles help you unplug, make something with your hands, and stimulate your creative instincts.”

But don’t let the puzzle’s small size deceive you into thinking that it will only take a few short minutes to solve. While there may only be 49 pieces, since none have images on them, and there is no front or back (since they are clear), normal puzzle solving techniques don’t exactly work. Instead, one finds themselves looking for patterns and paying much closer attention to the specific shapes of the individual pieces. On top of that there are at least two known solutions.

For that that are puzzle masters, more than one of puzzle can be ordered and combined in to nearly-endless combinations and compositions.

If you are reading this before October 25, 2018 there is still time to get a deal on the one or more of the Wave Puzzles on Kickstarter. If it is after the 25^th, the puzzles will be available on www.modapuzzles.com.

As Seen on TV: American Democracy

Democrat Sen. John Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon during the 1960 presidential election. (AP)

In honor of this year's upcoming elections, the following is an excerpt from a piece first published on my School Blog for Archinect. Written in mid-2012, we were in the midst of election season, and televised debates were hitting ratings marks never scene before. This piece discusses the public's expectations for candidates and the show they put on for us. 

"It is through the Presidential electoral process that we can read the American ideal of democracy.  It is no secret that every last detail of every campaign is meticulously planned.  It is a system that is designed and, ironically, agreed upon.  While in reality it may have nothing to do with what democracy really is, it is exactly what might makes it all so American.  Nowhere is this more clear than in the televised debates..." 

"The first debate quenches the need for the candidates to be Presidential. The U.S.'s obsession with the Greek “looking” democracy is still very real.  The staging of this debate positions the candidates as Greek thespians in an amphitheater, waxing planned talking points like a script.  This debate simply makes the election official. 

The second debate is to make sure that the candidates are American enough.  The town hall meeting is seen as a historic staple of American democracy."

"The format and form of these shows fulfills the collective prophecy of what an American election should be."

Head over to Archinect to read the full essay. 

  

The Operable Window is Reopening

The Coyote Building, home of the Robey Hotel. Recently remodel by TEN Arquitectos. Wicker Park, Chicago, IL. (Matthew Messner)

The Operable Window blog was started almost exactly 10 years ago. It was started as a means of sharing all of the amazing architecture, design, and photography things I was seeing online with my friends, (Facebook was not exactly what it is now back then) who were, and are mostly interested in the same things as me.

The Start of School AKA The End of Summer

I start school on Monday at the School of Architecture @ University of Illinois Chicago.  It has been two long years since I was last in school.  In that time I spent one year in the least scholastic place perhaps on earth, Afghanistan.

Many people ask me what Afghanistan was like, and I often have trouble explaining in few words the experience.  It is not often easy to describe a year of ones life, let alone one so trying.  The best I can do is vocalize some of the emotions that I felt.  Many come to mind when I think about that year, anger, boredom, and most often loneliness.  Not loneliness in the way that I was alone physically (you are never alone physically in the army).  More so I was alone Mentally.  I had very close friends and we had lots of long and sometimes deep conversations, but it was it was rare to never that I could discuss that which I love the most.  Over the whole year I had no one that had a true interest in the arts, design or the creative world.  I found it hard to keep my mind occupied sometimes.  I would lay and bed and have debates with myself over the virtues of Gesamtkunstwerk in design.  If nothing this time let me explore my own views on design without the interference of others.  I time to see where I was at in my thinking.  A Meditation on Metacognition.

So here I am now.  I have been back for about six months.  I have been around my friends, who are all creative types. I have worked on my own art and settled into the lifestyle that I hope to continue until perhaps marriage or children someday.  Life is very good.

With the start of school begins a new adventure!  I am beyond excited to meet new ideas and learn new people.  As I understand the situation, SOA@UIC is a heavy theory based program with emphasis on technology and urbanism, things I love.  Chicago being the home of Modernism in the US and the Sky Scrapper in the world, I feel there is no better place to be for the start of what I believe to be a new Era in design.  What will define this Era?  I am not sure yet.  That is what I hope to explore in school.

For the sake of conjecture though, here is my stab at what will define this next Era.

It is easy, and I dare say lazy, to just say that "Sustainability" will be the basis for design for the foreseeable future.  To me the "green" movement, so far, is little more then what "style" has been in the past to design.  Very little to do with the culture of those that us and experience it, and a lot to do with attempting to affix "decoration" to the same crap.  People still work and, for the most part, live in the same way that they have lived since perhaps the 1950's.  For design to truly change, the populous lifestyle will have to change.  It is not my hope or intention that design will be the catalyst for this change.  That never seems to work.  Instead, I believe it is the designers task to provide for those that are looking to live in a certain way, a better way.  We can present options and solutions that most would never have thought possible.  Imagine office buildings and class rooms with Operable Windows! Network server heat harvesting! Live/work/transportation/recreation lifestyles!  All things that are starting to happen!

My contribution to this? My interest in the future of design is based in the idea that we have gotten a lot of things right already.  Often these things have been forgotten or ignored in the interest of "style" or economy.  My goal is to present elegant solutions for a healthy, contradiction free, lifestyle through simple straight forward design.  I am pretty sure Glenn Murcutt has my back on this ideology.

My plan in graduate school is to explore how I can refine these ideas with the help of computer modeling and technological tools.  So often in the past it seems that technology is used to "advance" design instead of using it to refine what works and figure out what does not.  Never before have we been able to truly study how light and air will work in spaces before they are built.  Native peoples of hot and cold climates can tell you how these things will work in their homes because the design of their spaces is an evolved concept based purely on what has worked for them in the past.  People lived in the Middle East before central air, and people lived in the Midwest before space heaters.  I foresee figuring out exactly how they did this will be a large part of my journey to a New Design.  Do not expect to see me designing wigwams, longhouses, or Qalats any  time soon, but do anticipate a distillation of what worked about these spaces.      

wow, rant over...
long story short. I start school next week.

Geoffrey Cooper

A recent Grad of the Art Center College of Design, Geoffrey Cooper fits right in with what we are trying to do around here.  His goal? "bring product design and interaction design closer together, until one day the line between them is blurred."  With pieces already on the market it looks like is on the way to doing just that. 


Much of Cooper's work perfectly in line with some of my personal interests in design. Hence me blogging about him.  


1. 3d Interfaces- His SPH3RE is absolutely beautiful and unique.  
2. Perception of Time- "This is not a Knob" is an insightful take on how we understand the world around us. Also check out his watch designs Geocentric and Lumina.
3. Cat/Fishy interaction- Too cool, Muuto Cat Dome


Go see for yourself Geoffrey Cooper

No Copyright? No Problem!

An amazing resource, the Internet Archive is a collection of digitized media that is no longer copyrighted. Besides Just general historical research this site is so fun just to bum around on. As far as a design aspect goes the site offers programs from world fairs, promotional videos from the last 100 years, and more. Here are some of my fav. short videos, the American Look and a great GM video showing the amazing Kitchen of the future. Watch them all and check the page as an research tool.



American Look I

American Look II

American Look III

Design For Dreaming