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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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010289
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01028900.008
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1990-09-22
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DESIGN, Page 92BEST OF '88A Compelling New ModernismAvoiding ideology, the year's choices accommodate pizazz andgravitas
Last summer's well-hyped Museum of Modern Art exhibit devoted
to the anxious, determinedly unlikable architecture called
deconstructivist was the signal design event of 1988. Not, as its
enthusiasts hoped, because it galvanized the profession and
fascinated the public, but because it was so anticlimactic, a bust.
We have seen architecture's future, and its name is not
deconstructivism.
Which is not to say that successful design has turned bland
and safe. The best new buildings and products are lively and
provocative even as they avoid ideological purity. The compelling
modernism of the moment is lush, dreamy and concerned with
appropriateness, not big, inhumane and cookie-cutter corporate;
successful ersatz-old-fashioned buildings are lately tough and even
somber, not merely quaint and pleasant. Hybrids abound, and modesty
is a virtue. Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's Long Island pool
house, for example, combines industrial materials and delicate
details. The Clayton County (Ga.) Library delivers a high concept
with a relatively low budget. The finest work, from Washington's
restored Union Station to the sleek Ford Probe, accommodates both
pizazz and gravitas.
It is surprising nowadays when decent housing for the working
class gets built. Boston's 50-unit Charlestown Navy Yard Rowhouses,
designed by William Rawn, are virtually miraculous: cheerful,
dignified, altogether grand-looking low-cost housing. The long, low
brick structure culminates in a brilliantly fetching waterfront
wing -- cylindrical, two stories higher than the main body of the
structure, with a copper conical top. Equally heartening is the
graceful design applied to a humble fertilizer and hay-bale storage
shed for a garden center in Raleigh, N.C. Local architect Frank
Harmon unapologetically used homely materials (plywood, corrugated
fiber glass) but observed lucid symmetries. A row of
birthday-candle-like light bollards stands outside, handsome and
functional.
A caretaker's cottage, a bathhouse, a lifeguard's tower: those
were the modest requirements for Newcastle Beach Park in Bellevue,
Wash. The buildings designed by Jones & Jones architects of Seattle
manage to be sensible without being banal. They are charmingly
appropriate to the region (wooden board and batten exteriors,
exaggerated overhanging eaves) without being simply
Hansel-and-Gretelish. Ann Mullaney's new information kiosks on
Paramount Pictures' Melrose Avenue studio lot in Los Angeles are
also admirably no-nonsense and low-key. They are neoclassical
wooden booths with fine detailing, standing-seam copper roofs and
all the glitz of a New England farmhouse. When a large corporation
suppresses the instinct for overpolished aesthetics, hurrah for
Hollywood.
The Sonin distance calculator is a practical device shaped
wholly to its purpose. Toys, on the other hand, must maintain a
precarious design balance: neither too whimsical and childish
looking nor too sober and dull. Texas Instruments' Voyager,
designed by the firm of Richardson-Smith, is just right -- chunky
and merrily colored enough for four-year-olds and glamorous and
grown-up enough for eight-year-olds. Through an earphone, a child
is quizzed on dinosaurs or the solar system, and through a
cockpit-style microphone, he or she gives yes-or-no, true-or-false
answers, to which the headset responds with explanations and more
questions. The software cassette's big handle and wavy edge declare
that it is modular, to be plugged and unplugged. Like all good
design, the Voyager elegantly explains itself.