Whitehouse & Company

saneihopkins.co.uk

In England, we call these things Wendy Houses, so named because Peter and the Lost Boys built Wendy a little house in Peter Pan. In the US they are rather unpoetically referred to as just playhouses. At least I think so, we built one for our daughter Amy, and we called that Amy’s house (although she only went into it twice and it now houses decaying headless Barbie dolls and crawly things with excessive numbers of legs). While usually an opportunity for unrestrained kitsch and revolting cuteness, I thought this example both witty and of considerable charm. Particularly gratifying is that it is in this year’s Royal Academy show in London, organized by my old flatmate Peter Cook, who has been encouraging some new and younger talent to submit projects. It was designed by Amir Sanei (who studied at the AA like myself) and Abigail Hopkins (who studied at Columbia, where I later went on to teach).

Their Website www.saneihopkins.co.uk

So here’s a little game a friend and I came up with when finding ourselves bored, in a car, stuck in the middle of traffic. I’ve found it to be quite relevant to honing the practice of visualization, and garnering problem solving skills that come in handy in any creative field. It’s mental tic-tac-toe. Amazing. This otherwise simple game, when played without pen and paper (and while operating a moving vehicle) can be quite the thriller… not to mention a bigger challenge than expected.

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OK you guys, as an expatriate Brit I listen every year to all this independence stuff with resigned stoicism. But dare I say we’re not the only country with an embarrassment called George. Barking madness is not confined to the UK, even mad cow disease has now been confirmed beneath these spacious skies. The thing that really gets me is that each year National Public Radio recites the Declaration and ends up sniggeringly with ‘on that day, George III entered into his diary, “nothing of importance happened today“‘. While we are on the subject of self-evident truths, how the hell did you expect poor old George to know that you lot had suddenly got all uppity. An MSN newsfeed? In fact he did not learn of it for several weeks until the first ship returned with the news. What he in fact wrote in his diary on that day was “Shit. I guess we screwed that one up royally”. What the hell. Happy birthday America. They can’t stay in power for ever.

Wednesday night. A screech of brakes, a thud, and then a young woman screaming. A yellow cab had struck her baby stroller in the crosswalk. A small boy, maybe three or four years old, naked other than for a diaper, was thrown over a hundred feet or so along Amsterdam Avenue to end up lying motionless in the gutter immediately below our living room window. Within ninety seconds, thanks to dozens of cell phone calls, three police cars and two ambulances had arrived. After about five minutes the paramedics revived the child whose cries were chilling but reassuring (although he did not appear to be able to move). Ten minutes later the vehicles sped off with sirens howling, leaving us and the assembled group of bystanders below wondering how tragedies like this come about.

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The Post Office have just released this series of Masterworks of American Architecture stamps, which is nice, although the cropping of most of the images leaves little of the architecture to appreciate. Particularly egregious is the fact that they cropped out our graphics for Richard Meier’s High Museum. We have solved that by redesigning that particular stamp for you (go on, you can see our graphics if you look hard enough). If you want to see more…

I’m sure it’s happened to you at some point, you visit a website that you registered with, maybe your company’s healthcare provider, but you’ve totally forgotten your username and password. If you’re anything like me, you have a few usernames you’ve used over the years and a few passwords you might have used, but which ones are they? A few minutes of trying and I usually give up and ask for my username and password to be e-mailed to me.

This scenario happens to me over and over again and I never seem to get used to it. Is there another way? Are usernames really the best method for registering users?

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A participant, and a traditionally shaped New York City cop (I didn’t know there were any of these left), festooned with genuine good old-fashioned cop paraphernalia. Taken during today’s gay pride parade just along from our studio, at Fifth Avenue and 16th Street. Hillary Clinton got the biggest applause.

Four years ago, a German high school graduate with no previous experience but with an avid passion for design knocked on our door looking for an internship for the Summer. Her prodigious talent was immediately apparent, and in the few months she was with us we were glad to be able to help a little with her application to design school in Berlin. Now she has graduated with this accomplished monothematic magazine about funerals as her Thesis. Congratulations again Jasmin Mueller-Stoy, Diplom Designer.

Her website www.muellerundstoy.de.