Marcel Wandershas given the world booger-shaped vases, avant-garde macramé chairs, and his girlfriend on a string. Now, in “Daydreams,” an exhibition opening November 22 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that only Wanders could dream up, the inimitable Dutch designer mixes 14 years of his objects with a hand-picked selection of films, making what he calls a “theatrical forestscape” that is equal parts hagiography and theater of the absurd. “He’s an extremely interesting, humorous designer,” says Kathryn Hiesinger, the show’s curator, “but underneath it, also deeply serious and original.” Boogers with brains. He spoke with I.D. about poetry, airborne furniture, and dropping trou in the name of design.
Earlier this decade, Frank Lantz helped pioneer the idea of “big games”—tech-driven multiplayer games that unfold in public space, like PacManhattan, an urban version of the classic arcade game invented by his students at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Area/code, the company he founded in 2005 with Kevin Slavin, has developed these kinds of games for clients ranging from Qwest Wireless to CBS, as well as online social games like the wildly popular Facebook game the company introduced last year to promote A&E’s reality series Parking Wars. Lantz just launched NYU’s Game Center, a game-focused program that will eventually become a degree-granting department.
TOY STORIES The brief was simple and open-ended: Offer an emotional design critique of an iconic toy. Most of the designers, creative directors, authors, educators, curators, and entrepreneurs we enlisted chose objects from their childhood, articulating the smart design thinking behind these timeless playthings while also recalling what their treasured toys meant to them personally. The result is a survey of approaches to designing for play that provides insights into how childhood fun informs adult design practice.
