the kitchen work triangle

Today's indexing included an article by Heidi Overhill in Design issues entitled "Apple pie proxemics: Edward T. Hall in the kitchen work triangle" (spring 2014 issue). Not only did I get to meet Mr Hall as the developer of the concept of proxemics (or "spatial behavior" as the AAT has it), I got to meet home economist Christine Frederick who lived from 1883 to 1970. The Wikipedia article on Frederick describes her as an American home economist and proponent of Taylorism as applied to the domestic sphere. Her NACO heading included only her birth date so I set upon revising the record to include her death date and other updating to RDA. As I was doing that, I was thinking about my grandmother who was also a home economist. They were near contemporaries and I wonder if they ever met.

I am now living in the house with the kitchen where she spent many an hour, throughout her life. The kitchen is not (now) particularly efficient, doesn't follow the work triangle theory, but then it's also not very large. I wonder if Gram was frustrated by the layout, and I am quite sure she would have been even more horrified by an enormous expenditure on renovation.

I have no idea how many times I was in the kitchen as a child, watching Gram wash the dishes with Great Aunt Dora sitting on the stool drying them. Oh, I probably helped with the dishes as a kid when we visited Gram but it was the two sisters in their regular positions that I vividly remember.

what would Albert Speer do?

Click here for an article from io9.com on post-Soviet architecture in Kazakhstan. This is the Astana Music Hall, worthy of gold status in the Roadside Hall of Fame.

Zoe Leonard at the Whitney Biennial

I had been quite disappointed to miss the camera obscura installation by Zoe Leonard at Murray Guy Gallery in late 2012 but then, there it was, a similar installation as part of the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Now, the latter has been awarded the Bucksbaum Award. Stendhal Syndrome moment, and it was far more subtle than this photo indicates on the overcast day I visited in mid April.

Photo from an email announcement by Murray Guy. © Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York