This week’s mood
Welcome to Design Meal! This will be a weekly newsletter curating miscellaneous design and a bit of design-related culture/news. Last year I started posting slideshows of architecture and interior design I loved on a TikTok account that kinda blew up (@placeandspace). Then, a TikTok update glitch locked me out of the account and I spent almost half a year recovering it. I’m not quite sure where I want to take that account or what I want this newsletter to be, but the urge to curate and share design persists. So now we’re here. And I promise I will normally talk write less. Pretty pictures incoming!
TLDR: This newsletter is a collection of the pretty things (or their influence on our culture) that I encounter. Feel free to skip the chatter and skim the visuals.
Design x fashion: Sex and the City
Sex and the City’s recent addition to the Netflix catalog has sparked its return into the cultural zeitgeist (though it arguably never left). I find it so interesting that this move has had a larger impact on Carrie Bradshaw and Co.’s (organic) relevance in the digital cultural consciousness than anything the recent reboot has managed to achieve (except maybe giving us all something to cringe at). Instead of talking about what’s inside Carrie’s closet, let’s take a look at what’s outside.
I love the androgynous cozy feel of Carrie’s apartment, particularly in the earlier seasons. The warm 90s lighting and grainy, nostalgic quality of the 16/35mm film takes me back to Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers movies. I think why her apartment is so enduring, aside from debates about how on earth she afforded it, is that it feels lived-in; it’s filled with mismatched furniture and the things she loves, all seemingly collected over time. It’s also fun to see how the space changes as Carrie enters different phases in her life.
I’ll break down about Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte’s apartments in a future newsletter!
Film club: House (1977)
It’s late on a Wednesday and I’m in a spring allergies-induced miserable haze. I see a tweet from Criterion announcing a new 24/7 livestream channel feature that plays their entire content library. Streaming marches towards the graveyard of cable television. New ideas become old and old ideas become new. The death of streaming etc. etc. But I’m 22 and only have vague memories of the Blockbuster in my town so Criterion’s new feature feels magical and comforting. After being dropped into the last 10 minutes of Eraserhead (interesting…), I sat entranced by a 1970s avant-garde Japanese horror film I’d been too intimidated by to watch: House (1977). Unfortunately, my allergy meds were the non-drowsy kind so there was no added fun to the psychedelic trip that is this film. But this isn’t a film analysis newsletter (though what else am I supposed to do with my Media Studies degree), so let’s just admire the incredible visuals and poster design.
News
Chris Pratt has come under fire in the court of public opinion (what else is new) for bulldozing the Zimmerman house, an iconic piece of mid-century modern architecture, in order to build a 15,000-sqft modern farmhouse McMansion in Brentwood. The deal actually went down last year (for $12.5m), but has come to the Internet’s attention in recent weeks. It’s been a rallying call for the vocal “stop painting over historical details with white paint” online crowd (of which I am a passionate member). Originally designed in 1950 by architect Craig Ellwood, the Zimmerman house was last home to the widow of Sam Rolfe, co-creator of the series The Man from Uncle.
Thanks to estate-sale TikToker Quinn Fiona Garvey, we can get a glimpse into what the house last looked like during a 2022 estate sale (aka there was no good need for it to be torn down):
And lastly … thank you for reading my inaugural newsletter!! I plan on adding a bunch of extra stuff in future letters but as any perfectionist knows, you just need to get over yourself and hit post.
Let me know what else you want to see from this newsletter down below!!