The way I see it, design is humility. And clients are the chance.

I also think that as soon as designers like Ron Arad, Marc Newson, etc. start being processed through contemporary art museums, art auction houses and places like Gagosian, then the power of a store like Moss becomes diluted.

“(Brancusi’s atelier is) a poor man’s construction of his own little paradise–cheerful, roomy, efficient, and full of things that can feel ancient, avant garde, even luxurious, often all at the same time.”

Hi, Wendy! Great topic. We’ve seen some good ideas right here in NY recently, and some of them are quite technical:
-change the zoning code to allow for smaller and more flexible living spaces, especially for communal living (i.e. don’t require every apartment to have a kitchen)
-expand techniques of modular construction to apartment buildings, which can potentially lower costs without diminishing quality of construction or design. (SHoP is doing this at Atlantic Yards).
-cultivate and encourage the altruistic instincts of many architects with challenges like Via Verde in the Bronx (Grmishaw/Dattner) or Schermerhorn House in Brooklyn (Polshek…I mean Ennead) or Nehemiah Houses in East New York by Alex Gorlin.
-make it easier for developers and non-profit organizations to navigate the complexities of subsidies and tax incentives, rather than asking them to be time-consumingly creative about financing.
-move towards inclusive housing in which all new residential buildings are required to include some affordable units, rather than just offering tax incentives.
-focus on urban living facilities for seniors, where they can be far more independent in walkable neighborhoods than in car-dependent suburbs.

These suggestions improve conditions but don’t address actual design. I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel here, actually. Many architects are quite expert at building good, creatively-designed residential buildings and containing costs at the same time. The obstacles, I think, lie mostly in the financing, but I’ll give some more thought to the design side, too.

Have you read The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson? It reads like a blueprint for how to encourage design action to improve our cities. It is the story of wanting to be the first city in the world in terms of architecture, design and engineering (and reclaim this title from Paris with its Eiffel Tower) and how a small group of thinkers were able to transform an idea to reality in the form of the Chicago World Fair in one short year through design and ingenuity, driven by pride and talent. Great model, minus the murder of course!

I find the archival aspect of a book collection to be powerful. I go back to the notion of the photography archive – and how in the early days of the medium, specific archives of photographic images were collected, categorized and contained in a single place, for purposes of news media, general interest for curious collectors, or under the auspices of institutions. Many try to confer a sense of objectivity on photographic objects, stressing their ontological function, their “realness,” but there’s a tremendous amount of subjectivity in the photo archive. One person’s “lovers on a bench” is potentially another’s illicit act.
I think this optic extends to book collections as well. The knowledge and pleasure you gain from a specific book in your own collection may exist in someone else’s for an entirely different purpose. Seeing books in context of creative people like Philip Johnson, for example, I think is crucial to scholars and academics. No longer is this private aspect of someone’s life now public, but their collected body of knowledge – their archive, becomes a tangible participant in their creative development.