Eli Foner

Browsing through a museum giftshop this week, I ran into the very funky 'blueprint' wallet pictured below. Having never heard of Moscow-born designer Constantin Boym, I checked around and unearthed a few links worth sharing:

the blueprint collection

It's a bit larger than a normal wallet (perhaps to accomodate lira?), and fashioned from super-soft leather. Other features include a removable insert (depending on your current card/id count) and coin purse. Moscow-born designer Constantin Boym's 'Blueprint' collection also includes a roller ball pen, leather wallet, a business card case, cufflinks, a tie, and pencils.

Note: Although I cannot find the wallet for sale on his site, you can purchase most of these from either Acme Studio or Unica Home. I for one will check around as the museum's price was almost triple the online prices.

Click to continue reading article:

curious boym, the book

Boym's first 220-page monograph has been published by Princeton Architectural Press in November 2002. The book, written by Constantin Boym, with essays by Peter Hall and Steven Skov Holt, covers fifteen years of our work in design. As designers, we find inspiration in Curious George, a cute little monkey who is driven by curiosity to play and experiment with elements of his daily environment. In a similar way, the designer today should be on a continuing outlook, to detect and reflect on the intangible vibes of emerging needs, trends, and desires.

The design of the book, by Karlssonwilker, is full of surprises and amusing interactive features. It will make a fun and informative design gift. $28 at Amazon or at a bookstore near you.

buildings of disaster

Boym has recently taught at Parsons School of Design in New York, and is the creator of the Buildings of Disaster collection:

Buildings of Disaster are miniature replicas of famous structures where some tragic or terrible events happened to take place. Some of these buildings may have been prized architectural landmarks, others - non-descript anonymous structures. But disaster changes everything. The images of burning or exploded buildings make a different, populist history of architecture, one based on emotional involvement rather than on scholarly appreciation. In our media-saturated time, the world disasters stand as people's measure of history, and the sites of tragic events often become involuntary tourist destinations. Made of bonded nickel, these miniatures of these seminal locations of tragedy are spooky, haunting, strange, and almost quaint.

They include the Murrah building, the WTC, the Dakota, the highway of OJ Simpson's chase, Alma Tunnel (site of Princess Di's death), and Chernobyl.

sex rugs

And somewhere along the way, he created these funky sex rugs, which I don't have much info on at all.