Objects of My Affection: Eames RAR Rocker

The Eames RAR (rocking armchair rod) Rocker is a perfect example of timelessness in design: it could've been created in 2009 in a boutique workshop in São Paulo (it wasn't), or it could've been born in a crazy Renaissance-style think-tank/24-hour carnival/cultural epicenter in California for a competition at the MoMA six decades ago (it was). It's equal parts earthy/traditional (maple rockers, small footprint) and modern/industrial (bright-yellow fiberglass shell, steel base). It looks just as good outside on the deck as it does in a hyper-modern office, and looks even better when it's rocking a newborn baby to sleep.

It's also incredibly comfortable.

Just ask him.

We got ours about a month ago at Machine Age, which is probably the coolest store on the planet. Some years ago, Herman Miller (the manufacturer) decided to switch to plastic shells (in the name of environmental soundness). Ours, though, is the original fiberglass, and it's got a wonderful texture.

I hope this stays in our family for generations. I hope our great-grandchildren park their hoverboards to stare at it, wide-eyed, believing that they've witnessed something sent back from the future to enthrall them.

A short rant on exquisite cars with terrible names

As the dust of our economic collapse begins to settle, a handful of once-begotten automakers is on the ascent. One of particular note is Ford, which entered 2008 with a decidedly lackluster lineup, slumping sales, and an impossibly complex global manufacturing scheme, and emerged profitable, robust, and unified--all in the absence of the much-bemoaned (and yet undeniably successful) "bail-outs" awarded the other two of the Big Three American car companies.

I start off with Ford not because I'm going to discuss any Ford-branded vehicles, but because the two marques with which I'm concerned---Jaguar and Lincoln---have beenirrevocably affiliated with the big blue oval for quite some time, and both brands are getting back on their feet after decades of neglect and terrible decisions. One---Lincoln---because Ford abandoned Mercury, and the other---Jaguar---because Ford abandoned them.

Rolls down the road, not off the tongue

Jaguar, of course, is now owned by Tata, an Indian firm. Cut free of the Old Ford fetters (shoddy platforms, badge engineering, confused marketing), Jaguar has retaken its place as a global design icon. The current XJ, released in 2009, is---and I sincerely mean this---one of the most beautiful, uniquely artful automobiles I've ever seen. Like the evergreen E-Type, the XJ is fluid grace made manifest. And powered by a can of Whoop-Ass. Just look at this thing:

I didn't even notice the woman until the second time I saw this.

It's the kind of beauty that, though immediately apparent in pictures, is magnified when it's in motion. The interplay of light and dark, the gleam of black metal and cold glass, the sweeping profile of its greenhouse as it slips by you---it's just a masterpiece, and one that only cements Ian Callum's place in the pantheon.

And then, take a look at the strikingly redesigned XK:

The new, supercharged iteration of the XKR.

While we're at it, here's the delightful XF:

This is the spankin' new 2012 model.

What we have here is a thrilling lineup---just three vehicles, suited for different, distinct purposes and demographics. No bloated, confusing, cross-platform nonsense.

And yet, for the life of me, I can barely remember what they're called.

XF, XK, and XJ are acronyms utterly devoid of meaning to the average consumer. I'm a self-professed car nut, and I have to struggle to remind myself that there was a different XJ before the current one, and that it looked completely different. That the name "Jaguar XJ" has been in use, more or less continuously, since 1968. That the original XJ's powerplant was largely based on the then-new "XK engine," and that designs based on the XK engine (including the XJ) occasionally made use of an innovative fuel-tank arrangement adopted from the Jaguar Mark X.

All of this is to say that XJ means absolutely nothing. It's a half-century old term that supposedly bridges the heritage gap between these two vehicles:

What makes matters worse is that there's no discernible pattern here. The XJ, a full-size sedan (think Audi A8) is much larger than the XK (a diminutive grand-tourer à la the Audi A5), and slots in directly above its little sedan-brother, the XF (comparable to the Audi A4). Something the Germans do well (one of many things, admittedly) is plan: like addresses in a well-laid housing development, the numbers go up as you make your way through the line, but space is afforded between them in case a tougher-to-classify model has to slide in between.

Examples:

BMW's 1 Series (teeny tiny), 3 Series (compact executive), 5 Series (mid-size), 7 Series (full-size luxury). When they built a large, two-door executive sports express, they called it the "6 Series." When they wanted a small roadster, they called it the "Z4." When they want to specify things like engine displacement, the taxonomy specifies gradations within a given line, like "328" or "335." You know a 335 is rear-wheel drive when it's called a "335i." Likewise, you know it's directing power to all four wheels when it's labeled "335xi."

When they build a crossover, even, you immediately know the specifics of the platform in relation to those initial, odd-numbered product lines. The X3 is a sport-utilified version of the 3 Series. If you want something racy, look for anything with an "M" in front of it. The M3 and M5 are salient examples.

All this is to say that BMW's nomenclature---while not exactly thrilling or evocative---serves a purpose, and serves it well.

Jaguar's nomenclature isn't only devoid of thrills or evocations, but it doesn't tell the consumer anything about the vehicle they want. I'm a connoisseur of these things, and I don't even really know what to call them. When I mention the XKRS to someone, I have to stop and think if I'm even talking about the right vehicle.

In the end, though, I can mostly forgive Jaguar for these marketing mishaps. They are currently putting out only three vehicles, and these three vehicles are truly among the best in each of their respective classes. I can't quite say the same for our next guest, unfortunately.

A comedy of grammars

Lincoln doesn't produce anything right now that competes with any of the big players in the entry-level luxury arena. They have, however, produced some visually striking vehicles over the last two years, and on this basis alone have entered my "cars I vaguely desire" list.

One of said vehicles resembles, for all intents and purposes, a sperm whale. It is called the "MKT" (I had to look that one up, FYI).

Ahab would be covetous. His would be in white.

Its basic shape is that of a distended sea cucumber (rendered in mammoth proportions), flanked by a grille looking for all the world like a gaping maw filled with baleen plates and a rear that looks like ... well ... this:

Here we go, Ahab.

Yet there's something about the sheer ballsiness of the MKT that I just can't help but admire. I'm not sure if I'm revolted by it, or if I'm attracted to it, but I can't really take my eyes off the thing.

The MKT's little crossover-brother is the MKX, which is built on the same platform as its sedan alter-ego, the MKZ (the Ford CD3 platform). The MKZ's slightly larger sedan-brother is the MKS, which I'm just now realizing I've been calling the MKZ for the last year or so. Just to make things even more awkward, the platform underlying the MKS isn't the CD3: it's the D3. Not sure what was lost in the slipping of the "C," but it certainly wasn't size.

Lincoln is finally building cars that are interesting, if not quite enviable. They're selling many, many more of them than they were back in 2008, too. They just brought a new design chief on board, and he's just the right person to make the brand competitive with rivals both domestic (Cadillac, even Buick) and foreign (das Germans).

The problem is, it's very nearly impossible to remember what the heck these things are called. Here are three reasons:

1. The whole "MK" business is directly descended from Lincoln's long practice of labeling things "Mark ___." I can get on board with that. It reminds me of WWII-era fighters. But now that they are "MK_," I don't really know if I'm supposed to be saying "Mark" or "MK" when I refer to them. I have to watch video reviews to find out, and even they don't always say the same thing.
2. If you're going to have this diverse of a lineup (small sedan, large sedan, small crossover, large crossover, not to mention the Navigator and the on-its-last-leg Town Car), you absolutely have to come up with a way of making them distinct. The MKS looks like a bloated MKZ, but I can't even really remember why. It's just bigger and ... mushier. Not in a bad way---actually in something of a good way---but in an indistinct way. Naming them essentially the same thing just puts this problem in sharper relief.
3. The Z is smaller than the S, and the T is larger than the X. I don't know what that's supposed to indicate.

The single most frustrating thing Lincoln's done in recent years---this is minor, sure, but it's frustrating to me at least---is to dump the one truly wonderful name it's resurrected in recent memory, the "Zephyr," in favor of "MKZ." "Zephyr" had historical significance for the brand, and was evocative, romantic even. "MKZ," on the other hand, was the first of the modern "MK" cars, and heralded the trend that's resulted in the mess I've been writing about.

Anyway, that's about enough about Lincoln. I still don't know why I like the MKT, but I have a feeling I wouldn't want to find out.

Or was it the MKX?

Lastly, a thought on the exotics

I'll end by comparing two cars that are so viscerally appealing that it almost pains me to look at them: the Lamborghini Aventador and the McLaren MP4-12C. I'll wait while you catch your breath, don't worry.

"Aventador" is the name of a famous fighting bull.

"MP4-12C" is derived from, well, see below.

Here we have two cars representing the peak of modern automobile design, running in the same vaunted circles as the Ferrari 458 Italia and the Bugatti Veyron. Everyone who hears "Aventador" a few times will never forget it: the bull-fighting connection, the sweeping, exotic way it sounds when you say it out loud, the down-sweeping "A" jammed against the up-sweeping "V"---it's sensual, memorable, icon-worthy.

"MP4-12C," however, took me forever to memorize. The name is derived from about a thousand different sources. "MP4" is McLaren's internal name for the F1 chassis it's been building for thirty years. The "12" is apparently indicative of McLaren's internal "performance index," which it uses to rate vehicles on a scale of 1 to something. Probably not 10, but something. The "C" is short for carbon, or more precisely carbon fiber, a material used liberally in the construction of the car.

Two things make this even more ridiculous:

1. McLaren's championship-winning, late-'90s Forumula One racer was called the MP4/12. So for 15 years or so, car geeks around the world were quite familiar with "MP4" and "12" being used by McLaren to talk about a vehicle utterly unrelated to the sports car that swapped the backslash for a dash and added a "C" to the end.
2. In England, where the car is produced, people pronounce the "dash" in the middle. So whenever someone (take, for example, Jeremy Clarkson) wants to talk about the car, they have to pronounce six syllables, and not even syllables that constitute a word. They constitute a string of acronyms.

I've always liked my cars named, and named proudly. When I tell people I drive a Charger, they immediately know what kind of car I'm talking about even if they know nothing about cars. When I say I've been passionately pining for a Viper for most of my life, they can imagine why. When I say "Gremlin," everyone immediately reacts (usually with disgust, but often with fond memories of awkward little cars from a bygone era).

The first car that was truly mine was a brand-new, bareboned, black Pontiac Sunfire. It might not've been particularly sunny or pyrotechnical, but come on: Sunfire. That's just a wonderful name, and one that I'm glad for having said out loud.

Cars, whether we like to admit it or not, are never blank slates. They aren't just palettes on which we paint our personalities. They are developed over years by teams of people who love engineering and design, and they arise in response to our basic need to transport ourselves, to hurtle our bodies through the air so that we may get where we're going quickly, safely, and---some might argue---even thrillingly.

I say "bring the balls back."

John Hancock Tower - The Charm of Impossibilities

The great French composer and theorist Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) famously spoke of "the charm of impossibilities." When Messiaen used the phrase, he was usually referring to what he called "modes of limited transposition," or a distinct set of seven scales which, due to their inbuilt symmetry, can only undergo a limited number of transpositions before folding back into themselves. Each of the modes contains elements with which we're all familiar---the chromatic pitch-classes of the traditional Western equal-tempered scale---but arranges them in an order that transforms them, transmutates them into something new, something mysterious, something at once extraordinarily simple and yet remarkably complex. Suddenly these pitches we know so well are heard as sounds from another world. They lack the traditionally stabilizing element of a tonic or a key signature, but their adamantine structure makes them stable to the point of immovability.

The Hancock Tower (which is really called "Hancock Place," but I don't think anyone's called in that in a couple of decades) is both impossibly beautiful and impossibly impossible. It's atowering monolith that dwarfs everything in its immediate vicinity, but---if the conditions are just right---it's virtually invisible. It thrusts up from the earth with verticality and violence, and yet maintains a sense of weightlessness, of floating, of being some figment of a half-remembered dream.

The most charmingly impossible (and impossibly charming) aspects of this building, though, are a little harder to see. A decades-long engineering experiment, the Hancock is a testament to the power of will and intellect in the face of remarkably adverse conditions. In the 35 years since it was finished (and, really, the 43 years since plans were first drawn up), the Tower has been in constant war with the laws of physics, the laws of chemical engineering, and the laws of municipal government.

Credit: Rich007 at Flickr

Here's a little overview, in something resembling chronological order.

• 1968: The general public reacted with vehemence when the Tower's location was announced. Its proximity to Henry Hobson Richardson's beloved Trinity Church was apparently sacrilegious, as it meant the church might occasionally be in the shade.
• 1968: Back Bay, being essentially swamp land, proved inhospitable to such a large structure from the very beginning. Excavating the foundation was especially disastrous, as the temporary steel retaining walls---erected to keep the mud in check---began to buckle and destroy all sorts of infrastructure in the greater-Copley area. Power cables, telephone lines, sidewalks, pavement, you name it. Even Trinity Church suffered some damage, which was, apparently, another act of sacrilege.
• 1971-73: The most infamous issue plaguing the building (though not the most hazardous (see below for that one)) was also the most visible. The problem was that the Hancock started losing windows. Gigantic, 500-lb. windows. Almost immediately after the curtain wall was completed, the panes started popping out with remarkable regularity. In an effort to keep the building vaguely weatherproof, the architectural firm (more on them to come) replaced the fallen windowpanes with plywood. It didn't look very good. Eventually, all 10,344 panes were replaced. Years later (and after much speculation), engineers pinpointed the root of the problem: the bonds holding the glass panes in place. The window structures were actually quite cutting-edge for the time: dual-paned, chromium-coated, insulating, you name it. The issue was that the lead-tape spacer (so tiny it'd be barely visible) was creating too firm a bond with the sheets of glass on either side of it. It was, in a sense, over-engineered. Because of numerous factors (thermal flux being perhaps chief among them), the spacer's tenacious grip meant that there was no wiggle room, which---though you'd think it'd be a good thing---made the bond completely inflexible. The spacer was actually stripping microscopic bits of glass from the panes, which ultimately weakened the bond and led to a very costly (not to mention hazardous) situation.

Photo: Michael Shellenbarger/ University of Oregon Library

• 1976: Tenants of the upper floors began calling out of work sick due to chronic nausea caused by the Tower's "cobra dance." The "dance" was caused by rather significant amounts of swaying and torsion, a problem only exacerbated by the unique structural properties of the building: the natural periods of vibration of the twisting and lateral bending motions were very close to one another, so neither cancelled the other out. One of the cooler engineering solutions I've ever heard of was then proposed and carried out: two colossal "Tuned Mass Dampers," a recent invention consisting of 300-ton lead and steel boxes floating on a nearly frictionless surface, attached to the core of the building by way of shock absorbers. When the building sways, the dampers stay more or less in place, counterbalancing the motion beautifully.
  
• Shortly thereafter: The most dangerous problem, it turned out, was kept secret for years. After the PR disaster of the falling windows, the firm wasn't about to disclose what was one of the more shocking engineering dilemmas of the late-twentieth century. An engineering review found that under very specific (but not necessarily abnormal) wind conditions, the Tower was in acute danger of falling over on its narrow side. Yup, that's right, the narrow side. The effect this would have on the surrounding environment would be essentially that of a 790-foot guillotine. A 790-foot guillotine encased in glass. The firm immediately began efforts to fix the problem, and fortified the core of the building with 1,500 tons of steel bracing. Word eventually got out, but luckily the building was just about the safest on the planet by that point.

So why didn't they just give up? Why didn't they scrap the design and try something else, something simpler, something more proven?

I'm not sure exactly, but I think it's got something to do with the fact that the Hancock Tower is perhaps the most beautiful mid- to late-twentieth century building in Boston. Speaking personally, I can't think of a better skyscraper created anywhere in the 1970s. The Hancock is the singular fulfillment of everything the Modernists had sought to achieve for the better part of a century. It's outrageously clean---it's a building that outwardly appears to consist of little else but windows, and yet the curtain wall appears to be devoid of mullions (from far away, at least).

Credit: Andrew Paul Jackson

The firm responsible for the architectural design of the Hancock was I.M. Pei & Partners (you might've heard of 'em). The chief architect wasn't Pei, though he was involved. It was the remarkable (and remarkably undervalued, in my opinion) Henry Cobb, a man responsible for other Boston gems like the Harbor Towers and the Moakley Courthouse. The falling windows fiasco almost put an end to his budding career, but a series of critical and public successes helped put him back in high regard.

Mies van der Rohe's hugely influential Seagram Building---erected in New York about a decade before work started on the Hancock---represented what many thought to be the perfect embodiment of the International Style. It was, for many architectural buffs, the ideal manifestation of form following function, and it sounded a clarion call for similar office structures to be erected around the country. A flood of dark, glass pylons began appearing in major cities around the country (see, for example, one of the Hancock's most famous neighbors: the Prudential Tower).

Mies van der Rohe - Seagram Building

Prudential Tower, Boston

Cobb's design married this Functionalist aesthetic with a refreshing sense of minimalism. The Tower's parallelogram shape lends the building a remarkable sharpness, especially when viewed from a 3/4 angle. Two exceedingly simple notches run the full, vertical length of the building, each one splitting one of the narrow sides into two spears reaching up into infinity. In the early morning and early evening, these notches catch the light of the sun as it rises and then falls. It's really remarkable.

One of the greatest temp. jobs I ever had was a season-length position in an asset management firm occupying the Tower's 53rd floor (just about 7 floors from the top). I remember a sense of floating above all else. The core of the building, of course, is opaque, but everything lining the building's periphery is just pure, unadulterated sky.

On a windy day, I could hear the tuned dampers shifting slowly on the 58th floor, groaning faintly like two giants watching over the building beneath them, protecting it from the ever encroaching laws of nature.

And it was impossibly beautiful.

Objects of My Affection: Samsung Series 9 Notebook

The Duralumin plays some wonderfully subtle tricks with ambient light.

The first thing you need to know about the Series 9 Notebook by Samsung is that it's just achingly, exquisitely beautiful. The second thing you need to know is that it's achingly (perhaps not exquisitely) expensive. The important thing to keep in mind is that this is a thoroughly premium product, and that you really do get what you pay for. The Series 9 backsup its looks with equally impressive internals, including a very fast Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD.

Why I like it:

1. It's beautiful

There are very, very few hardware manufacturers in the world that can challenge the eternal elephant in the design-review room, Apple. Two companies that can occasionally be thought of as being in the same league (emphasis on "occasionally") are Samsung (Korean) and Sony (Japanese). They might not be as innovative as the wizards from Cupertino, but they can at least keep pace in terms of build quality, ergonomics, and genuine, aesthetic value.

Sure beats printing things out to play through them.

Sometimes, of course, this can lead to some problems.

Still, there are moments when each of the Big Ss strike design gold (check out the Sony Vaio Z Series). The Series 9 represents such a moment: it is aesthetically original, resembling its obvious arch-nemesis only in its footprint (and, to a degree, its touchpad). The designers have spoken at length about drawing inspiration from organic forms (a leaf, water, etc.), and I sincerely believe them. This isn't a design that comes about by iterating something for a test group. This is a design that came directly from some sort of artistic impulse, from a desire to create something beautiful.

The look works because it marries the masculine (brushed, black Duralumin case, sharp edges) and the feminine (that beautiful "light-catcher" that curves around the periphery, a sense of fundamental lightness and elegance) without appearing to try very hard.

It also achieves the same impossibly-thin look as the Air, but does so through different design cues. Part of why the Air shocked everyone when it debuted back  in 2008 was that, from certain angles, it basically looked as thick as a supermarket tabloid. This was because a) it was as thick as a supermarket tabloid, and b) because Apple engineers pushed anything remotely bulky in the chassis all the way to the hinges, tapering the rest of the case to an impossibly thin crease. This was a masterful application of trompe l'oeil, emphasizing just how portable this next-generation laptop was (and is). The Series 9 underscores its own svelte lines not so much by tapering, but instead by way of a delicate aluminum band elegantly tracing its profile.

Both laptops have eliminated optical drives from their respective equations. I use an Asus external disc drive for my Series 9, but when I say "use" I really mean "purchased, utilized to install Finale, and then held onto as a nice little sculptural piece for my desk."

Samsung further slims the Series 9 by way of concealed ports. Each side has a flap-down compartment containing three connection points (left: network, HDMI, high-speed USB; right: micro SD, headphone/microphone (combined), USB).

That's actually the ethernet port on the left: you connect the network cable by way of an included dongle.

The ports feel (and, indeed, are) very sturdy, opening and closing with a solid (albeit small) "thunk."

2. It's functionally well-suited to writing music

The primary purpose of any computer I own is to help me compose music more effectively. Three key aspects of the Series 9's design have proven invaluable in this respect: the screen, the keyboard, and the trackpad.

First, the screen. Aside from the fact that it has absurdly bright, crisp colors and a striking contrast ratio (this is Samsung, after all, and they're known for their screen technology perhaps above all else), it's matte. This, more than just about anything, was what steered me towards the Series 9 and away from the glossy-screened Air. It means I can routinely enjoy moments like this:

The fact that the whole thing is just so darn portable makes it that much easier to tote it around with me wherever I go, whipping it out if inspiration strikes.

Backlighting and chiclet-style keys make me happy.

The keyboard also has some distinct advantages over the competition. Among other things, it's backlit. Not only that, but the backlight is manually adjustable (and very responsive to ambient light conditions when left to its own devices). The chiclet-style keys are a joy to navigate, with softly textured faces and precise weighting.

The trackpad might not be quite up to Apple standards, but it's easily the best I've ever seen on a non-Mac computer. It has a soft, rubberized texture, and features fluid multitouch capabilities that I've never experienced on a PC before. The thumb-down-while-navigating-using-another-finger method works like a charm. Dragging articulations, entering notes, and even simple graphic design is just a pleasure. I used to wonder how it was possible that my friend (and Mac-geek) Andrew Paul Jackson actually preferred entering notes and other score items via trackpad, and had no desire to buy a mouse for his MacBook. Using this buttonless, multitouch, accurate trackpad has been quite an enlightening experience for me, to say the least.

3. It is among the most well-rounded devices (of any kind) I've owned.

In summing up, I can't think of a better compliment to give Samsung than the fact that I, as a relatively tech-savvy, aesthetically judgmental, cash-strapped consumer not only bought this computer, but that months of using it haven't changed something I realized the moment I first turned it on: I wouldn't change anything about it. I still get that little thrill when I flip the lid open and it wakes up from sleeping in 3 seconds, the keyboard backlight surging to life, the Duralumin gleaming darkly like a panther.

I love how, after hours and hours of intense usage (running Finale, Word, Chrome, Zune, even SketchUp), I can hover over the battery icon and see that I've still got 60% remaining. I love how "60% remaining" means that I've still got a few hours before I start looking for a wall port.

I love how I can tote the system around in an office-use-only envelope and no one has any idea I'm carrying a fully fledged, desktop-replacement-worthy system.

I love how I can look at the Series 9 every day and feel like I made the right choice, even if the right choice was an expensive one in this case.

It was worth it.

ADDENDUM: Check out this ridiculous line of crystal-studded Series 9 notebooks announced at Samsung's IFA press conference last week.