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This Week in Social: The Four Seasons, Michelle Obama's Nails Match The Whitney, and An Empty Orioles Stadium

By Katherine Wisniewski

Welcome to Curbed's new weekly round-up of architecture and design on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and (god forbid) even LinkedIn. Collected from retweets, inter-office chats, and, well, anything that sent us into a 140-character tizzy, this is what Curbed editors actually read this week. Please be in touch if you have a recommendation for next week.

1. The demolition of Frederick Dunn's midcentury modern Lewis and Clark Branch Library has already begun. And it's a real tear-jerker. Preservationists angled to save the library's incomparable stained-glass, designed by Robert Harmon, a prodigy of the infamous St. Louis Emil Frei Stained Glass Company. We hope it works.


2. Michelle Obama, the First Lady of The United States (a.k.a. FLOTUS), was in New York Thursday morning to cut the inaugural ribbon on the #NewWhitney. From her visit we learned that Michelle Obama has feelings about freight elevators, color coordinates her nails to match the Whitney's metallic façade, and shuts down traffic with her mere presence. A choice quote, "One mile from here, there are kids who don't feel like they belong here, and this place starts to change that."

3. Patrick Parrish, proprietor of the Patrick Parrish Gallery and the @mondoblogo Instagram handle, brings us a perfect #TBT: Donald Judd's cadmium red furniture against the florescent lights, drop ceilings, and office park carpets of The National Gallery of Canada circa 1975.

#DonaldJudd, #NationalGalleryofCanada, Ottawa, #1975 #WWDJD

A photo posted by Patrick Parrish (@mondoblogo) on


4. Mark Lamster, architecture guy at the Dallas Morning News, decried the possible renovation of the Philip Johnson-designed Four Seasons Restaurant in New York. And for good reason: The Seagram Building, New York's first seminal skyscraper, is pretty unanimously considered to be a "perfect" thing. Here's the Curbed New York article.

5. LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne delivered a thoughtful piece about the "no fan's land" of Wednesday's Orioles game, which was vacated and cordoned-off at the height of Baltimore's protests.

6. When an 18th-century Palladian mansion is engulfed in flames, the only appropriate course of action is Twitter. Here's the heartbreaking fire.

7. Michelle Obama, who has apparently been extremely busy this week generally unveiling things, debuted the White House's brand-spankin'-new china set. Manufactured in Detroit and christened at Tuesday evening's Japanese state dinner, the gold-and-blue-banded china set was inspired by the shores of Hawaii.

The new Obama State China? It's "Kailua Blue," and the @WhiteHouse will use it for the first time this week at the #JapanStateDinner!

A photo posted by First Lady Michelle Obama (@michelleobama) on


8. The Milan Expo, aka the great-great grandchild of the World Fair, has transformed about half a square-mile outside of Milan into a 140-strong pavilion that, to quote Iwan Baan, is kind of "uh."

Uh?

A photo posted by Iwan Baan (@iwanbaan) on


9. Adrian Shaughnessy, critic and graphic designer, isn't alone in supporting a Kickstarter campaign to reprint Czech émigré Ladislav Sutnar's 1961 tome, Visual Design in Action. With 791 backers, 565 social media followers, and $65K (and counting), the internet has wholeheartedly committed itself to reprinting Sutnar's work with "exactly the specifications, materials, and visual and tactile qualities of the original book, under the guidance of Lars Müller."

10. Tim Dunn, who, we kid you not, is a British model village and miniature train aficionado (note: dream job), recently tweeted this photo of a long lost proposal for London's Thames River. Eventually he got his answer: The architect was William Walcott.


· All Too Short; Didn't Read coverage [Curbed National]