"TEMPLECORE"– Isn't it IONIC?

The Greeks and Romans had empires in yesteryear so that you and we could have TEMPLECORE today. Here's how to take advantage of it.

IN THIS ISSUE:

• Have your own column! (And we don’t mean a Substack!): A very meta, very visual column on COLUMNS by correspondent JAKE RODEHUTH-HARRISON

• Seeing TEMPLECORE IN ACTION, mainly in Italy

• Introducing this week’s SOMEONE TO KNOW: ANDRÉ CAZENAVE

• An important TEMPLECORE film, which JOHN WATERS refers to as “the best failed art film ever!”

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Dear Snoops,

For the record: empires are hell, as are most vestiges of past empire. Yet, in order to remain optimistic about humanity, we must pluck the cute bits from these insane, egomaniacal projects and find some joy in those.

Today, we honor TEMPLECORE, specifically as it relates to the failed empires that were spawned on the northern shores of the extended Mediterranean Sea (i.e. including Aegean, Ionian, Tyrrhenian, Adriatic, etc.). Even more specifically: ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME.

WHY?

• If you think “my body is a temple,” then what the f*ck is your home? It’s way more ALREADY LIKE A TEMPLE than your body. So, lean into that?!

• As per, we kind of latch onto things we start seeing again and again, and lots of TEMPLECORE has come up for sale. Plus, when those recurring things intersect with several (past) FOR SCALE themes, we REALLY know a moment is soon to be upon us.

  e.g. the oft-ref’ed (by us) CAPITELLO CHAIR is peak TEMPLECORE

We’ve used GUFRAM’s “Capitello” chair, pictured here at a party in 1974, as fodder for several newsletters: as the right kind of UGLY, in celebration of PLASTIC (its made of polyurethane foam), and we had to hold ourselves back from introducing it once again last week in “CHAIR EXTREMISM”

• Equally, we deplore Empires and ergo support celebrations of their collapse via the appropriation of grand elements of TEMPLE for use in the humble, everyday home

• MOST NOTABLY, HOWEVER: The TEMPLE is all about the RELATIONSHIP OF ELEMENTS, where every little bit is integral to the overall structure and/or meaning-drenched aesthetic. And THAT is some fully-formed spatial sh*t that is a major lessons from temples

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TEMPLECORE IN ACTION

A slightly harder-to-visualize style than perhaps we typically laud, it’s perhaps best to get some action shots of TEMPLECORE so you know what we’re dealing with here:

1- THE COLUMN: IS RUINS

Reception Desk at the Pensacola Place apartments, Chicago, Illinois, by Stanley Tigerman, 1981

The purpose of the column as far as we’re concerned at FOR SCALE the suggestion of RUINS.

In the home of today, the column (non-structural) is best deployed in kind of unusual places and ways so as to suggest REPURPOSE. Because so much of Rome, for example, is built from the crumbled bits of the Rome that came before it, and we’re aiming for that.

Ruins is a great reminder that 1 → Things aren’t forever, 2 → Yes, the world is in ruins, but there’s still some beauty. (AN OPTIMISTIC MESSAGE FROM US!)

N.B.:

There is a full COLUMN REPORT from COLUMN CORRESPONDENT JAKE RODEHUTH-HARRISON - of L.A.’s own HUBBAHUBBA (they do interior design) - to follow.

So extensive is Jake’s column report (in particular his image research) that it will be spilling over into our INSTAGRAM, so watch out for that.

2- THE BODY: IS PERSONIFYING STUFF

We snooped this on the feed of photographer RIK PUSHINSKY

TEMPLECORE is also about THE PERSONIFICATION OF ASPIRATIONS AND FEARS, which humanity/temples have done through all those great statues of Gods and such. And, listen, we’re not strict on this – because of course there’s a lot of non-ripped figures we’d also love to see you incorporate.

• Personify the things you LOVE to give you constant reminders of the person you are or want to be (i.e. affirmations or motivations)

• Personify the things you HATE to neutralize it through possession/imprisonment

DUAL PURPOSE: to add that kind of eerie under-surveillance vibe of holy places – those places, like, WATCH YOU.

For example, this table (below):

→ See it as either something next-to-Godly for you look up to,

→ Or, something you can henceforth dominate by placing it in your service (i.e. eating off it)

Either way, the power dynamics are quite Templecore, because temples are actually super hierarchical.

This is a glorious table at the never-lived-in home of CARLO MOLLINO, architect, whom we’ll return to shortly, because this house is far more TEMPLECORE than you might expect!

INTRODUCING: PERSON TO KNOW

We’d like to introduce you to the designer ANDRÉ CAZENAVE, who is an inspiration to us because he makes lamps in the shapes of like, sea shells, and rocks, and … heads. So clearly design inspiration via a solo game of “Eye Spy” - and THAT is enough to make us love him right there!

Anyway, his circa 1970 lamp called APPOLON (a.k.a. APOLLO, one of the most complex Gods, and one of the sexiest):

The transformative powers fo NIGHT: severed statue head by day, GOD OF LIGHT (as he supposedly is) BY NIGHT.

We’ll come back to CAZENAVE soon, too, because he does a great column.

3- DRAPEY: IS A CELEBRATION OF “NO WORK”

First, an admission: we hate, like, consciously “draped” throws and stuff. (Kris Kardashian is a culprit, see here.)

But, imagine the TEMPLE SCULPTOR, for whom draping was not only a reflection of the fashions of the time (like, we assume?), but also of their immense skills at sculptor-ing.

So, we must find a way to DRAPE in our Templecore home. And here it is…

This is a 1980s snap from the NYC loft of French fashion photog CLAUDE MOUGIN and his wife MAE. It gives us “unused wing of the palace”; it’s “these things need to be reupholstered, but whatever – throw a sheet on it”; it’s the cheapest, laziest way to make everything match.

In TEMPLECORE, draping is actually an indicator and CELEBRATION of the ZERO SKILL.

In the modern temple, nothing can be too much work, because we’re already totally absorbed in constant labor (we won’t get into it too much, but we don’t think we need to point out that everything any of us do these days is in service of some venture capitalist). And, if there is one good think about templecore, it’s that we can honestly throw a sheet over what we’ve got and we’re 1/3 of the way there. PRAISE THE GODS!

And yet, you can also spruce up DRAPEY. For that, we’re back at CARLO MOLLINO’s enigmatic personal home CASA MILLER , in a slightly more formal example of THE DRAPEY:

On Mollino’s super furniture success, fellow Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi writes Mollino “is today remembered above all for his erotic photos, and because the strange furniture he designed, with its bone-like forms, is sold… for stratospheric prices, as if they were paintings by Klee or Picasso.” He was way into bodies!!!!

CRUCIAL DETAILS ABOUT CASA MILLER

Carlo Mollino, who was a mega-talent, apparently never spent a single night in this place, and had kept its existence a total secret from his pals – despite spending YEARS AND YEARS decorating it.

SOME BELIEVE: that Mollino put this thing together “to prepare its maker’s soul for the hereafter” or as like a kind of Egyptian ‘book of the dead’ thing.

(The house is in Turin, and you can visit – the chicest way possible, which is that you have to like, email them and we assume like, kind of beg? We’ll try it out this summer and report back.)

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BODY TANGENT:

For those of you in LOS ANGELES, please do look at some fine design exhibitions on currently (MAY WE RECOMMEND SARAH BURNS at Marta on ROWENA AVE.). For the purposes of BODY, we’d like to show you THIS BUST of MICHAEL B. JORDAN by the wildly talented HOLLY SILIUS on show care of SIZED LTD at the gallery space of the DRIES VAN NOTEN store on La Cienega. (Gosh, that’s all a mouthful.)

The shop boy at Dries told us, with delight, “this is the closest I’ll get to Michael B. Jordan’s nipples!”

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AND NOW, DRUM ROLL PLEASE…

A FLAWLESS, HIGHLY VISUAL TAXONOMY OF COLUMNS CARE OF COLUMN CORRESPONDENT JAKE RODERUTH-HARRISON

OF HUBBAHUBBA DESIGN.

“By definition, a column is an upright pillar, typically cylindrical, supporting an arch, entablature, or other structure or standing alone as a monument, or more simply put a vertical, roughly cylindrical THING. We often see them as a framing device, typically providing the support of something spectacular and through the annals of time, they've been continually reinvented, especially in the postmodern era when iconic silhouettes were up for grabs to be retooled into fresh and unexpected forms.

But why should ancient ruins get to have all the fun, when your space too can scream, "HEY, I'M IMPORTANT, I DESERVE WORSHIP, I AM WORTHY!"

For your consideration, seven unconventional takes on the classic form. Now get to work and create a self-shrine that celebrates the spectacular architecture that is YOU. Because we can all use a little added (and chic) support these days.”

REMINDER: FURTHER VISUALS SHALL BE OFFERED ON INSTAGRAM… if you’re reading this, some are already there!

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ONE: THE PARTIAL COLUMN

Zero Gravity Columns by Robert Mittelstadt in San Francisco, circa (1975-79)

FOR SCALE NOTE:

POP QUIZ: Is a half-column an indication of being half-committed or THE ABSOLUTE MOST COMMITTED to Templecore?

A: The latter! A crumbled column is also very CAPITELLO (as way above) - and in fact that Capitello partial column is part of a cute SET of column BITS, see here.

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TWO: THE MIXED-MEDIA COLUMN

Austrian Traffic Office by Hans Hollein, Vienna, Austria (1997)

FOR SCALE NOTE:

Hans Hollein, Austrian wacko, also gave us THIS, which is possibly one of THE BEST shop fronts in all of human history.

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THREE: THE ILLUMINATED COLUMN

Pair of light up fiberglass and powdered marble beauties by André Cazenave for Singleton.

FOR SCALE NOTE:

ANDRÉ IS BACK, and like the APPOLON, these are kind of one thing by day one thing by night. We found them on 1stDibs, if you’re feeling RICH.

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FOUR: THE HOLLOW COLUMN

Columns by Ikuyo Mitsuhashi

FOR SCALE NOTE:

You know how last week we talked about Chair Extremism? Well, here’s one to add to that, also by I. MITSUHASHI: here.

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FIVE: THE SHRINE COLUMN

This is DRAPEY GUY Claude Mougin’s BEDROOM via FOR SCALE fave source (and clearly also fave source for JAKE, too): International Book of Lofts (1986) by THE Suzanne Slesin.

FOR SCALE NOTE:

As per, LOFTS are the domestic laboratory. Buy THE INTERNATIONAL BOOK OF LOFTS TODAY. ISBN 0-517-56016-X

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SIX: THE JUMBO COLUMN

RARE REFERENCE TO ARCHITECTURE:

M2 Building by Kengo Kuma, Tokyo, Japan (1991) FUN FACT VIA CORRESPONDENT JAKE: Originally designed as a Mazda showroom, it now operates as a funeral hall. 

FOR SCALE NOTE:

We hadn’t yet talked about the importance of SCALE, which is: you can make this sh*t GRAND AS ALL F*CK if you really want to give into the style. Kengo does that here.

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SEVEN: THE SOFT COLUMN

Plush Columns by Barcelona-based artist Sergio Roger

FOR SCALE NOTE:

Sergio Roger is a babe, and also he did some plush BUSTS, too. If you want a full SOFT TEMPLE.

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A FINAL NOTE: TEMPLECORE INSANE CINEMA

If you want a kind of wacky, Sicilian island interiors moment, that has some elements of TEMPLECORE, may we suggested 1968’s “BOOM!”. Which John Waters refers to as “the best failed art movie ever!” (← that clip is 8 mins, and really worth watching), and calls Elizabeth Taylor’s performance “the ultimate drag queen role”:

This is like, maybe the least kooky moment.

Until next week.

LOVE AND GOOD LUCK,