Keehnan Konyha of 2THEWALLS, guest post on YHBHS

"But beneath the brash exteriors, Memphis is a philosophy of the senses—one that eschews an overly academic approach to design fixated on utility in favor of engaging the senses directly."











Keehnan Konyha writes:


Rather than single out a specific favorite collection or piece here, I wanted instead to shine a light on Sottsass' unique worldview. The images attached are from The Curious Mr. Sottsass, and were taken by Ettore himself. The texts are by Sottsass and by Barbara Radice, taken from Memphis: Research, Experiences, Result, Failures and Successes of New Design, Rizzoli's 1984 survey of the group's efforts.

Thirty years on, it's easy to read Memphis as dated, shallow and reactionary; a loud, goofy exercise in upending what was then the status quo through the use of plastic laminates and a (still) shocking color palate. But beneath the brash exteriors, Memphis is a philosophy of the senses—one that eschews an overly academic approach to design fixated on utility in favor of engaging the senses directly. One that understands beauty and function not as fixed points, but as fluid concepts that shift and redefine themselves according to their times. "

















(From Memphis (Radice, 1984), pg 142)

Generally speaking the Memphis idea descends from Sottsass. Those who know him may discover many of Memphis's cultural roots simply by tracing Sottsass's career. While still quite young Sottsass learned that the "beauty," "formal correctness," "coherence," "function," even the "utility" of an object were not absolute, metaphysical values, but that they responded to a culture or a system, and varied in accordance with historical and cultural conditions.

So he began to look at architecture and design as sign systems, and to catalogue styles, colors, decorations, and formal tendencies statistically, in an attempt to understand what impact they could have or might have had in the context which they arose, and why.

Sottsass's idea was not to arrive at the point of inventing a new style or a new formal program, but to discover how to use and apply this catalogue of signs in different circumstances and situations. Sottsass's uniqueness lies in the fact that his work never refers to an intellectual scheme, but to a sort of Morse code of sensory seductions transmitted to the body through physical messages (light, shadow, color, warmth, roundness, weight, thickness, fragility, etc.), rather than to the brain through cultural patterns.

Those who follow Sottsass pursue neither a style, nor an ideology. They adhere to a very simple principle; a principle which is really very ancient in the West as in the East: the world is perceived through the senses. Moving away from functionalism means taking one's distance from Cubism, the Bauhaus, Suprematism, Futurism, De Stijl—all movements that accepted the idea of an objective reality or "truth," and embraced a heroic and reformatory moral system in the pursuit of alibis and solutions of a spiritual, mental, logical, and ideological kind.

"I AM AN IDIOT" says Sottsass," and I've always said the problem is to eat, drink, sex, sleep, and stay down low, low, low. The world is an area of sensory recovery. I'm not talking about an image but about an attitude." And Sottsass goes on: "World culture today is concerned with the American vision of comfort. Today and for many hundreds of years to come humanity will pursue earthly comfort. Comfort means to possess warmth, coolness, softness, light, shade, air-travel, Polynesian spaces or Alaska. To have money means to possess sensory possibilities, not power. Sensoriality destroys ideology, it is anarchical, private; it takes account of consumerism and consumption, it is not moralistic, it opens up new avenues."

M E M P H I S originated from these intuitions and visions. Not from an aggressive, controversial outlook or a desire to invent new supports, monuments, truths or programs, but from a generic, biological, EXISTENTIAL HAPPINESS; from the consciousness of life as an indifferent cosmic-historic event and from the desire to taste it, consume it, communicate it physically, almost chemically or molecularly, as a vibrant, neutral, enticing, seductive presence.

(text quoted from Memphis (Radice, 1984), pg 142)

Do you read 2thewalls? you should! thank you keehnan......

2THEWALLS is an ongoing experiment in the documentation and representation of interior experience. 2THEWALLS attempts to examine decoration outside the constructs of style, taste, and era. 2THEWALLS welcomes collaboration of all kinds; please contact info@2thewalls.com.

2THEWALLS is Keehnan Konyha. Brooklyn, New York.

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Y H B H S (card catalog) selection 33

Keehnan Konyha, 2THEWALLS, decorator, New York

"To my fifteen-year-old self, this was beauty and power. These were people in absolute control of their lives and of how they chose to present them."


" There is an intrinsic and transformative magic in our ability to shape our environments—markedly more so when we are restricted to available materials. "

- Keehnan Konyha

The Essential House Book, by Terence Conran
Three Rivers Press; First American Edition edition, October 18, 1994

"Living in unsatisfactory surroundings doesn't necessarily promote a desire for change; it can just as easily blunt the awareness of how improvements could be made." (p. 84)

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Keehnan Konyha writes, "I grew up in a trailer park—two, actually—in rural Washington. The second for over a decade, until I moved out at seventeen. As an adult there are innumerable reasons I am grateful for my childhood, but as a teenager, it wasn't ideal.

My mother, a single parent, experienced long stretches of darkness. Periods when rooms would become so saturated with fleas and teeming with garbage they couldn't be opened; when dishes would sit, dirty, for weeks on the floor until they were eventually thrown out. To experience this as an adolescent, already in a state of profound powerlessness, was paralyzing. I was mortified not only by the traditionally unenviable state of my exterior living situation, but by my lack of control over its interior as well.

It's hard to say when Terence Conran's The Essential House Book appeared, though I must have been about fifteen. A Costco markdown gift from my grandmother, shelved with the "good books" and enshrined behind the glass of the MDF-and-white-laminate Levitz media unit that was the only piece of furniture ever purchased new during my youth.

'If anything good can be said to come from economic hardship, it has to be a rejection of the artificial values which accompany an inflated sense of wealth." ( p. 117)

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I became obsessed, the aspirational nature of interior photography, and the world of shelter magazines in general absolutely lost on me. Here were people, families, living in homes. Not wood-paneled, corrugated aluminum-sided boxes, but cabins, lofts, converted garages. To my fifteen-year-old self, this was beauty and power. These were people in absolute control of their lives and how they chose to present them.

I began to realize that my bedroom was a world I could control. I started to liberate gallons of forgotten house paint from neighboring sheds. I covered furniture from dumpsters in contact paper, began lining drawers and decoupaging chests in tear sheets from old issues of Wired and Raygun. I reupholstered a broken chaise lounge in clearance sale leopard-print flannel sheets from J.C. Penny's using picture hanging nails and thumbtacks.

And I would lie on the floor for hours, The Essential House Book, the IKEA catalog, and a notebook spread out in front of me, designing and redesigning rooms I did not, could not access.

"Homemaking might have a deeply unfashionable ring about it today, but it may be that in mastering the art of shaping a home around our individual and family lifestyle, instead of trying to fit the glossy dictates of magazine and showroom within our own restricted walls, we will rediscover the power of domestic well-being." p. 117

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The contradiction here is that this isn't a book about decoration. Ostensibly, The Essential House Book is about the fundamental architectures of home, its focus primarily the bones of space, structural function and flow. The elements of pure decoration it contains are superfluous in the scheme of the book as a whole.

For most of us, the anatomical elements of our living space are beyond our control. We live in cramped and poorly aging apartments; we have roommates; we have security deposits and double mortgages. At fifteen, and even now at almost thirty, ripping up the kitchen floor and retiling isn't an option.

What this book taught me is that it doesn't have to be. Decoration is a very real sort of alchemy. Painting an object, a wall, is literal world building; Mod Podge is power in situations where there is little. Even if accidentally, what I gleaned from The Essential House Book is that decoration can never be only about appearance. There is an intrinsic and transformative magic in our ability to shape our environments—markedly more so when we are restricted to available materials.

Viewing these images again after so many years, I find myself embarrassed by the degree to which I've internalized them and their palate of chalky pastels, draped couches and faux-humble mattresses on floors. I look around at my apartment to see rows of shirts on wall-mounted hooks and leopard-print throw pillows, and wonder if I haven't been rebuilding the same room for myself since I was fifteen.

Keehnan Konyha is a decorator based in Brooklyn, New York. Established in 2008, 2THEWALLS is an ongoing experiment in the documentation and representation of interior experience. 2THEWALLS attempts to examine decoration outside the constructs of style, taste, and era."



I received the above amazing letter from Keehnan Konyha last month with his entry for the YHBHS card catalog. Keehnan's site, 2THEWALLS has influenced how I view interiors as much as any design magazine. If you are not familiar with his work, then this entry is a perfect introduction to his thought process and how he views rooms & spaces... His take on interiors and dwellings are triggered by and collaged with memories, emotions, and historical references. Sources galore and rightfully exposed..... Decoupaged-dubstep dioramas of foyers and living rooms. A true collision of art, literature and film... And much more.

Thank you Keehnan for keeping me inspired, and continually thinking of new and old spaces.

-David John, YHBHS

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