Design Criticism: SVA's Reading Series: Akiko Busch, Paul Lukas and others

SVA's Design Criticism reading series: Akiko Busch, Paul Lukas and others dish food-related design criticism.

Paul Lukas is the former marketing columnist for Fortune magazine and the author of Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure (Crown, 1997). His related column on design website Core 77 dissects the cultural implications of consumer products---ranging from oddball foodstuffs like Heinz EZ Squirt Blastin' Green Ketchup to self-proclaimed "classic" commodities like Coca-Cola. Several years worth of these product investigations are collected in his fanzine, Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption.  In addition, Paul writes about brand histories for FSB magazine and travel for Money magazine. In 1999, he began writing Uni Watch, a column about sports uniforms which ran in The Village Voice and Slate before appearing in its current spot on
ESPN.com in 2004.

Akiko Busch has written about design and culture since 1979. She is the author of Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live and The Uncommon Life of Common Objects:  Essays on Design an the Everyday. Her most recent book, Nine Ways to Cross a River, a collection of essays about swimming across American Rivers, was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury/USA. She was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine for 20 years. Her essays have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues, and she has written articles for Architectural Record, Elle, Home, House & Garden, Metropolitan Home, London Financial Times, The New York Times, Traditional Home, Travel & Leisure and Wallpaper, among other publications. In Fall, 2005 she served as a Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair for the Visual Arts at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She has lectured widely on architecture and design and has appeared on public radio in the U.S. and Canada.  Currently, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times Sunday regional section.