Top Design contestant Teresa Keegan (at left) and her "Modern Zen" aesthetic were sent packing in the most recent episode of Bravo's reality competition show, but Keegan took the news with the same calm and upbeat perspective that she brought to the show's grueling challenges ("design triathalon," anyone?). How did she cope with live-in competition and shooting days that lasted as long as 22 hours? "Somehow, no matter how awful I felt physically or mentally, I kept my focus and smiled," Keegan tells us. "I took it whether I was barked at, ignored, treated nicely or badly." The strategy meant that she didn't make any enemies on set—or friends, she points out—and helped her to learn something along the way. "I had the opportunity to discover that quietness does not mean weakness and that talent shines through the darkness," says Keegan.

Her refreshingly relaxed approach may have something to do with good role models. Keegan, who currently runs her own design firm, has worked with 2008 National Design Award winner Tom Kundig and raves about the architect's vision, talent, enthusiasm, and the sense of fun that he injects into his work. "I remember his story about the design of a soap dish in the powder room of a client's home," says Keegan. "He purposely made it awkward to use by making it unusually shaped, so people would struggle to get a slippery bar of soap back into this small, strangely shaped dish." And so she'll keep on smiling. "Designers and architects can get caught up with the stiff, serious side of design rather than realizing it is a fun process that does not have boundaries."

Previously on UnBeige:

Don't forget that Thursday is the last day to enter our UnBeige "Name That..." Contest, in which you answer the following simple, three-pronged question by e-mailing your response to unbeige AT mediabistro.com (subject line: Contest!):

You have been tasked with naming a) a dog, b) a band, and c) a child after commercially available typefaces. What name(s) would you choose?

Wonder why everyone around you is so sad to see Philippe de Montebello leave the Met at the end of the year? A great, lengthy piece by Jed Perl in the most recent issue of the Atlantic profiles the famous director of that most famous of museums, discussing the man himself, what he did for the Met, and his legacy within the art world. It's also a great look at how the museum industry changed from when de Montebello came into the scene back in the early 60s and where he helped take it, particularly in his battle to maintain some integrity when many other museums were eager to play "the game of 'guess which shows will fill the till.'" Here's a bit about his management style:

Unlike most museums, the Metropolitan has no exhibition committee. Curators go straight to de Montebello, whose adventurous spirit (he has been known to add last-minute shows to already overcrowded schedules) makes for an environment in which creative people flourish. People like Carlos Picon, who installed the new Greek and Roman galleries, and Helen Evans, who organized "The Glory of Byzantium," not only are formidable scholars, they also have a sixth sense for the most effective way to pre sent challenging material.

Our prayers are with you, Thomas Campbell. You have some big shoes to fill.

Returning to a story from the other day about the flooding at Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House here in rural Illinois, the organization that runs the historic house, Landmark Illinois, has begun to use their site as a blog with updates on the restoration process. And it isn't just "things are looking better every day!" sorts of posts. Sure to be of great relief to all the Farnsworth fans who watched helplessly as their icon drowned, they look like they're set to lay it all out and be completely forthcoming with all the details, including, most recently, talking about the troubles they've run into with their insurance provider and all of the number of problems the flood water caused, such as:

The most significant and costly damage has occurred around the core. We will have to reconstruct the three doors (two bathroom doors and the mechanical room door) as they have swollen and can no longer close. The wing walls have expanded and the seams are gaping, the core has some significant areas of delamination, and what appears to be glue induced discoloration of the veneer below the flood line. The kitchen cabinets are showing rust and there are still several locations we haven't managed to investigate because the analysis requires further deconstruction.

They're also asking for donations, which we know we just talked about a minute ago, with patrons no longer having any money to give to cultural outlets, but if you have the means, it's a very worthwhile cause that's near and dear to the UnBeige heart. What's more, if you're somewhere nearby and donate a certain amount, they'll lead you on a special tour, showing you the damage and what they're doing to fix it.

You've probably noticed that we, along with numerous other sites, have been talking about Le Corbusier a lot more than would traditionally be expected. This is, of course, due to the recent launch of the first exhibition on the famous architect in many years, located in the crypt of the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral in the UK. To give you a sense of the exhibit, we thought we'd offer up a quick rundown of the recent reviews, now that they're starting to trickle in. First up is the local press, the Liverpool Daily Press, which spends it's time talking to museum officials about the exhibit and describes what's there. It's interesting, but certainly short and sweet. For the real meat and potatoes, turn first to Jay Merrick's review in the Independent, which not just gets into detail about what exactly you're looking at, but into the significance of what it meant to Le Corbusier, his career, and the idea of "architecture as art" in general. If you're one for putting your brain cap on to do some thinking about these sorts of things, it's well worth your time. Finally, we turn to the one and only Edwin Heathcote, who muses on some similar terrain, but also focuses on delivering more of a review toward the end, saying that it's perfect for Corbusier fans, but really doesn't spend enough time focused on what happened after he'd died in 1965, both the cultish celebration of his work and the vilifying of it as well. In total, all well worth your time, and see how we either just saved you plane fare to the UK, or persuaded you to book a trip to go check it out? Either way: you're welcome.

Sorry to keep bringing you down and ruining your morning buzz (why you're drinking at 5am is something we'll get into later), but here's some more bad museum news to add to our reports last week. The Boston Globe has this gloomy report that museums' financial woes don't just stop at the big corporate donor, but will trickle down and affect their annual hauls from the bigger, private donations and likely even with the small change donors who drop a few coins in their visits (assuming they can even visit in the first place and pay entrance fees). It's a pretty somber story and one that doesn't paint a pretty picture of things to come. Granted, we know that the financial markets pretty much operate on emotional levels and we're just making it worse by saying all these depressing things, but hey, what can you do, right? Here's a bit about not wanting to even talk to donors right now:

One thing arts officials are not doing is pressuring potential donors.

"Because so much of the fund-raising everywhere in the last five years has come from the financial world, I think it will color all of your planning," said Hans Morris, president of Visa Inc. and head of Mass MoCA's finance committee. "If I had [potential donor] who had been at [collapsed firm] Lehman [Brothers], I wouldn't call right now."

You've heard UnBeige's take on Designisms past, and so for the event's highly anticipated three-peat, we dispatched designer and blogger Prescott Perez-Fox to provide a designer's perspective on the evening, which buzzed with excitement for design, social responsibility, and the then-imminent vice-presidential debate. Here's his take on Designism 3.0:

Last Thursday, I ventured out to The Art Directors Club to attend Designism 3.0, the third annual event to celebrate design for social change. Not having attended previous sessions, I wasn't entirely sure what the program aimed to cover. After all, "social activism and instigating change through media" sounds rather lofty. However it soon became clear that the topic at hand was simply ideas. Simple ideas that help people.

While the event was billed as "an evening of discussion, debate, and presentations," it felt more like a mini conference, with case studies and speeches on topics that range from water purification to the latest in fashions for the homeless. The venue was filled beyond capacity, with many having to stand or else enjoy obstructed views.

The evening began with Core 77's Allan Chochinov schooling us all on the errors of our ways with the "Five Imperatives of Design." After seeing the ugly truth of our disposable culture, the stage was set for what would be one inspirational idea after another. IDEO's Aquaduct water purification bicycle (pictured above) struck me as especially brilliant for its obvious simplicity—no manual required.

Read on as Prescott covers the flashes of brilliance exhibited in the Designism 3.0 "lightning round," Steve Heller's brilliant propagandizing, and what it all means.

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Thanks to sister blog FishbowlNY's champion Twittering from the American Magazine Conference in San Francisco, we know that New York's Barbara Kruger-annotated photo of Eliot Spitzer has bested Todd Eberle's shot of Marc Jacobs as Andy Warhol (Interview) and cartoonist Barry Blitt's illustration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Senator Larry Craig (The New Yorker) to be named Cover of the Year in the third annual Best Cover Contest organized by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

The March 24 New York magazine cover (pictured above) also bested Blitt's 3am phone call New Yorker cover and two others to take the Best News Cover prize, and its five-letter coverline—"BRAIN," in Futura Bold Italic—nabbed Best Coverline honors, trumping WIRED's "Evil Genius" caption of a barbed wire-ringed Apple logo and The New York Times Magazine's "Oprah. Martha. Tyra." Meanwhile, our pick for Best Fashion Cover—Paolo Pellegrin's stark runway shot for New York Look—triumphed, albeit in a tie with Vanity Fair's Style issue cover, featuring Gisele Bundchen helpfully demonstrating how to exit a limo when wearing a very short, spangled Roberto Cavalli dress. Get a closer look at all the winners and finalists here and head to FishbowlNY for ongoing coverage of the annual magazine confab.

No, it's not Zaha Hadid's latest concept chair, but there is rapid prototyping and automotive paint involved. The fiery squiggle pictured at right is one of the ten recently announced finalists for the CityRacks Design Competition cooked up by the New York City Department of Transportation and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to develop a functional, innovative bike rack design that will raise the profile of cycling in the city. Having admired all ten finalist designs on display in the Cooper-Hewitt courtyard (see them installed and ready for use at New York's Astor Place), we were particularly intrigued by this one, designed by Francis Anthony Bitonti of FADarch in Brooklyn. "Alien is probably the best word to describe it," Bitonti told us of his creation, built from a modular system of parts using custom-developed software. "Because it lacks familiarity, the object appears foreign." And fascinating.

Bitonti's design process is entirely digital. "I use animation software to develop the forms and create an aesthetic sensibility for the project," he said. "I then write a series of simple computer programs that combine these objects in different ways. These algorithms help me produce complex patterns that would be very time-consuming and difficult to produce any other way." Then it's off to the 3-D printer, where the alien comparisons continue. "Data is extracted directly from the 3-D CAD file and is used as instructions for a robotic arm that fuses together layers of material."

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Speaking of greening things up and the greening LEEDening of the world, we ran across this interesting press release about a massive, very green production studio complex being built in Plymouth, Massachusetts called Plymouth Rock Studios. Headed up by mega-firm Gensler, the campus will sit on 240 acres and feature things like 14 sound stages, a hotel, office buildings, theaters, and so on. Just gigantic. And they're making sure it's all as green as it possibly can, with their LEED standards in place and even registered with the United States Green Building Council, giving it the possible title of "world's first completely 'green' studio complex." That it's being built in Massachusetts confuses us a bit, as we're always a little concerned when gigantic production houses sprout up outside of LA's grip, but hey, if they can do it and make it all work somehow, we give them the official UnBeige blessing and wish them many good fortunes.

Are you still saying "lead" instead of "LEED"? If so, and you're in New York this week, you'd do best by hiding under a blanket and staying inside your home, because otherwise you'll likely look quite the fool as the fall-winter line-up kicks off tonight for the series "What is Green Architecture?" sponsored by the Goethe-Institute. This first in a three-evening collection of events is called "Green is the New Black" and it will feature host Andres Lepik and guest Steffen Legmann, in all the way from Australia, who are set to talk about their work in building completely zero-emission urban developments and discussing the venue itself, the first LEED-certified cultural venue in the whole of New York, the Galapagos Art Space. Future events, on October 14th and December 4th, respectively, are set to include Friedrich von Borries talking about the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale and later Stefan Benisch. Here are the details for tonight:

Monday, October 6th
7pm
Galapagos Art Space
16 Main Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn

Is the gloved-one, fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, taking a page from the Philippe Starck playbook entitled "Talk About How Disappointed You Are In You"? Well, certainly they're both more than a little nutty, but when Lagerfeld says he's "suffering from an overdose of myself" and worries that perhaps he's become too overexposed and sought after far too much, we feel it's probably maybe just an instance where the world of fashion get very near to a sense of "humble" but maintains their ironic detachment from the real world (like when certain artists complain that it's just so hard being a genius). But we're always one to give Lagerfeld the benefit of the doubt, as we still maintain that soft spot for the guy after reading that New Yorker profile on him from a while back. Here's a bit:

With his trademark white ponytail and dark glasses, the pop culture icon is the subject of an umpteenth documentary, to be shown on French television on Sunday, and even features in the latest installment of the video game "Grand Theft Auto."

"I'm suffering from an overdose of myself," Lagerfeld told reporters after the show. "At a certain point, you ask yourself, am I a puppet or not?"

We've always been fascinated by retail Target's story, and we're not just saying that because it makes a nice segue into this story. When we first encountered one of their outlets, some fifteen or so years ago, it was a dumpy, nothing-special K-Mart clone. Then, almost in a blink of an eye, it became this huge, important, flashy empire. And despite being a discount retailer, they somehow figured out how to harness design and make it work for them, instead of their competitors, like Sears or the aforementioned K-Mart, who seemed to exist purely to punish anything even remotely related to quality design. But now it looks like we might be in the third chapter of this "rags to riches to rags" story, as seen in this BusinessWeek story about how Target is beginning to suffer due to this financial hiccup we find ourselves in the middle of. Consumers have suddenly started to shift back to the less showy stores, possibly because Target's design-focus has started to backfire (e.g., people begin to think of Target as a more expensive retailer, due to the perceived quality of their merchandise). So what does Target do during this decline? Well, for now, they've apparently pulled an Obama and are staying cool and collected in the face of pressure, deciding to go full-steam ahead with planning to focus even more heavily on design and continuing to hire even more "name" designers to create products for their stores. A gutsy move and we'll be anxious to see what happens.

Upon winning the Technology Entertainment Design (TED) Prize in 2007, photojournalist James Nachtwey made a wish: to break a story that he was working on "in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age." Today Nachtwey's TED Prize wish comes true with the unveiling of his stirring black-and-white photographs of people around the world who are affected by extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), a mutated form of TB that is found in 49 countries and responsible for more than 20,000 preventable deaths annually.

"Health authorities know what needs to be done, but politicians and the public at large don't have XDR-TB on their radar," wrote TED curator Chris Anderson in an e-mail sent to TED suporters this afternoon. "That's what James Nachtwey's powerful TED Prize wish is all about." Tonight the photos will be projected in public places in 50 cities worldwide, and the next issue of Time magazine will feature a seven-page feature on XDR-TB. Meanwhile, Radical Media has created the below video slideshow as well as a print campaign around the project's Mammalfish-built website; visit today to spread the word.

Okay, finally, here's one thing we can return to without saying that you need to clear your frontal lobes of. A while back, we'd told you about the messy custody battle between Jeff Koons and his ex-wife, the former porn star/Italian parliament member, Ilona Staller. Well, it's finally over and while Koons can command millions in art sales, that sort of power apparently doesn't carry over well into the courts, who decided in favor of Staller:

Koons claimed that Italian authorities breached his right to respect of his family life by allowing Staller to keep their son in Italy, blocking him from visiting the U.S. and awarding his ex-wife custody, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, said today in a statement on its Web site.

Italian authorities "made every effort to protect the higher interests of the child" in "a difficult situation marked by constant disagreement between the parties and their inability to put their son's well-being first," the court said.

If you want the full legal notice, it can be found here.