Design

Trying to find out about the media storage unit that was pictured on the front page of the Home section May 30. Do you know where it was purchased? The article featured Kristan Cunningham, the designer from "Design on a Dime," and her kitchen redesign. I could find no mention of the media cabinet and the book shelves above it. Did they come together? Stasia Sinik Via e-mail Editor's note: The Danish wall unit was from Floor-Model's North Hollywood warehouse, open by appointment.

Dish Network Corp. said it has been trying to work around a patent owned by TiVo Inc. of Alviso, Calif., while challenging a ruling to shut down its digital-video recording service. Dish "is investigating other potential design-around options, but at this stage, does not know whether a further design-around is even possible," the Englewood, Colo., company said in a filing in federal court in Marshall, Texas.

New York-based artist Peter Macapia comes to art making with weighty credentials, a vision that spans multiple fields -- including visual art, design, architecture, urban planning, geometry, physics and mathematics -- and a theoretical vocabulary that's likely to challenge even the most determined layman. His CV, indeed, is a little dizzying. He has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, a master's in history from Harvard and a PhD in theory and criticism from Columbia. (His advisor was critical heavyweight Rosalind Krauss.

Russia has seen its share of puppet regimes but nothing quite like Rogue Artists Ensemble's "Gogol Project" at the Bootleg Theater. Combining masked performers, digital animation, immersive sound and music, and diverse styles of puppetry, this spectacular new piece deftly balances flights of whimsy and depths of darkness in three classic short stories by 19th century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Visual invention dazzles as director Sean T. Cawelti marshals a gifted design team to drive the storytelling.

In a sprawling plant on the eastern edge of Carson, the light-rail passenger cars of Los Angeles' future are being welded, molded and riveted into shape. The cars--the first such vehicles made in the United States in 50 years, their builders say--will be faster and sleeker than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's existing light-rail cars. They will be quieter and more automated. And they will be called L.A. Standard Cars.

The publisher of Consumer Reports on Tuesday charged that 1995-96 Isuzu Troopers and 1996 Acura SLXs can roll over during quick turns at low speed and demanded a recall of the sport-utility vehicles. "To consumers who are considering buying one of these models, our advice is don't--not until a satisfactory repair is made," said R. David Pittle, Consumer Reports' technical director. Consumers Union, the nonprofit Yonkers, N.Y.

Proposed design changes for Boeing 737 jetliners prompted by the still unexplained crash of one of the planes near Pittsburgh, Pa., two years ago were announced by the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday. The most important proposals involve the rudder system of the aircraft. The rudder system remains the prime suspect in the crash of USAir Flight 427, but the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board have never determined exactly what happened.

There's good news for kids (and for those who are kids at heart) addicted to high-performance CD-ROM video games: The thousands of hours spent trying to beat the bad guys and get to the next level are valuable experience for employment in the growing video game industry. Just ask Jeremy Airey, 23, whose parents used to complain that he was wasting his time playing video games. After he graduated from high school, Airey got a job testing games for bugs at Interplay Productions in Irvine.

As the 20th century draws to a close, we seem to have entered a more forgiving period, aesthetically speaking. The heated conflict between those who believe that ornament is, as Viennese architect Adolf Loos once put it, "crime" and those who hunger for floral motifs and cornices has lapsed into a state of deetente. A case in point: the Getty Center, which perches the ridge line of the Santa Monica Mountains like an over-nourished Italian hill town.

You know how your mother told you to throw out your comic books and stop playing all those video games or you'd never amount to anything? Boy, was she wrong. The boom in multimedia companies--the firms that make computer graphics, CD-ROM games and animation for films and television--has created a voracious market for talent. Especially young talent familiar with art, pop culture and games, who can draw and who know computers.