I spent the end of last week in Lisbon, where I had been invited to speak on a panel at Experimenta Design 2011, the city’s design biennial. My theme, and the theme of the biennial as a whole, was “Useless Architecture.” Or was it “Use less”? No design conference is complete without punctuation trickery. I found Useless to be an excellent jumping off point for my talk, in which I tried to identify what recent criticism, and what recent architecture, could actually prove Useful. It seemed to go over well.

In the latest installment of Lunch with the Critics, our intrepid interlocutors travel to Lower Manhattan to view the exhibition Supertall! at the Skyscraper Museum. After touring the show, they walked north to the Winter Garden in Battery Park City, where they sat down to compose this dialogue in the shadow of New York City’s rising entry into the supertall field, One World Trade Center.

This month’s issue of Fast Company, “The United States of Design,” includes a profile of Bill Moggridge, director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, co-founder of IDEO, and all around design world untouchable. The profile, by Jessica Lustig (a friend and former colleague), focuses on Moggridge’s big plans for the museum, which variously and vaguely include business partnerships, hands on programs, becoming a clearinghouse for other design organizations, and a better digital presence. What the article can’t, and Moggridge apparently won’t address, is what he’s actually going to do with the museum as a museum. When he lists the museum’s constituencies, designers come last.

My first blog was a Tumblr, A Bit Late, which I started in June 2009. I picked Tumblr because the New York Times told me it had the nicest templates, and I proceeded to go about using it all wrong. It was weeks before a friend suggested I include photos on my posts. I wrote at length. I never used tags. I completely failed to comprehend what Tumblr was good for. As I’ve said before, I’m a Late Adopter.

But midway through last year, when I started blogging for Design Observer, I had a Tumblr epiphany. I began following more of what people call “single-serving Tumblrs”: 1950s ephemera (heavy on glamor), Scandinavian home design, brutalism, architecture everything. What was I supposed to be doing on Tumblr? Admiring the images, and reacting. I was supposed to like every Paul Rudolph and Kevin Roche building that filtered across my dashboard. I was supposed to reblog Jane Austen board games, Almanzo Wilder’s homestead application, Mies’s Resor House drawing. Below each image I just said what I felt, in two sentences or less. It was the equivalent of Twitter criticism. My Tumblr is far from single-serving, but it has now become a visual map of my interests, notes on my enthusiasms, in a less self-conscious (and less articulate) way than this blog. There’s something so pleasant about seeing wonderful things, new things and old things, with so little effort.

“Stop That” is a recurring series I just invented. Previous entries include “Hands Off the Icons,” a Dwell column in which I begged the furniture manufacturers of the world to stop painting Eames green and Le Corbusier pink (latest outrage = Xtreames, which offers to pimp your Lounge with olive leather and stripes to benefit the armed forces). And my Twitter war against Architect Barbie, which all the good intentions in the world can’t save from being a bad idea.

This week, minimalist posters, a design blog meme whose time is over. As I tweeted last week, on a day which brought me both minimalist Philosophy posters and minimalist Game of Thrones posters, “It’s official: there’s nothing you can’t make a minimalist poster for, and soon there will be nothing without one.” What was, the first time I saw it applied to Mad Men, a charming exercise in reducing archetypes to their essence, has now become an attention-getting tic. After Mad Men (at least on my Dashboard) came Albert Exergian’s more ambitious series on TV shows. And Marvel superheros. And fairy tales.

Have you ever fallen in love with a fork? I did, on a recent Friday at Brooklyn pie mecca Four & Twenty Blackbirds. The fork in question had four long, evenly spaced tines, a slim stem that rested lightly on my fingers, and a tapered end that came to a petal–like point. On the stem, more abstracted petals, with tiny berries or buds peeking out between them. It was feminine without being fussy, modern without being clunky, and very, very nice to eat (buttermilk chess) pie from.

So nice, in fact, that I wanted to take the fork home with me. I thought about putting it in my pocket— Four & Twenty Blackbirds is the sort of place that prides itself on mismatched everything, so they would never miss it—but then I would have served guilt with every meal. So I just turned it over and made a mental note of the brand on the back: Community.

We buy so many products for the kitchen with our eyes, from mixers to cutting boards, china to coffeemakers. My moment with the fork made me remember a basic principle of industrial design: how it feels. You wouldn’t buy a tool for the garden without first testing its weight, its grip, how easy it is to squeeze, and in truth, you shouldn’t buy something as simple as a fork without touching the merchandise and asking some questions.

In 1951, the Walker Art Center’s Everyday Art Quarterly devoted an entire issue to the history, use, and design of the knife, fork, and spoon, and the authors break it down like this: “The knife, fork, and spoon are HAND tools; they should fit in the HAND, work in the HAND, be comfortable in the HAND, balance in the HAND.” I hadn’t been thinking about any of this when I forked up that piece of pie, but this one stopped me mid–bite, it felt so right, so balanced between tines and handle. The EAQ continues, “The fork and spoon are used in the MOUTH; they should fit the MOUTH, carry proper quantities of food to the MOUTH, be comfortable to the MOUTH.” My fork’s four tines were long, straight along the edge to cut through the piecrust, pointy at the ends to spear pastry and custard. I knew I was holding a piece of good design. I had to find out more about it.

When I got home I tried various Google searches: community and flatware; community and pattern and silver. I discovered that Community was the first line of silver plate produced by Oneida Ltd., which was founded in 1880 and remains a well–known name in the tabletop industry today. But Community made tens of patterns and unlike some, my fork didn’t have the pattern name stamped on the back. Many sites just list pattern names, or only have a few photos, but Copper Lamp, a store in Dallas, has an online visual dictionary of silverware. I scrolled the list, looking for my petals, and found them halfway down. My perfect fork was Lady Hamilton, 1932.

That it was from the 1930s made perfect sense. My previous favorite silver pattern, Stieff’s Betsy Patterson—my grandmother’s choice for her wedding set;—was also issued in 1932 and has a lot in common with Lady Hamilton, notably that petal–like end. The year 1932 puts both patterns squarely in the Streamline era, when American design was moving toward modernism by stripping off historical detail and simplifying the outlines of everything from refrigerators to toasters to forks. My fork is a little longer and leaner than its historical predecessors, and that petal detail is transitional. Older flatware would have had actual flowers and shells on the handle. Community’s Paul Revere (1927) has a simple shape and a flat profile, but its handle is decorated with a pinprick design that looks like lace. The suggestion rather than the literal depiction of flowers is what made Lady Hamilton look new in the 1930s, while encouraging the newlywed that she wasn’t moving too far from her mother’s pattern.

Vintage Lady Hamilton ads tell the story of the pattern’s intended audience, and that audience’s perceived need for reassurance. “The happiest brides have Community,” reads one 1948 ad, showing a bride with a daisy headpiece. The tagline is, “If it’s Community…it’s correct!” A Christmas version includes a “handwritten” card, mentioning the company’s “famous good taste,” prices “in everybody’s reach,” and service for eight, in 1949, for “as low as $49.75.”

That’s the other thing about my perfect fork. It cost me under $2, less than the piece of pie. After I had identified the pattern, I went straight to eBay. Service for ten, in 2011, could be had for approximately $80. If Lady Hamilton had been a sterling–silver pattern it would have been significantly more expensive, and much heavier, but silver plate has the same warm cast as real silver. Compare that to the stainless steel offerings at Crate & Barrel, put on the registry by many a contemporary bride. (Grooms, too.) Prices range from $19.95 to $99.95 for one place setting, or five pieces. That means a minimum of $200 for the cheapest set. Flatware is one of the easiest things to buy used and online, because a maker’s pattern is instantly recognizable, and once you run the utensil through the dishwasher, it’s clean. (Silver in the dishwasher is heretical to some, but my grandmother swears it keeps it polished.)

Looking at Crate & Barrel’s offerings, you can also see how fashion–driven flatware is. Judging from the Community ads, Lady Hamilton was one of the plainest patterns on offer in the 1940s, but it seems wildly decorative today. The distinguishing characteristic of most contemporary patterns is silhouette. Square end or round, traditional flare or straight stem, bulbous or flat? I would trace C&B’s (and many of its competitors’) overall aesthetic back to Calvin Klein, who entered the home market in 1995 and made it more manly and more minimalist. The majority of the patterns are chunky, as if to indicate that this is the set for steak, not salad. If you want something with a little detail your choices are limited to faux bamboo, faux hammered (as if the pieces were handmade), or a fork fluted like a column. (I can’t imagine that feels good in the hand.)

But I suspect the chunky–silverware era is coming to a close. Design trends tend to trickle down from the expensive and avant–garde to the mass market, and the most stunning new silver in recent memory is Dutch designer Marcel Wanders’ Jardin d’Eden for Christofle ($1,295 per place setting). A wallpaper–like carpet of blooms runs up the handle and over the back of the spoon, and it is available with or without gold accents. It is not my taste, but I do like the shape of the fork, with its slim shaft and close–set tines. The wallpaper is a contemporary twist on the raised and bulbous flowers of old. In five years maybe Lady Hamilton will look plain rather than fancy. But I am sure I’ll still be happy eating with my perfect fork.

It is rare that a mainstream novel is about architecture. But it is also rare that a popular non-fiction is about architecture, and the fight to build at Ground Zero inspired two books of the latter kind, Philip Nobel’s Sixteen Acres and Paul Goldberger’s Up From Zero. What made the non-fiction compelling was the cast of characters, the selfless and the self-interested, the high stakes and the deep emotion surrounding what to do with the “hallowed ground.”

All these qualities also make for a good novel, so I had high hopes for The Submission by former New York Times reporter Amy Waldman. From the jacket copy: “Ten years after 9/11, a dazzling, kaleidoscopic novel reimagines its aftermath.” The Submission is an alternate history of the selection of a design for the 9/11 memorial based on the uncomfortable question, What if Michael Arad had been Muslim?

Long answer:  Herbert Muschamp. In 1997, New York Times architecture critic Muschamp traveled to a then little-known industrial city in northern Spain to see a building. He came back with a 5,000-word swoon, which ended up on the cover of the Times Magazine and remains his best-known review. What makes it so good is the perfect marriage of critic and subject.

Now that I have a daughter, and I am continually outraged by the mainstream clothing choices for her (Heart on her butt. Really?), my sewing machine is calling me. I know I should have sewed little overalls and camp shirts for my son, but those seemed so complicated. Buttonholes! And there were always stripes and cargo pants in the boys department, just like I wear. I have nothing against shopping across the aisle for her, but I am also not opposed to more pattern, color and volume than the tomboy uniform. I need more reds and dramatic purples in my life, not more tulle. Or butterflies.

Four enterprising 2011 graduates of D-Crit have started a design communications consultancy called Superscript, and have decided to launch in a both public and critical way: with the Architecture and Design Book Club (ADBC). It meets next Thursday, August 18 at 6:30 p.m. on the High Line, where they’ve asked me to guest host the first edition on William H. Whyte’s classic 1980 text The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Future texts and locations, including some fiction, TBA.