La Psychologie de la Forme
On Maps
With a cross country drive in my near future, I've purchased an updated copy of the Rand McNally Road Atlas. Opening it up is something of a pleasure due to its raw scale. The atlas is huge. When I look through these pages I feel like America is a big place. The shields and crests of Eisenhower's greatest project string across the Rockies, the Mississippi, and the Appalachians. And yet it's a parody. The hubris of condensing the entire world into a single page of two dinemsional lines is so inflated that it escapes what this atlas cannot. It is at once a useful representation of the entire country and a useless shadow of itself. Despite the fact that it's very large, it's a parody because it's still not large enough to encapsulate this vast expanse of space. What do you do with a big country? You make a big map.
On Nomadicism
The notion of focusing on physical mobility seems out dated. Our planet is traversed daily by a number of global nomads: we call some of them business men and the rest frequent flyers. These are the people racking up frequent flier miles and hotel points in un-usable surplus. They know starched sheets better than those of their own bed at "home."
Lately when I consider the long-fascinating issue of nomadicism I find that it's more about being comfortable with mobility than the actual act of mobility. High levels of mobility and large numbers of nights spent away from home are not an issue. The condition of being rootless, then, is to be able to move without issue. To float or drift as necessary, but not needlessly. This is the essential difference between a drifter and a nomad: the former is in a state of movement for lack of better activity but the latter is compeled to move because of unmet needs.
On Scent & Architecture
Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron as quoted in Natural History:
The really interesting thing about perfumes is not actually the scent itself, but rather the memory that is stored with the scent. Smells and scents can evoke experiences and images of the past, almost like photographs. For us certain smells always produced architectural images and spatial memories -- almost like an inner film... And another thing about scents that come and go: there is an aspect of this that applies to architecture as well, namely that is leaves a mark on us and reminds us of our own history. One need only think of the school houses of one's youth, whose architecture makes a lifelong impression, especially in connection with a specific smell. I do not know if the uncomfortable feeling often caused by the memory of the architecture of our own past has to do with the fact that it evokes a time that is over and, with it, a whole portion of our lives, or whether we project the usual frustrations of growing up onto these architectural memories. We can certainly design better or poorer, more pleasant or less pleasant architecture, but, like perfume, it is the experience associated -- or not associated -- with it that is decisive.
Peter Zumthor quoted from his Complete Works:
Thus, the quest for the new object that I shall design and build consists largely of reflection upon the way we really experience the many places of our so different dwellings throughout the world -- in a forest, on a bridge, on a town square, in a house, in a room, in my room, in your room, in summer, in the morning, at twilight, in the rain. I hear the sounds of cars moving outside, the voices of birds, and the steps of the passer-by. I see the rusty metal of the door, the blue of the hills in the background, the shimmer of the air over the asphalt. I feel the warmth reflected by the wall behind me. The curtains in the slender window recess move gently in the breeze, and the air smells damp from yesterday's rain, preserved by the soil in the plant troughs. Everything I see, the cement slabs that hold the earth, the wires of the trellis, the chiseled balusters on the terrace, the plastered arch over the passageway -- they all show traces of wear, of use, and of dwelling. And when I look more carefully, the things I see start to tell me something about why, how and for what purpose they were made. All this comes to light, or is concealed, within their form and presence.
On Cooking
Beets: bring a saucepan of water with a few tablespoons of vinegar to a boil. Add peeled, chopped beets and simmer until soft. Dress with white vinegar and crumbly gorgonzola.
On Spark:03
Dear someone:
Do not blog this conference. Please do not type during the presentation, just as you would not chat or shuffle a deck of cards. Do you think that because you're sharing with the world we should excuse you from the social mores that request the curtesy of your silence? Are you really making the world a better place with your bullet points?
On working again
Entering my first job outside of the tech world has been quite a transition. I didn't expect a free lunch and stocked snack cabinet, but the finality and resolution of the quote-normal-unquote working world environment is striking. In some surface ways it's stark in comparison. It amazes me that every office supply and every print out or copy I make is attributed to my employee number. I like the woman in the ground floor shop who has every flavor of Snapple but no batteries. I like the people who sell lunch at any of a number of cafes near by. What I like most is finding out that the rest of the world works just as hard as we thought we did-- as hard as all those people working the web in earnest. Not that I ever fully bought into the new economy rhetoric, but there was something of a charmed air about all of the dotcom offices I worked in. Even if we were just building a boring product we were working on it really hard, it seemed, and it was something special solely to that world. For all the seriousness of those jobs, and I was duly professional, they have nothing on this new corporate experience. It may be hard to say with a straight face, but corporate is serious and that seems to be just fine. We have the managers-in-ties and dress down friday. Barcelona chairs in the lobby, fresh flowers every monday, a snack room with a coffee maker, and a hierarchy of offices. We have a lot of elevators.
California
Last time I left the state I wrote a lexicon of those things that had a great effect on me. Some of them remain valid, especially this. I'm realizing now that I have always loved it here and still feel compelled to stay away.
--Posted 08/12/03 06:45PM