Less, but better There must be millions less of things, less words, less gestures, less of everything. But every word and every gesture will become more valuable. If we can put it all into perspective we will need less things as a result. Sophie Lovell & Dieter Rams, Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible Omit needless wordsTo be truly simple makingrestraintproductionwasteminimalism
From consumption to production I see no other solution (political, economic) to the problems of mankind than the formation of small responsible communities involved in permaculture and appropriate technology. I believe that the days of centralised power are numbered, and that a re-tribalisation of society is an inevitable, if sometimes painful, process. The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture societyconsumptionproduction
All-use environments Until the nineteenth century, virtually all cities were “all use” environments. Craft-scale production was typically carried out in a workshop below the home of the craftsperson, which often also served as the site of exchange. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan Small economies productionwork
Biggering I meant no harm. I most truly did not. But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got. I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads. I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads of the Thneed’s I shipped out. I was shipping them forth to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North! I went right on biggering...selling more Thneed’s. And I biggered my money, which everyone needs. Dr. Seuss, The Lorax capitalismproduction
This thing is a Thneed "Look, Lorax," I said. "There's no cause for alarm. I chopped just one tree. I am doing no harm. I'm being quite useful. This thing is a Thneed. A Thneed's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need! It’s a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat. But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that. You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets! Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!" The Lorax said, "Sir! You are crazy with greed. There is no one on earth who would buy that fool Thneed!" Dr. Seuss, The Lorax production
The life-giving continuum In System A, creation and production are organic in character, and are governed by human judgments that emanate from the underlying wholeness of situations, conditions, and surroundings. In System B, the production process is thought of as mechanical. What matters are regulations, procedures, categories, money, efficiency, and profit: all the machinery designed to make society run smoothly, as if society was working as a great machine. The production process is rarely context-sensitive. Wholeness is left out. Identifying these two categories helps us sharpen and clarify the range of differences among ways of creating the environment that exist in different societies. And the two categories serve to identify a dimension of great importance: the dimension that runs from more life-giving to less life-giving. Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth lifeproduction
Muda, Muri, Mura An Article mag.toyota.co.uk Eliminating waste is the key to efficiency – in the Toyota Production System, this is termed as: Muda (waste), Muri (overburden), and Mura (irregularity). productionwastemanagementefficiency
Towards a New Architecture A Book by Le Corbusier en.wikipedia.org The house is a machine for living inBut men live in old housesPrimitive resourcesEmploys nothing at allAll the work of an epoch+6 More Classical absurdity
But men live in old houses It is not right that we should produce bad things because of a bad tool; nor is it right that we should waste our energy, our health and our courage because of a bad tool; it must be thrown away and replaced. But men live in old houses and they have not yet thought of building houses adapted to themselves. tools
Primitive resources There is no such thing as primitive man; there are primitive resources. resources
Employs nothing at all The man of today planes to perfection a board with a planing machine in a few seconds. The man of yesterday planed a board reasonably well with a plane. Very primitive man squared a board very badly with a flint or a knife. Very primitive man employed a unit of measurement and regulating lines in order to make his task easier. The Greek, the Egyptian, Michaelangelo or Blondel employed regulating lines in order to correct their work and for the satisfaction of their artist’s sense and of their mathematical thought. The man of today employs nothing at all and the result is the boulevard Raspail. The Nature and Art of Workmanship tools
All the work of an epoch Style is a unity of principle animating all the work of an epoch, the result of a state of mind which has its own special character. Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it. style
A taste for fresh and clear daylight Tail pieces and garlands, exquisite ovals where triangular doves preen themselves or one another, boudoirs embellished with “poufs” in gold and black velvet, are now no more than the intolerable witnesses to a dead spirit. These sanctuaries stifling with elegance, or on the other hand with the follies of “Peasant Art,” are an offense. We have acquired a taste for fresh and and clear daylight.
Eyes which do not see Our epoch is fixing its own style day by day. It is there under our eyes—Eyes which do not see. seeingstyle
The problem of the house has not yet been stated The lesson of the airplane is not primarily in the forms it has created, and above all we must learn to see in an airplane not a bird or a dragon-fly, but a machine for flying; the lesson of the airplane lies in the logic which governed the enunciation of the problem and which led to its successful realization. When a problem is properly stated, in our epoch, it inevitably finds its solution. The problem of the house has not yet been stated. problems
At the Green Mosque In Broussa in Asia Minor, at the Green Mosque, you enter by a little doorway of normal human height; a quite small vestibule produces in you the necessary change of scale so that you may appreciate, as against the dimensions of the street and the spot you come from, the dimensions with which is is intended to impress you. Then you can feel the noble size of the mosque and your eyes can take its measure. You are in a great white marble space filled with light. Beyond you can see a second similar space of the same dimensions, but in half-light and raised on several steps (repetition in a minor key); on each side still a smaller space in subdued light; turning round, you have two very small spaces in shade. From full light to shade, a rhythm. Tiny doors and enormous bays. You are captured, you have lost the sense of the common scale. You are enthralled by a sensorial rhythm (light and volume) and by an able use of scale and measure, into a world of its own which tells you what it set out to tell you. 112. Entrance Transition doors
Poems of an Indian summer To build one's house is very much like making one’s will. When the time does arrive for building this house, it is not the mason’s nor the craftsman’s moment, but that moment in which every man makes one poem, at any rate, in his life. And so, in our towns and their outskirts, we have had during the last forty years not so much houses as poems, poems of an Indian summer, for a house is the crowning of a career. Rand HillJapanese Death PoemsEach ruler commissioned his own gardenThe Abode of Fancy melancholyhomedeathpoetry
A grave and noble beauty An architecture of our own age is slowly but surely shaping itself; its main lines become more and more evident. The use of steel and reinforced concrete construction; of large areas of plate glass; of standardized units (as, for example, in metal windows); of the flat roof; of new synthetic materials and new surface treatments of metals that machinery made possible; of hints taken from the airplane, the motor-car or the steamship where it was never possible, from the beginning, to attack the problem from an academic standpoint—all these things are helping, at any rate, to produce a twentieth-century architecture whose lineaments are already clearly traceable. A certain squareness of mass and outline, a criss-cross or “grid-iron” treatment with an emphasis on the horizontals, an extreme bareness of wall surface, a pervading austerity and economy and a minimum of ornament; these are among its characteristics. There is evolving, we may begin to suppose, a grave and classical architecture whose fully developed expression should be of a noble beauty. beauty