Church on the Water, Hokkaido, 1985–8 At the edges of the outer walls to left and right, the slate floor is held back, creating a shadowed slot into which the concrete wall slips out of sight. Because the wall does not meet and bear upon the floor, as is usual, the relationship of the wall to the ground is uncertain, and the rippling surface of the black slate floor appears to float free of the walls, merging with the rippling surface of the water. Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture weight
Lightness & Heaviness "Lightness is born of heaviness and heaviness of lightness, instantaneously and reciprocally, returning creation for creation, gaining strength proportionally as they gain in life, and as much more in life as they gain in motion. They destroy one another also at the same time, fulfilling a mutual vendetta, proof that lightness is created only in conjunction with heaviness, and heaviness only where lightness follows." — Leonardo da Vinci Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture materialweight
Buttresses Buttresses, Ruskin writes, are structures against pressure: a cathedral’s walls want to fall outward, for example, pushed aside by the relentless weight of the roof. But this gravitational pressure can be stabilized by an exoskeleton: a sequence of buttresses that will prevent those walls from collapsing outward. However, Ruskin points out, there is a similar kind of pressure from the waves of the sea. Think of the curved hull of a ship, he writes, which is internally buttressed against the “crushing force” of the ocean around it. It is a kind of inside-out cathedral. Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG www.bldgblog.com weightarchitecture
Stretching the product When we’re thinking about where to take our product next, we actually take a lot of inspiration from our customers and the Figma Community, to see how they’re stretching our product in interesting or unexpected ways. We saw this happening in the early days of the pandemic. Our users were starting to use Figma for everything from brainstorming ideas to running team warm-up activities, to even putting on social events for people to get to know each other. We saw a lot of use cases that got us thinking. Yuhki Yamashita, A Q&A with Figma's VP of Product All sorts of ways to use the machineHacking is the opposite of marketingIn ways you didn't anticipateThis tactile form of doodling tools