The Umbrellas, a temporary work of art realized in two countries at the same time, reflected the similarities and differences in the ways of life and the use of the land in two inland valleys in Japan and the USA.
After a struggle spanning the seventies, eighties and nineties, the wrapping of the Reichstag was completed in June 1995. For two weeks, the building was shrouded with silvery fabric, shaped by the blue ropes, highlighting the features and proportions of the imposing structure.
In 1983, eleven of the islands situated in Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, were surrounded with 6.5 million square feet (603,870 square meters) of floating pink woven polypropylene fabric covering the surface of the water and extending out from each island into the bay.
it is apparent that the unfolding of the design process assumed a distinctly episodic structure, which we might characterize as a series of related skirmishes with various aspects of the problem at hand.
As the scope of the problem became more determined and finite for the designer, the episodic character of the process seems to have become less pronounced. During this period a systematic working out of issues and conditions took hold within the framework that had been established. This phenomenon is not at all surprising when we consider the fundamental difference between moments of problem solving when matters are poorly defined and those with clarity and sufficiency of structure.
Within the episodic structure of the process, the problem, as perceived by the designer, tends to fluctuate from being rather nebulous to being more specific and well-defined. Furthermore, moments of "blinding" followed by periods of backtracking take place, where blinding refers to conditions in which obvious connections between various considerations of importance go unrecognized by a designer.