To create noblemen and kings While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. Henry David Thoreau, Walden societycivilization
Can maintenance save civilisation? An Article by Tim Harford timharford.com Maintenance is a low-status affair: you can confess to being unable to change a tyre in a way that you would never confess to being unable to name a play by Shakespeare. …We understand the expertise of janitors, plumbers and mechanics, and we suffer mightily in their absence, yet somehow we take them for granted. We take for granted, too, the most basic maintenance of all — preparing food, washing clothes, changing dirty nappies. Nobody would boast at a dinner party or on a first date about doing any of this, yet it is essential. …This is about more than breaking bridges and breaking bike chains. There is a missed opportunity here to find something rather wonderful in maintenance. repaircivilization
168. Connection to the Earth Problem A house feels isolated from the nature around it, unless its floors are interleaved directly with the earth that is around the house. Solution Connect the building to the earth around it by building a series of paths and terraces and steps around the edge. Place them deliberately to make the boundary ambiguous—so that it is impossible to say exactly where the building stops and earth begins. Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language Deep Interlock