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
An index of the shifting patterns "Because this is a garden where things can be left out at night without being stolen, we're going to 'furnish' the garden with French café chairs that won't be secured in the ground, so people can move them to wherever they want to sit...It's like with the chairs being totally casual and relaxed and comfortable. They set a tone. There's things that you have to do to get the right feel, where it's all already there, but then, you know, 'Bing!' – there's a moment of recognition." The patterning of chairs pulled together in different ways by successive waves of visitors over the course of the day becomes an index of the shifting patterns of people that sit in a variety of arrangements to facilitate conversations and other intersubjective alignments, or simply to allow for a moment of private contemplation free from contact with others. Matthew Simms, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art 251. Different Chairs furniture