1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  2. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  3. Abo, Akinori 9
  4. aesthetics 19
  5. agile 30
  6. Albers, Josef 17
  7. Alexander, Christopher 135
  8. Alexander, Scott 5
  9. Allsopp, John 4
  10. Ammer, Ralph 6
  11. Anderson, Gretchen 7
  12. anxiety 9
  13. Appleton, Maggie 5
  14. Aptekar-Cassels, Wesley 5
  15. Arango, Jorge 4
  16. architecture 110
  17. art 86
  18. Asimov, Isaac 5
  19. attention 17
  20. Auping, Michael 6
  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
  22. Bachelard, Gaston 12
  23. Baker, Nicholson 10
  24. beauty 58
  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bjarnason, Baldur 8
  27. Blake, William 5
  28. blogging 22
  29. body 11
  30. Boeing, Geoff 7
  31. boredom 9
  32. Botton, Alain de 38
  33. Brand, Stewart 4
  34. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  35. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  36. Broskoski, Charles 6
  37. brutalism 7
  38. building 16
  39. bureaucracy 12
  40. Burnham, Bo 9
  41. business 15
  42. Byron, Lord 14
  43. Cagan, Marty 8
  44. Calvino, Italo 21
  45. Camus, Albert 13
  46. care 6
  47. Carruth, Shane 15
  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 16
  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Clark, Robin 3
  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
  60. code 20
  61. collaboration 18
  62. collections 31
  63. color 23
  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
  70. construction 9
  71. content 9
  72. Corbusier, Le 13
  73. Coyier, Chris 4
  74. craft 66
  75. creativity 59
  76. crime 9
  77. Critchlow, Tom 5
  78. critique 10
  79. Cross, Nigel 12
  80. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  81. css 11
  82. culture 13
  83. curiosity 11
  84. cycles 7
  85. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  86. darkness 28
  87. Darwin, Will 10
  88. data 8
  89. death 38
  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
  92. design 131
  93. details 31
  94. Dickinson, Emily 9
  95. Dieste, Eladio 4
  96. discovery 9
  97. doors 7
  98. Dorn, Brandon 11
  99. drawing 23
  100. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  101. Duany, Andres 18
  102. Eatock, Daniel 4
  103. economics 13
  104. efficiency 7
  105. Eisenman, Peter 8
  106. Eliot, T.S. 14
  107. emotion 8
  108. ending 14
  109. engineering 11
  110. Eno, Brian 4
  111. ethics 14
  112. euphony 38
  113. Evans, Benedict 4
  114. evolution 9
  115. experience 14
  116. farming 8
  117. fashion 11
  118. features 25
  119. feedback 6
  120. flaws 10
  121. Flexner, Abraham 8
  122. food 16
  123. form 19
  124. Fowler, Martin 4
  125. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  126. friendship 6
  127. fun 7
  128. function 31
  129. games 13
  130. gardens 26
  131. Garfield, Emily 4
  132. Garfunkel, Art 6
  133. geography 8
  134. geometry 18
  135. goals 9
  136. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  137. goodness 12
  138. Graham, Paul 37
  139. graphics 13
  140. Greene, Erick 6
  141. Hamming, Richard 45
  142. happiness 17
  143. Harford, Tim 4
  144. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  145. Hayes, Brian 28
  146. heat 7
  147. Heinrich, Bernd 7
  148. Herbert, Frank 4
  149. Heschong, Lisa 27
  150. Hesse, Herman 6
  151. history 13
  152. Hoffman, Yoel 10
  153. Hofstadter, Douglas 6
  154. home 15
  155. Hoy, Amy 4
  156. Hoyt, Ben 5
  157. html 11
  158. Hudlow, Gandalf 4
  159. humanity 16
  160. humor 6
  161. Huxley, Aldous 7
  162. hypermedia 22
  163. i 18
  164. ideas 21
  165. identity 33
  166. images 10
  167. industry 9
  168. information 42
  169. infrastructure 17
  170. innovation 15
  171. interaction 10
  172. interest 10
  173. interfaces 37
  174. intuition 8
  175. invention 10
  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
  180. Ive, Jonathan 6
  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
  183. Jacobs, Alan 5
  184. Jobs, Steve 20
  185. Jones, Nick 5
  186. Kahn, Louis 4
  187. Kakuzō, Okakura 23
  188. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  189. Keith, Jeremy 6
  190. Keller, Jenny 10
  191. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  192. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
  193. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  194. Kitching, Roger 7
  195. Klein, Laura 4
  196. Kleon, Austin 13
  197. Klinkenborg, Verlyn 24
  198. Klyn, Dan 20
  199. knowledge 29
  200. Kohlstedt, Kurt 12
  201. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  202. Krishna, Golden 10
  203. Kuma, Kengo 18
  204. language 20
  205. learning 30
  206. life 59
  207. light 31
  208. loneliness 12
  209. love 26
  210. Lovell, Sophie 16
  211. Lupton, Ellen 11
  212. Luu, Dan 8
  213. Lynch, Kevin 12
  214. MacIver, David R. 8
  215. MacWright, Tom 5
  216. Magnus, Margaret 12
  217. making 77
  218. management 14
  219. Manaugh, Geoff 27
  220. Markson, David 16
  221. Mars, Roman 13
  222. material 39
  223. math 16
  224. McCarter, Robert 21
  225. meaning 33
  226. media 16
  227. melancholy 52
  228. memory 29
  229. metaphor 10
  230. metrics 19
  231. microsites 49
  232. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  233. Mills, C. Wright 9
  234. minimalism 10
  235. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  236. Mod, Craig 15
  237. modularity 6
  238. Mollison, Bill 31
  239. morality 8
  240. Murakami, Haruki 21
  241. music 16
  242. Müller, Boris 7
  243. Naka, Toshiharu 8
  244. names 11
  245. Naskrecki, Piotr 5
  246. nature 51
  247. networks 15
  248. Neustadter, Scott 3
  249. Noessel, Christopher 7
  250. notetaking 35
  251. novelty 11
  252. objects 16
  253. order 10
  254. ornament 9
  255. Orwell, George 7
  256. Ott, Matthias 4
  257. ownership 6
  258. Pallasmaa, Juhani 41
  259. Palmer, John 8
  260. patterns 11
  261. Patton, James L. 9
  262. Pawson, John 21
  263. perception 22
  264. perfection 7
  265. performance 17
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  297. repair 28
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  299. Reveal, James L. 4
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  314. senses 11
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  318. silence 9
  319. Silverstein, Murray 33
  320. Simms, Matthew 19
  321. Simon, Paul 6
  322. simplicity 14
  323. Singer, Ryan 12
  324. skill 17
  325. Sloan, Robin 5
  326. Smith, Cyril Stanley 29
  327. Smith, Justin E. H. 6
  328. Smith, Rach 4
  329. socializing 7
  330. society 23
  331. software 68
  332. solitude 12
  333. Somers, James 8
  334. Sorkin, Michael 56
  335. sound 14
  336. space 20
  337. Speck, Jeff 18
  338. spirit 10
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  340. structure 13
  341. Strunk, William 15
  342. Ström, Matthew 13
  343. style 30
  344. Sun, Chuánqí 15
  345. symbols 12
  346. systems 18
  347. Sōetsu, Yanagi 34
  348. Sōseki, Natsume 8
  349. Tanaka, Tomoyuki 9
  350. Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō 15
  351. taste 10
  352. Taylor, Dorian 16
  353. teaching 21
  354. teamwork 17
  355. technology 41
  356. texture 7
  357. thinking 31
  358. Thoreau, Henry David 8
  359. time 54
  360. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
  361. tools 32
  362. touch 8
  363. transportation 16
  364. Trombley, Nick 44
  365. truth 15
  366. Tufte, Edward 31
  367. Turrell, James 6
  368. typography 25
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  370. urbanism 68
  371. ux 100
  372. Victor, Bret 9
  373. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 4
  374. vision 7
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  377. wabi-sabi 8
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  383. Watterson, Bill 4
  384. Webb, Matt 14
  385. Webb, Marc 3
  386. Weber, Michael H. 3
  387. Wechler, Lawrence 37
  388. whimsy 11
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  390. Wirth, Niklaus 6
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Material

Close
  • Aesthetic palate cleansing

    During the 1960s and 1970s, light became the primary medium for a loosely affiliated group of artists working in Greater Los Angeles who were more intrigued by questions of perception than by the notion of crafting discrete objects.

    ...Often with modest means (a bolt of scrim, a sheet of glass, a bucket of resin, an open window) these artists engaged in a kind of aesthetic palate cleansing, shaking off the art-historical weight and heavy impasto of midcentury painting as it had been influentially practiced in New York and San Francisco.

    Phenomenal: An Introduction
    • aesthetics
    • material
  • From the head of Jove

    A complex structure is a result of, and to a large extent a record of, its past. Though a proton and an electron may, as a pair, be able to spring full-panoplied from the head of Jove, more complex things cannot, or at least do not.

    Everything complicated must have had a history, and its internal structural features arise from its history and provide a specific record of it. One might call these structural details of memory “funeous,” after the unfortunate character in Borge’s story “Funes the Memorious” who remembered everything.

    The Interpretation of Microstructures of Metallic Artifacts
    1. ​​What the advancing interface leaves behind​​
    • memory
    • time
    • structure
    • material
  • Aesthetically motivated curiosity

    It seems that the first and most imaginative use of practically every material was, before quite modern times, in making something decorative. People are experimentally minded when looking for decorative effects, but they can’t experiment with the established techniques on which their livelihood depends.

    /

    It is of basic significance for human history that, from the cave paintings on, almost all inorganic materials and treatments of them to modify their structure appear first in decorative objects rather than in tools or weapons necessary for survival. Aesthetically motivated curiosity, or perhaps just play, seems to have been the most important stimulus to discovery.

    The Interpretation of Microstructures of Metallic Artifacts
    • material
    • experiments
  • Whose eyes had seen and whose fingers had felt

    Aristotle’s 18 qualities of homoeomerous bodies that he chose to explain in detail in his Meteorologica, are just those fine points of behavior that would be noticed in a workshop. They are:

    solidifiable
    meltable
    softenable by heat
    softenable by water
    flexible
    breakable
    fragmentable
    capable of taking an impression
    plastic
    squeezable
    ductile
    malleable
    fissile
    curable
    viscous
    compressible
    combustible
    capable of giving off fumes

    This redundant list of properties is not the neat classification of a philosopher. It reads more as if it were based on a conversation with a workman whose eyes had seen and whose fingers had felt the intricacies of the behavior of materials.

    Matter versus Materials: A Historical View
    • craft
    • material
    • texture
    • collections
  • More than the Graces and less than the Muses

    The Sukiya consists of the tea room proper, designed to accommodate not more than five persons, a number suggestive of the saying "more than the Graces and less than the Muses..."

    The tea room is unimpressive in appearance. It is smaller than the smallest of Japanese houses, while the materials used in its construction are intended to give the suggestion of refined poverty. Yet we must remember that all this is the result of profound artistic forethought, and that the details have been worked out with care perhaps even greater than that expended on the building of the richest palaces and temples. A good tea room is more costly than an ordinary mansion, for the selection of its materials, as well as its workmanship, requires immense care and precision. Indeed, the carpenters employed by the tea masters form a distinct and highly honored class among artisans, their work being no less delicate than that of the makers of lacquer cabinets.

    Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea
    • details
    • material
    • craft
  • The idea grows as they work

    As they work, the experience of the material under the artist's fingers subtly interacts with the idea in their mind to give the finished work some quality that was rarely fully anticipated. A few artists seem to have such a feeling for their materials that the prevision needs little modification; most say that the idea grows as they work experimentally.

    Cyril Stanley Smith, A Search for Structure
    1. ​​On Greatness​​
    2. ​​The situation talks back​​
    3. ​​The discoveries you make in the making​​
    4. ​​When I was 22​​
    • craft
    • material
    • art
  • Materials and how to employ them

    Forming a paper clip presents a common dilemma encountered by engineers and inventors: the very properties of the material that make it possible to be shaped into a useful object also limit its use. If one were to try and make a paper clip out of wire that stayed bent too easily, it would have little spring and not hold papers very tightly. On the other hand, if one were to use wire that did not stay bent, then the clip could not even be formed. Thus, understanding the fundamental behavior of materials and how to employ them to advantage is often a principle reason that something as seemingly simple as a paper clip cannot be developed sooner than it is.

    Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things
    1. ​​Ideas behind their time​​
    • material
  • What the material wants to be

    Part of how Lou Kahn made things be good was to ask the material what it wanted to do and be. He asked brick what it liked, and would get a different answer depending on the context for the building. In Dacca, the capital of Bangladesh, brick said it liked an arch. For the Korman House in Philadelphia, brick said it liked two giant fireplaces with a lintel between them for a doorway beneath and a balcony above.

    Dan Klyn, What Good Means
    1. ​​The material finds the right object​​
    2. ​​We are working against the grain of the wood​​
    3. ​​The joy of the humble brick​​
    • material
  • What the brick really wants.

    Michael Sorkin, Two Hundred Fifty Things an Architect Should Know
    1. ​​The material finds the right object​​
    2. ​​We are working against the grain of the wood​​
    3. ​​The joy of the humble brick​​
    • material
  • We are working against the grain of the wood

    A woodworker works along the grain of the wood to prevent splinter. A butcher slices across to the muscle fiber to improve tenderness. A sailor trims the sail to balance the lift and drag from the wind. When we respect the material, the material pays us back in convenience, safety, and efficiency.

    Good web design requires the same understanding of and respect for the materials. And that material is the browser, along with its semantic HTML, default styles, and standard behaviors. But the wide use of design software such as Figma, Sketch, and AdobeXD has trivialized the nuances of such material into “canvases” or “artboards” of pre-defined sizes. The convenient styling and manipulation of pixels and objects have disguised the hierarchy of the DOM, the constraints of the device, and the personal preferences and browser setting from real users. Dishonest tools encourage dishonest design.

    We are working against the grain of the wood.

    Chuánqí Sun, A case against "pixel perfect" design
    1. ​​The Web's Grain​​
    2. ​​What the brick really wants.​​
    3. ​​What the material wants to be​​
    • material
    • www
    • design
  • Violence to the very structure of our being

    If we conclude that creative mind is in fact the very grain of the spiritual universe, we cannot arbitrarily stop our investigations with the man who happens to work in stone, or paint, or music, or letters. We shall have to ask ourselves whether the same pattern is not also exhibited in the spiritual structure of every man and woman. And, if it is, whether, by confining the average man and woman to uncreative activities and an uncreative outlook, we are not doing violence to the very structure of our being. If so, it is a serious matter, since we have seen already the unhappy results of handling any material in a way that runs counter to the natural law of its structure.

    Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
    • creativity
    • work
    • life
    • material
  • A passive beauty of right structure

    The human maker, working in unself-conscious matter, receives no worship from his creatures, since their will is no part of his material; he can only receive the response of their nature, and he is alone in fault if that response is not forthcoming. If he tortures his material, if the stone looks unhappy when he has wrought it into a pattern alien to its own nature, if his writing is an abuse of language, his music a succession of unmeaning intervals, the helpless discomfort of his material universe is a reproach to him alone; similarly, if he respects and interprets the integrity of his material, the seemliness of the ordered work proclaims his praise, and his only, without will, but in a passive beauty of right structure.

    Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
    1. ​​The Web's Grain​​
    • material
  • In conformity with its proper nature

    If the characters and the situation are rightly conceived together, as integral parts of the same unity, then there will be no need to force them to the right solution of that situation. If each is allowed to develop in conformity with its proper nature, they will arrive of their own accord at a point of unity, which will be the same unity that pre-existed in the original idea.

    Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
    • material
  • A single material

    9.jpeg

    There is something very appealing about a form constructed in a single material.

    John Pawson, A Visual Inventory
    • material
  • The material finds the right object

    Rather than the craft object finding the most suitable material, it can be said that the material finds the right object. Folk crafts are invariably the product of a local environment. When a certain locality is rich in a certain raw material, that material gives rise to a certain craftware.

    Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Miscellaneous Things
    1. ​​Terroir​​
    2. ​​What the material wants to be​​
    3. ​​What the brick really wants.​​
    • material
  • Invisible substance

    We wanted wood, not only in many visible places, but also in the roof trusses of the homeroom buildings, where they are invisible. Fujita wanted to replace the invisible trusses with steel trusses. They could not understand the idea that it was the actual substance — even though not visible — which would control the feeling of the thing.

    Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth
    1. ​​All the way through​​
    2. ​​Finished on the inside​​
    • material
  • 207. Good Materials

    Problem

    There is a fundamental conflict in the nature of materials for building in industrial society.

    Solution

    Use only biodegradable, low-energy-consuming materials, which are easy to cut and modify on site. For bulk materials we suggest ultra-lightweight 40–60 lbs. concrete and earth-based materials like tamped earth, brick, and tile. For secondary materials, use wood planks, gypsum, plywood, cloth, chickenwire, paper, cardboard, particle board, corrugated iron, lime plasters, bamboo, rope, and tile.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​Zeniba's house​​
    • material
  • Separation of surface and structure

    The nineteenth century saw an increasing separation between the treatment of the surface and the structure of designed objects. Mass production and a mobile market economy encouraged the production of heavily ornamented yet cheaply fabricated products. Affordable manufacture allowed the burgeoning middle class to acquire “luxury” goods fashioned after objects formerly reserved for an elite.

    Ellen Lupton & J. Abbott Miller, The ABC's of ▲■●: The Bauhaus and Design Theory
    1. ​​The drop press​​
    • structure
    • material
  • Lacquerware

    There are good reasons why lacquer soup bowls are still used, qualities which ceramic bowls simply do not possess. Remove the lid from a ceramic bowl, and there lies the soup, every nuance of its substance and color revealed. With lacquerware there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its color hardly different from that of the bowl itself.

    Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper, In Praise of Shadows
    • darkness
    • material
  • Nearer to the surface

    If in the following I overemphasize the Orient, this is simply because in the Far East the properties of materials are a little nearer to the surface, a little more consciously a part of what the artist is trying to show. The naturalistic aspects of Oriental philosophy encourage a sensitivity to the quality of materials — or is it the inverse, that an early enjoyment of stone, wood, clay, and fiber gave rise to the philosopher’s perception of the soul in all natural things comparable to man himself? Westerners tend to override materials, usually in ignorance, but sometimes proudly as a tour de force.

    Cyril Stanley Smith, A Search for Structure
    • material
    • soul
  • The inner nature of material

    The work of an artist in getting the details that he wants is greatly facilitated if he selects a material whose inner nature makes it want to take the desired shape.

    Cyril Stanley Smith, A Search for Structure
    1. ​​A state of energetic repose​​
    • material
    • details
  • 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
    • material
    • weight
  • We must go with them

    "You cannot make what you want to make, but what the material permits you to make. You cannot make out of marble what you would make out of wood, or out of wood what you would make out of stone. Each material has its own life, and one cannot without punishment destroy a living material to make a dumb senseless thing. That is, we must not try to make our materials speak our language, we must go with them to the point where others will understand their language."

    — Constantin Brancusi

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    • material
    • language
    • communication
  • Wood

    Wood speaks of its two existences and timescales: its first life as a growing tree and the second as a human artefact made by the caring hand of a carpenter or cabinet maker.

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    • material
  • American Folk Art Museum, New York City, 1998–2001

    American Folk Art Museum facade.jpeg

    As we draw closer, we see that the three-faceted planes of the museum are fabricated out of rectangular panels made of white bronze that was poured directly into dammed forms on the concrete floor of the foundry, producing a surface texture similar to both metal and stone.

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    • material
    • texture
  • Power law

    Central Building.jpeg

    Buildings which most profoundly communicate subtle harmony are composed of a complex mixture of materials, with the overall amounts of different materials jumping in a calibrated cascade — typically according to a power law. The relative proportions — the statistical distribution of materials by quantity of total visible area — is critical. It is this specific distribution, not just the mixture, which creates depth of feeling.

    Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth
    • material

    See also: Zipf's Law

  • A Search for Structure

    A Book by Cyril Stanley Smith
    mitpress.mit.edu
    1. ​​Apologia​​
    2. ​​Grain Shapes and Other Metallurgical Applications of Topology​​
    3. ​​Structure, Substructure, and Superstructure​​
    4. ​​The Interpretation of Microstructures of Metallic Artifacts​​
    5. ​​Matter versus Materials: A Historical View​​
    1. ​​Results of a search​​
    • making
    • material
    • craft
    • style
  • The Craftsman

    A Book by Richard Sennett
    yalebooks.yale.edu
    1. ​​The great teacher​​
    2. ​​The categories of good​​
    3. ​​For its own sake​​
    4. ​​The details of construction​​
    5. ​​The technology shelf​​
    • craft
    • making
    • material
    • style

    The intimate relations between problem solving and problem finding, technique and expression, play and work.

  • In Praise of Shadows

    A Book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​Things that shine and glitter​​
    2. ​​A naked bulb​​
    3. ​​The Japanese toilet​​
    4. ​​Empty dreams​​
    5. ​​Most important of all are the pauses​​
    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    2. ​​Daylight should not tyrannize architecture​​
    3. ​​Deep shadows and darkness are essential​​
    4. ​​Lights and lamps​​
    5. ​​The gentle light of shoji screens​​
    • zen
    • darkness
    • light
    • material
    • making
  • In praise of pastiche

    An Essay by Samuel Hughes
    www.worksinprogress.co

    So: it is perfectly true that contemporary traditional architecture tends to be structurally dishonest. But traditional architecture has always tended to be structurally dishonest. So if this is what makes contemporary traditional architecture pastiche, then most traditional architecture has been pastiche since the faux timbering of the Parthenon. Contemporary traditional architects have most of the great builders of our history as their companions in guilt.

    • architecture
    • tradition
    • material
  • The Finish Fetish Artists

    An Essay
    www.getty.edu

    For others, perhaps especially those artists who worked with light and transparency and were involved in the birth of the Light and Space Movement, an immaculate surface is a prerequisite. Helen Pashgian explained this very clearly:

    “On any of these works, if there is a scratch... that’s all you see. The point of it is not the finish at all – the point is being able to interact with the piece, whether it is inside or outside, to see into it, to see through it, to relate to it in those ways. But that’s why we need to deal with the finish, so we can deal with the piece on a much deeper level”.

    The importance of a pristine surface calls for a very low tolerance to damage by the artists. The feeling is shared by Larry Bell:

    “I don’t want you to see stains on the glass. I don’t want you to see fingerprints on the glass... I don’t want you to see anything except the light that’s reflected, absorbed, or transmitted”

    1. ​​Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees​​
    2. ​​The light that hits the glass​​
    3. ​​Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface​​
    • light
    • art
    • interfaces
    • material
  • The light that hits the glass

    A Quote by Larry Bell
    www.getty.edu

    My media isn’t glass, it’s the light that hits that glass.

    1. ​​The Finish Fetish Artists​​
    • light
    • material
  • On 'The Master and His Emissary'

    A Quote by Ian McGilchrist
    www.ttbook.org

    People who make works of art, whatever they might be, have gone to great trouble to make something unique which is embodied in the form that it is, and not in any other form, and that it transmits things that remain implicit

    ...Works of art are not just disembodied, entirely abstract, conceptual things. They are embodied in the words they’re in or in paint or in stone or in musical notes or whatever it might be.

    1. ​​The work is what it means​​
    2. ​​The meaning of music​​
    3. ​​If a book can be summarized, is it worth reading?​​
    • art
    • material
    • meaning
    • form
  • Craft and Material in Digital Design

    An Article
    1. ​​A little bit more about the stone​​
    2. ​​It is how we come to understand our medium​​
    • craft
    • material
    • software

    I saved this brief essay to my notes a while ago. The source has since been taken down, so I will not name the author or provide other details, but the message is worth preserving. If you wrote this and prefer I remove it from the site, please contact me and let me know.

  • The joy of the humble brick

    An Article by Tim Harford
    timharford.com

    The brick is one of those old technologies, like the wheel or paper, that seem to be basically unimprovable. ‘The shapes and sizes of bricks do not differ greatly wherever they are made,’ writes Edward Dobson in the fourteenth edition of his Rudimentary Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks and Tiles. There’s a simple reason for the size: it has to fit in a human hand. As for the shape, building is much more straightforward if the width is half the length.

    1. ​​I am here​​
    2. ​​What the material wants to be​​
    3. ​​What the brick really wants.​​
    • material
    • building
    • modularity
    • geometry
  • An audio professional's take on vinyl

    An Article
    aestheticsforbirds.com

    The analog-digital debate in audio is a longstanding one, and while it is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, I thought I might be able to offer some background as a longtime audio professional and musician. Recordings are a beautiful mix of technical and aesthetic concerns, and this post will attempt to tease out how to navigate these two framings of music recording, especially with regard to the often-oversimplified distinction between analog and digital recordings.

    • material
    • sound
    • music
  • Washi

    An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi Sōetsu

    Handmade washi (traditional Japanese paper) is replete with appeal. Looking at it, touching it, fills me with an indescribable sense of satisfaction. The more beautiful it is, however, the more difficult it is to put to use. Only a master of calligraphy could possibly add to its beauty; it is exquisite just as it is. This is wonderfully strange, for it is merely a simple material. Yet plain and undecorated as it is, it is alive with nuanced beauty. Good washi makes possible our most ambitious creative dreams.

    1. ​​To deprecate beauty itself​​
    • material
  • Material tour de force: The work of Eladio Dieste

    An Essay by Eladio Dieste
    archleague.org
    Image from archleague.org on 2020-12-24 at 1.20.49 PM.jpeg

    I have explained, and supported with evidence, the concern for rationality in construction and economy understood in, I dared to say, a cosmic sense rather than a financial sense. However, this is not the whole thing that has guided me. I have also been guided by a sharp, almost painful, awareness of form.

    • form
    • material
  • Cosmic economy

    A Quote by Eladio Dieste
    en.wikipedia.org

    There are deep moral/practical reasons for our search which give form to our work: with the form we create we can adjust to the laws of matter with all reverence, forming a dialogue with reality and its mysteries in essential communion... For architecture to be truly constructed, the materials must be used with profound respect for their essence and possibilities; only thus can 'cosmic economy' be achieved... in agreement with the profound order of the world; only then can have that authority that so astounds us in the great works of the past.

    • material
    • architecture

See also:
  1. craft
  2. art
  3. making
  4. light
  5. details
  6. structure
  7. texture
  8. darkness
  9. style
  10. architecture
  11. form
  12. soul
  13. memory
  14. time
  15. language
  16. communication
  17. weight
  18. collections
  19. zen
  20. sound
  21. music
  22. creativity
  23. work
  24. life
  25. www
  26. design
  27. building
  28. modularity
  29. geometry
  30. software
  31. meaning
  32. interfaces
  33. experiments
  34. aesthetics
  35. tradition
  1. Cyril Stanley Smith
  2. Robert McCarter
  3. Juhani Pallasmaa
  4. Christopher Alexander
  5. Dorothy Sayers
  6. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
  7. Thomas J. Harper
  8. Eladio Dieste
  9. Yanagi Sōetsu
  10. Dan Klyn
  11. Michael Sorkin
  12. Richard Sennett
  13. Murray Silverstein
  14. Sara Ishikawa
  15. Ellen Lupton
  16. J. Abbott Miller
  17. John Pawson
  18. Chuánqí Sun
  19. Tim Harford
  20. Ian McGilchrist
  21. Henry Petroski
  22. Okakura Kakuzō
  23. Larry Bell
  24. Samuel Hughes