The work is what it means It is desirable to bear in mind—when dealing with the human maker at any rate—that his chosen way of revelation is through his works. To persist in asking, as so many of us do, “What did you mean by this book?” is to invite bafflement: the book itself is what the writer means. Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker The meaning of musicNo more than a sketchOn 'The Master and His Emissary'Only a mind opened to the quality of thingsTranslation is always a treason meaningart
The quality without a name There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. There are words we use to describe this quality: alive whole comfortable free exact egoless eternal But in spite of every effort to give this quality a name, there is no single name which captures it. Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building No words to describeThis language without words beautylifemeaningspirit
The meaning of objects The meaning of objects is harder to grasp than that of words. The Interpretation of Microstructures of Metallic Artifacts meaningobjects
The meaning of music Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano. What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again. David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress The work is what it meansNo more than a sketchOn 'The Master and His Emissary' meaningmusic
A creature of bones, not words In building connections, [articulation work] builds meaning and identity, sorting out ontologies on the fly rather than mixing and matching between fixed and stable entities. Articulation lives first and foremost in practice, not representation; as its proper etymology suggests, it's a creature of bones, not words. When articulation fails, systems seize up, and our sociotechnical worlds become stuff, arthritic, unworkable. Steven J. Jackson, Rethinking Repair meaning
The shape of the sentence You've been taught to overlook the character of the prose in front of you in order to get at its meaning. You overlook the shape of the sentence itself for the meaning it contains, Which means that while you were reading, All those millions of words passed by Without teaching you how to make sentences. Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing meaningstructure
To build a folly To build a folly is essentially to do something a second time, something at an inopportune moment. That something is always the memory of something forgotten, about which we can paradoxically say "There it is again." Follies were misunderstood, purposeless constructions. They were often only small, extravagant gestures in a garden, easily whisking off the imagination to distant lands, a sort of time capsule built to awaken the memory and induce surprise in passers-by. They marked locations, organized secondary paths in a park, or simply predicted the arrival of better times—a demarcation, a sacred spot, a mysterious trail, a hill whose tragic rocky nature begged for a tower, a party, or the arrival of summer. Smiljan Radić, Death at Home Designed to be ruinsFolliesThermal aediculae meaningpurposeconstruction
Let the meaning choose the word What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality: From AI to Zombies meaningwords
Taboo your words Albert says that people have “free will.” Barry says that people don’t have “free will.” Well, that will certainly generate an apparent conflict. Most philosophers would advise Albert and Barry to try to define exactly what they mean by “free will,” on which topic they will certainly be able to discourse at great length. I would advise Albert and Barry to describe what it is that they think people do, or do not have, without using the phrase “free will” at all. Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality: From AI to Zombies meaning
The arbitrariness of the sign A key difference between verbal language and the modernist ideal of a visual “language” is the arbitrariness of a verbal sign, which has no natural, inherent relationship to the concept it represents. The sound of the word “horse”, for example, does not innately resemble the concept of a horse. Ferdinand de Saussure called this arbitrariness the fundamental feature of the verbal sign. The meaning of a sign is generated by its relationship to other signs in the language: the sign’s legibility lies in its difference from other signs. Ellen Lupton & J. Abbott Miller, The ABC's of ▲■●: The Bauhaus and Design Theory Gods of the Word soundmeaninglanguage
The eye does not see The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities meaningseeingimages
The utter nothingness of being Everything written symbols can say has already passed by. They are like tracks left by animals. That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept that writings are final. The aim is to reach true being by means of those tracks, those letters, those signs - but reality itself is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks. It doesn’t come to us by way of letters or words. We can go toward it, by following those words and letters back to what they came from. But so long as we are preoccupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle. "But when we give up symbols and opinions, aren’t we left in the utter nothingness of being?" Yes. Kimura Kyūho, On the Mysteries of Swordsmanship The Elements of Typographic Style zenmeaningsymbolsbeingreality
Whereof one cannot speak My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus What can be put into words meaning
Not knowing quite what they mean "Do you understand all the symbolism?" "Not really, besides its being Venus and Cupid." "I didn't even know that, so you're one up on me. I wish I'd read more about ancient mythology," she continued. "But actually, I like looking at things and not knowing quite what they mean." Alain de Botton, On Love meaning
Things cannot be other than as they are “It is demonstrably true that things cannot be other than as they are. For, everything having been made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose.” — Professor Pangloss Voltaire, Candide purposemeaning
50 reds If one says “Red” (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different. Josef Albers, Interaction of Color perceptionmeaning
No words to describe If there is no term for something, it might be thought that the commodity is of small importance. But it is just as likely that this something is of such importance that it is taken for granted, and thus any conveniences, like words, for discussing it are unnecessary. Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics The quality without a nameThis is Water meaningwords
That is not it at all It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock meaning
A soft and fitful luster Who decided that the American public couldn’t handle “a soft and fitful luster”? I can’t help but think something has been lost. “A soft sparkle from a wet or oily surface” doesn’t just sound worse, it actually describes the phenomenon with less precision. In particular it misses the shimmeriness, the micro movement and action, “the fitful luster,” of, for example, an eye full of tears — which is by the way far more intense and interesting an image than “a wet sidewalk.” It’s as if someone decided that dictionaries these days had to sound like they were written by a Xerox machine, not a person, certainly not a person with a poet’s ear, a man capable of high and mighty English, who set out to write the secular American equivalent of the King James Bible and pulled it off. James Somers, You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary meaningwords
Reference and Is-ness There are at least two aspects to what we have traditionally called the meaning of a word. One aspect is reference, and the other is something I will call ‘inherent meaning’ following Ullman (1963). Inherent meaning is ‘Is-ness’ meaning. Inherent meaning is a word’s identity, and reference merely its resumé, where it has gone and what it has done, an itemization of its contexts. ‘Is-ness’ is unifying. Each word has a single pronunciation, a single inherent meaning. But reference is divisive. It makes what was one thing – the word – appear to be many things – its senses. It is inherent meaning which gives all those multifarious senses the power of being a single word. Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word meaningwords
The demand of a new word Why are these phonosemantic classes enough, and we need neither more nor less? Why are these consonants enough, and we need neither more nor less? What determines the need for a new word? How is this demand ‘felt’ by a language? How did the metabolic pathways of American English recognize that ‘jerk’ and ‘twerp’ and ‘punk’ and ‘nitwit’ and ‘dork’ and ‘ass’ and ‘goon’ and ‘twit’ and ‘dodo’ and ‘bum’ and ‘nerd’ and ‘dunce’ and ‘turd’ and ‘boob’ and ‘chump’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘bastard’ and ‘prude’ and so on and so forth simply were not equal to the task? We had to add ‘turkey’ and ‘squirrel’ as well? Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word wordslanguagemeaning
Apparency Half a century ago, Stern discussed this attribute of an artistic object and called it apparency. While art is not limited to this single end, he felt that one of its two basic functions was "to create images which by clarity and harmony of form fulfill the need for vividly comprehensible appearance." In his mind, this was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning. Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City artmeaningimagesharmonyform
Fish and water How does one speak about something that is both fish and water, means as well as end? Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology meaningwords
The word invents itself Posits certain neologisms as arising from their own cultural necessity—his words, I believe. Yes, he said. When the kind of experience that you're getting a man-sized taste of becomes possible, the word invents itself. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King wordsmeaningnoveltyinvention
AI-art isn’t art An Essay by Erik Hoel erikhoel.substack.com AI-generated artwork is the same as a gallery of rock faces. It is pareidolia, an illusion of art, and if culture falls for that illusion we will lose something irreplaceable. We will lose art as an act of communication, and with it, the special place of consciousness in the production of the beautiful. …Just as how something being either an original Da Vinci or a forgery does matter, even if side-by-side you couldn’t tell them apart, so too with two paintings, one made by a human and the other by an AI. Even if no one could tell them apart, one lacks all intentionality. It is a forgery, not of a specific work of art, but of the meaning behind art. artconsciousnessbeautymeaningai
The Future Is Not Only Useless, It’s Expensive An Article by Dan Brooks www.gawker.com This is how NFTs make me feel: like the future is useless but expensive, and world-altering technology is now in the hands of a culture so aesthetically and spiritually impoverished that it should maybe go back to telling stories around the cooking fire for a while, just to remember how to mean something. A particular deficiency of which they all partake technologyfuturismmeaning
The Gifted Listener: Composer Aaron Copland on Honing Your Talent for Listening to Music An Article by Maria Popova www.brainpickings.org The poetry of music, Copland intimates, is composed both by the musician, in the creation of music and its interpretation in performance, and by the listener, in the act of listening that is itself the work of reflective interpretation. This makes listening as much a creative act as composition and performance — not a passive receptivity to the object that is music, but an active practice that confers upon the object its meaning: an art to be mastered, a talent to be honed. Music and ImaginationTo see is to forget the name of the thing one seesThe core assertion musicpoetryartmeaning
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. The work is what it meansThe meaning of musicIf a book can be summarized, is it worth reading? artmaterialmeaningform
A brief foray into vectorial semantics An Article by James Somers jsomers.net One of the best (and easiest) ways to start making sense of a document is to highlight its “important” words, or the words that appear within that document more often than chance would predict. That’s the idea behind Amazon.com’s “Statistically Improbable Phrases”: Amazon.com’s Statistically Improbable Phrases, or “SIPs”, are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book. mathmeaningwordsnotetakingsearchchance
The way an oyster does A Fragment by Kay Ryan www.csmonitor.com Her poems, [Kay Ryan] says, don't begin with a simple image or sound, but instead start "the way an oyster does, with an aggravation." An old saw may nudge her repeatedly, such as "It's always darkest before the dawn" or "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "I think, 'What about those chickens?' " she says, "and I start an investigation of what that means. Poets rehabilitate clichés." poetrymeaningcliché
The primacy of interpretation over sensation A Fragment by Mark Liberman languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu Our memory of exact word sequences usually fades more quickly than our memory of (contextually interpreted) meanings. More broadly, the exact auditory sensations normally fade very quickly; the corresponding word sequences fade a bit more slowly; and the interpreted meanings last longest. These generalizations can be overcome to some extent if the sound or the text has especially memorable characteristics. (And the question of what "memorable" means in this context is interesting.) memorysensesmeaningspeechwords
The body image A Quote The body image is informed fundamentally from haptic and orienting experiences early in life. Our visual images are developed later on, and depend for their meaning on primal experiences that were acquired haptically. Metaphors We Live ByGods of the WordThe Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses bodymeaning
Meaningness A Website by David Chapman meaningness.com The word “meaning” has two quite different meanings in English. It can refer to the meaning of symbols, such as words and road signs. This book is not about that kind of meaning. People also speak of “the meaning of life.” That is the sort of meaningness this book is about. So I apply “meaningness” only to the sorts of things one could describe as “deeply meaningful” or “pretty meaningless.” meaninglife
A Pattern Language A Book by Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa www.goodreads.com Its place in the web of nature9. Scattered Work21. Four-Story Limit51. Green Streets53. Main Gateways+27 More Deliberate actspatternsof.design125 Best Architecture BooksThe Timeless Way of BuildingThe design systems between usCollaborative Information Architecture at Scale architectureurbanismlifeconstruction
Its place in the web of nature This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it. Crafting repair imakingnature
9. Scattered Work Problem The artificial separation of houses and work creates intolerable rifts in people’s inner lives. Solution Use zoning laws, neighborhood planning, tax incentives, and any other means available to scatter workplaces throughout the city. Prohibit large concentrations of work without family life around them. Prohibit large concentrations of family life without workplaces around them. Men are not an abstraction work
21. Four-Story Limit Problem There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy. Solution In any urban area, no matter how dense, keep the majority of buildings four stories high or less. It is possible that certain buildings should exceed this limit, but they should never be buildings for human habitation. In every skyscraperIt begins with a trip down the stairsLow wooden silhouettesSkyscrapers are frowned upon citiesurbanismhome
51. Green Streets Problem There is too much hot hard asphalt in the world. A local road, which only gives access to buildings, needs a few stones for the wheels of the cars; nothing more. Most of it can still be green. Solution On local roads, closed to through traffic, plant grass all over the road and set occasional paving stones into the grass to form a surface for the wheels of those cars that need access to the street. Make no distinction between street and sidewalk. Where houses open off the street, put in more paving stones or gravel to let cars turn onto their own land. transportation
53. Main Gateways Problem: Any part of town—large or small—which is to be identified by its inhabitants as a precinct of some kind, will be reinforced, helped in its distinctness, marked, and made more vivid, if the paths which enter it are marked by gateways where they cross the boundary. Solution: Mark every boundary in the city which has important human meaning—the boundary of a building cluster, a neighborhood, a precinct—by great gateways where the major entering paths cross the boundary. 112. Entrance Transition
66. Holy Ground Problem What is a church or temple? It is a place of worship, spirit, contemplation, of course. But above all, from a human point of view, it is a gateway. A person comes into the world through the church. They leave it through the church. And, at each of the important thresholds of their life, they once again step through the church. Solution In each community and neighborhood, identify some sacred site as consecrated ground, and form a series of nested precincts, each marked by a gateway, each one progressively more private, and more sacred than the last, the innermost a final sanctum that can only be reached by passing through all of the outer ones. Einmal Ist Keinmal
70. Grave Sites Problem No people who turn their backs on death can be alive. The presence of the dead among the living will be a daily fact in any society which encourages its people to live. Solution Never build massive cemeteries. Instead, allocate pieces of land throughout the community as grave sites—corners of parks, sections of paths, gardens, beside gateways—where memorials to people who have died can be ritually placed with inscriptions and mementos which celebrate their live. Give each grave site an edge, a path, and a quiet corner where people can sit. By custom, this is hallowed ground. deathlife
80. Self-Governing Workshops and Offices Problem No one enjoys their work if they are a cog in a machine. Solution Encourage the formation of self-governing workshops and offices of 5 to 20 workers. Make each group autonomous—with respect to organization, style, relation to other groups, hiring and firing, work schedule. Where the work is complicated and requires larger organizations, several of these work groups can federate and cooperate to produce complex artifacts and services. work
104. Site Repair Problem Buildings must always be built on those parts of the land which are in the worst condition, not the best. Solution On no account place buildings in the places which are more beautiful. In fact, do the opposite. Consider the site and its buildings as a single living ecosystem. Leave those areas that are the most precious, beautiful, comfortable, and healthy as they are, and build new structures in those parts of the site which are least pleasant now. Einmal Ist KeinmalRepairBut then the knoll was goneComposition and revisionRethinking Repair buildingmakingdesignrepair
106. Positive Outdoor Space Problem Outdoor spaces which are merely “left over” between buildings will, in general, not be used. Solution Make all outdoor spaces which surround and lie between your buildings positive. Give each one some degree of enclosure; surround each space with wings of buildings, trees, hedges, fences, arcades, and trellised walks, until it becomes an entity with a positive quality and does not spill out indefinitely around corners.
109. Long Thin House Problem The shape of a building has a great effect on the relative degrees of privacy and overcrowding in it, and this in turn has a critical effect on people’s comfort and well-being. Solution In small buildings, don’t cluster all the rooms together around each other; instead string out the rooms one after another, so that distance between each room is as great as it can be. You can do this horizontally—so that the plan becomes a thin, long rectangle; or you can do it vertically—so that the building becomes a tall narrow tower. In either case, the building can be surprisingly narrow and still work—8, 10, and 12 feet are all quite possible. Einmal Ist KeinmalThe linear city
112. Entrance Transition Problem: Buildings, and especially houses, with a graceful transition between the street and the inside, are more tranquil than those which open directly off the street. Solution: Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view. Walking through doorways causes forgetting53. Main GatewaysAt the Green MosqueThe wind's pulling us inOne who has trodden this garden pathA more spiritual place transitionsdoors
126. Something Roughly in the Middle Problem A public space without a middle is quite likely to stay empty. Solution Between the natural paths which cross a public square or courtyard or a piece of common land, choose something to stand roughly in the middle: a fountain, a tree, a statue, a clock-tower with seats, a windmill, a bandstand. Make it something which gives a strong and steady pulse to the square, drawing people in toward the center. Leave it exactly where it falls between the paths; resist the impulse to put it exactly in the middle.
127. Intimacy Gradient Problem Unless the spaces in a building are arranged in a sequence which corresponds to their degrees of privateness, the visits made by strangers, friends, guests, clients, family, will always be a little awkward. Solution Lay out the spaces of a building so that they create a sequence which begins with the entrance and the most public parts of the building, then leads into the slightly more private areas, and finally to the most private domains. intimacy
134. Zen View If there is a beautiful view, don’t spoil it by building huge windows that gape incessantly at it. Instead, put the windows which look onto the view at places of transition—along paths, in hallways, in entry ways, on stairs, between rooms. If the view window is correctly placed, people will see a glimpse of the distant view as they come up to the window or pass it: but the view is never visible from the places where people stay. zen
135. Tapestry of Light and Dark Problem In a building with uniform light level, there are few “places” which function as effective settings for human events. This happens because, to a large extent, the places which make effective settings are defined by light. Solution Create alternating areas of light and dark throughout the building, in such a way that people naturally walk toward the light, whenever they are going to important places: seats, entrances, stairs, passages, places of special beauty, and make other areas darker, to increase the contrast. Einmal Ist Keinmal darknesslight
159. Light on Two Sides of Every Room Problem When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are lit only from one side unused and empty. Solution Locate each room so that it has outdoor space outside it on at least two sides, and then place windows in these outdoor walls so that natural light falls into every room from more than one direction. Daylight should not tyrannize architecture lightspace
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. Deep Interlock
172. Garden Growing Wild Problem A garden which grows true to its own laws is not a wilderness, yet not entirely artificial either. Solution Grow grasses, mosses, bushes, flowers, and trees in a way which comes close to the way that they occur in nature: intermingled, without barriers between them, without bare earth, without formal flower beds, and with all the boundaries and edges made in rough stone and brick and wood which become a part of the natural growth. Introduction to PermacultureThe garden is a riotChef's Table: Jeong Kwan naturefarminggardens
179. Alcoves Problem No homogeneous room, of homogeneous height, can serve a group of people well. To give a group a chance to be together, as a group, a room must also give them the chance to be alone, in one’s and two’s in the same space. Solution Make small places at the edge of any common room, usually no more than 6 feet wide and 3 to 6 feet deep and possibly much smaller. These alcoves should be large enough for two people to sit, chat, or play and sometimes large enough to contain a desk or a table.
180. Window Place Problem Everybody loves window seats, bay windows, and big windows with low sills and comfortable chairs drawn up to them. Solution In every room where you spend any length of time during the day, make at least one window into a "window place". windows
190. Ceiling Height Variety Problem A building in which ceiling heights are all the same is virtually incapable of making people feel comfortable. Solution Vary the ceiling heights continuously throughout the building, especially between rooms which open into each other, so that the relative intimacy of different spaces can be felt. In particular, make ceilings high in rooms which are public or meant for large gatherings (10 to 12 feet), lower in rooms for smaller gatherings (7 to 9 feet), and very low in rooms for one or two people (6 to 7 feet).
197. Thick Walls Problem Houses with smooth hard walls made of prefabricated panels, concrete, gypsum, steel, aluminum, or glass always stay impersonal and dead. Solution Open your mind to the possibility that the walls of your building can be thick, can occupy a substantial volume—even actual usable space—and need not be merely thin membranes which have no depth. Decide where these thick walls ought to be. Zeniba's house
205. Structure Follows Social Spaces Problem No building ever feels right to the people in it unless the physical spaces (defined by columns, walls, and ceilings) are congruent with the social spaces (defined by activities and human groups). Solution A first principle of construction: on no account allow the engineering to dictate the building’s form. Place the load bearing elements—the columns and the walls and floors—according to the social space of the building; never modify the social spaces to conform to the engineering structure of the building. Form follows function uxfunction
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. Zeniba's house material
239. Small Panes Problem When plate glass windows became possible, people thought that they would put us more directly in touch with nature. In fact, they do the opposite. Solution Divide each window into small panes. These panes can be very small indeed, and should hardly ever be more than a foot square. To get the exact size of the panes, divide the width and height of the window by the number of panes. Then each window will have different sized panes according to its height and width. Einmal Ist KeinmalProtected, yet tuned inWe have lost our sense of intimate life windows
247. Paving With Cracks Between the Stones Problem Asphalt and concrete surfaces outdoors are easy to wash down, but they do nothing for us, nothing for the paths, and nothing for the rainwater and plants. Solution On paths and terraces, lay paving stones with a 1 inch crack between the stones, so that grass and mosses and small flowers can grow between the stones. Lay the stones directly into the earth, not into mortar, and, of course, use no cement or mortar in between the stones.
249. Ornament Problem All people have the instinct to decorate their surroundings. Solution Search around the building, and find those edges and transitions which need emphasis or extra binding energy. Corners, places where materials meet, door frames, windows, main entrances, the place where one wall meets another, the garden gate, a fence—all these are natural places which call out for ornament. Now find simple themes and apply the elements of the theme over and over again to the edges and boundaries which you decide to mark. Make the ornaments work as seams along the boundaries and edges so that they knit the two sides together and make them one. ornament
250. Warm Colors Problem The greens and grays of hospitals and office corridors are depressing and cold. Natural wood, sunlight, bright colors are warm. In some way, the warmth of the colors in a room makes a great deal of difference between comfort and discomfort. Solution Choose surface colors which, together with the color of the natural light, reflected light, and artificial lights, create a warm light in the rooms. color
251. Different Chairs Problem People are different sizes; they sit in different ways. And yet there is a tendency in modern times to make all chairs alike. Solution Never furnish any place with chairs that are identically the same. Choose a variety of different chairs, some big, some small, some softer than others, some rockers, some very old, some new, with arms, without arms, some wicker, some wood, some cloth. Drawing pictures of citiesAn index of the shifting patterns furniture
252. Pools of Light Problem Uniform illumination—the sweetheart of the lighting engineers—serves no useful purpose whatsoever. In fact, it destroys the social nature of space, and makes people feel disoriented and unbounded. Solution Place the lights low, and apart, to form individual pools of light which encompass chairs and tables like bubbles to reinforce the social character of the spaces which they form. Remember that you can’t have pools of light without the darker places in between. Lights and lampsFalse train station darknesslight
253. Things From Your Life Problem “Decor” and the conception of “interior design” have spread so widely, that very often people forget their instinct for the things they really want to keep around them. Solution Do not be tricked into believing that modern decor must be slick or psychedelic, or “natural” or "modern art", or “plants” or anything else that current taste-makers claim. It is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life—the things you care for, the things that tell your story. collections