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
  266. Perrine, John D. 9
  267. Petroski, Henry 24
  268. philosophy 6
  269. photography 20
  270. physics 6
  271. Pinker, Steven 8
  272. place 14
  273. planning 15
  274. Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth 18
  275. poetry 13
  276. politics 9
  277. Pollan, Michael 6
  278. practice 10
  279. problems 31
  280. process 22
  281. production 7
  282. productivity 12
  283. products 21
  284. programming 9
  285. progress 16
  286. Pye, David 42
  287. quality 26
  288. questions 8
  289. Radić, Smiljan 20
  290. Rams, Dieter 16
  291. Rao, Venkatesh 14
  292. reading 16
  293. reality 13
  294. Reichenstein, Oliver 5
  295. religion 11
  296. Rendle, Robin 12
  297. repair 28
  298. research 17
  299. Reveal, James L. 4
  300. Richards, Melanie 3
  301. Richie, Donald 10
  302. Rougeux, Nicholas 4
  303. Rowe, Peter G. 10
  304. Rupert, Dave 4
  305. Ruskin, John 5
  306. Satyal, Parimal 9
  307. Saval, Nikil 13
  308. Sayers, Dorothy 32
  309. Schaller, George B. 7
  310. Schwulst, Laurel 5
  311. science 17
  312. seeing 36
  313. Sennett, Richard 45
  314. senses 11
  315. Seuss, Dr. 14
  316. Shakespeare, William 4
  317. Shorin, Toby 8
  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
  339. streets 10
  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
  369. understanding 32
  370. urbanism 68
  371. ux 100
  372. Victor, Bret 9
  373. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 4
  374. vision 7
  375. visualization 34
  376. Voltaire 4
  377. wabi-sabi 8
  378. walking 23
  379. Wallace, David Foster 33
  380. Wang, Shawn 6
  381. war 7
  382. waste 12
  383. Watterson, Bill 4
  384. Webb, Matt 14
  385. Webb, Marc 3
  386. Weber, Michael H. 3
  387. Wechler, Lawrence 37
  388. whimsy 11
  389. White, E.B. 15
  390. Wirth, Niklaus 6
  391. wisdom 20
  392. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 7
  393. Woolf, Virginia 11
  394. words 35
  395. work 81
  396. writing 55
  397. Wurman, Richard Saul 18
  398. www 88
  399. Yamada, Kōun 5
  400. Yamashita, Yuhki 4
  401. Yudkowsky, Eliezer 17
  402. zen 38
  403. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
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Our Natural Environment

Close
  • An endless living world

    If there is a heaven, and I am allowed entrance, I will ask for no more than an endless living world to walk through and explore.

    Michael R. Canfield, Field Notes on Science and Nature
    • learning
    • nature
    • religion
    • walking
  • 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.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​Crafting repair​​
    • i
    • making
    • nature
  • Cherry blossoms

    Cherry blossoms are to be preferred not when they are at their fullest but afterward, when the air is thick with their falling petals and with the unavoidable reminder that they too have had their day and must rightly perish.

    Immortality, in that it is considered at all, is to be found through nature's way. The form is kept though the contents evaporate.

    Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics
    • death
    • nature
  • Upstream Color Original Soundtrack

    1. Leaves Expanded May Be Prevailing Blue Mixed With Yellow Of The Sand
    2. I Used To Wonder At The Halo Of Light Around My Shadow And Would Fancy Myself One Of The Elect
    3. Fearing That They Would Be Light-headed For Want Of Food And Also Sleep
    4. Stirring Them Up As The Keeper Of A Menagerie His Wild Beasts
    5. The Finest Qualities Of Our Nature Like The Bloom On Fruits Can Be Preserved
    6. Perhaps The Wildest Sound That Is Ever Heard Here Making The Woods Ring Far And Wide
    7. I Love To Be Alone
    8. A Young Forest Growing Up Under Your Meadows
    9. Their Roots Reaching Quite Under The House
    10. The Rays Which Stream Through The Shutter Will Be No Longer Remembered When The Shutter Is Wholly Removed
    11. After Soaking Two Years And Then Lying High Six Months It Was Perfectly Sound Though Waterlogged Past Drying
    12. The Sun Is But A Morning Star
    13. A Low And Distant Sound Gradually Swelling And Increasing
    14. As If It Would Have A Universal And Memorable Ending
    15. A Sullen Rush And Roar
    Shane Carruth, Upstream Color
    www.discogs.com
    1. ​​Walden​​
    2. ​​I love to be alone​​
    • euphony
    • nature
    • loneliness
    • melancholy
    • sound
    • ending
  • The office landscape

    The office landscape.png

    An organic, almost forest-like office layout.

    There is an affinity with certain planned “landscapes” of the natural world – namely, the classic Italian Baroque garden. In the sample plans the Schnelle brothers devised, the arrangement of desks seems utterly chaotic, totally unplanned – a mess, like a forest of refrigerator magnets. But, as with the seemingly “wild” overgrowth of a “natural” garden, the office landscape is more thoroughly planned than any symmetrical and orderly arrangement of desks. Imaginary lines wend their way around every cluster, delineating common pools of activity; between and through the undergrowth of clusters are invisible, sinuous paths of work flow.

    Nikil Saval, Cubed
    • nature
    • gardens
  • 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.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​Introduction to Permaculture​​
    2. ​​The garden is a riot​​
    3. ​​Chef's Table: Jeong Kwan​​
    • nature
    • farming
    • gardens
  • Cyberspace as a global dump

    If we think that cyberspace is a public space, then let's think of the oceans. They used to be as much of a world resource as anybody could think of but didn't belong to anybody. So everybody put their garbage into them. The potential of cyberspace as a global dump is quite substantial.

    Ursula M. Franklin, Every Tool Shapes the Task
    • nature
    • trash
  • Mountains are mountains

    Before attaining enlightenment,
    mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers.

    At the moment of enlightenment,
    mountains are no longer mountains,
    nor are rivers rivers.

    After attaining enlightenment,
    mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers.

    Yuanwu Keqin, Thomas Cleary & J.C. Cleary, The Blue Cliff Record
    1. ​​Don't Rush to Simplicity​​
    • zen
    • nature
  • Freedomless freedom

    The beauty of kasuri is received as a gift. As long as the laws of nature are upheld, the beauty of kasuri remains intact. This demonstrates the curious principle that the artisan is deprived of technical freedom but works in the freedom of nature.

    In this sense, kasuri can be said to be created in a state of freedomless freedom.

    Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Kasuri
    • freedom
    • constraints
    • nature
    • making
  • Nothing that nature does not seek

    Nature tells us the shape and pattern a material should assume, and nothing good can be achieved by ignoring its dictates. A good artisan seeks nothing that nature does not seek.

    Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Miscellaneous Things
    • nature
    • form
  • Deep Interlock

    Forms which have a high degree of life tend to contain some type of interlock – a “hooking into” their surroundings – or an ambiguity between element and context, either case creating a zone belonging to both the form and to its surroundings, making it difficult to disentangle the two.

    The interlock, or ambiguity, strengthens the centers on either side, which are intensified by the new center formed between the two.

    Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order
    1. ​​The versatility of flat surfaces​​
    2. ​​Strength from both mass and form​​
    3. ​​168. Connection to the Earth​​
    4. ​​Interlocking​​
    5. ​​Protected, yet tuned in​​
    • nature
    • architecture
  • The group of blind mullahs

    In a natural landscape, each element is part of the greater whole, a sophisticated and intricate web of connections and energy flows. If we attempt to create landscapes using a strictly objective viewpoint, we will produce awkward and dysfunctional designs because all living systems are more than just a sum of their parts. Our culture has tried to define the landscape scientifically, by collecting extensive data about its parts.

    These methods are much like the group of blind mullahs in the Sufi tale, who try to describe an elephant.

    Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture
    1. ​​The blind men who felt the elephant​​
    2. ​​The blind men and the elephant​​
    • holism
    • nature
  • Ground displaced upward

    Imagine that our rooftops were parkland, that the area of ground occupied by buildings was, in effect, simply displaced upward. Imagine that the city enacted legislation requiring that the equivalent of 100 percent of the surface area of New York were to be green. A 100 percent requirement would not simply oblige green roofs. It would also demand that compensatory greenery be added to make up for such ungreenable areas as roadways, runways, and other unplantable places. Perhaps the requirement would be satisfied with road narrowings, cantilevered gardens, or green floors in buildings (utilities on the order of the mechanical floors that occur in almost all tall buildings).

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    • nature
    • cities
  • Nature, sentimentalized

    Nature, sentimentalized and considered as the antithesis of cities, is apparently assumed to consist of grass, fresh air and little else, and this ludicrous disrespect results in the devastation of nature even formally and publicly preserved in the form of a pet.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    • respect
    • nature
  • Modularity

    One of the most pervasive features of these buildings is the fact that they are “modular.” They are full of identical concrete blocks, identical rooms, identical houses, identical apartments in identical apartment buildings. The idea that a building can - and ought - to be made of modular units is one of the most pervasive assumptions of twentieth-century architecture.

    Nature is never modular. Nature is full of almost similar units (waves, raindrops, blades of grass) - but though the units of one kind are all alike in their broad structure, no two are ever alike in detail.

    The same broad features keep recurring over and over again. And yet, in their detailed appearance these broad features are never twice the same.

    Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
    • nature
    • architecture
    • making
    • details
    • modularity

    On traditional cultures and their building processes, Alexander expands this view:

    Each building was a member of a family, and yet unique.
    Each room a little different according to the view.
    Each tile is set a little differently in the ground, according to the settling of the earth.

  • I went to the woods

    I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

    Henry David Thoreau, Walden
    • life
    • nature
    • truth
  • The way of things

    It is when one forces principles on the world that one interferes with its natural workings.

    Yoel Hoffman, Japanese Death Poems
    1. ​​How things ought to be​​
    • wisdom
    • nature
  • Ecological cycles

    This house exists in the midst of a year-long cycle of natural phenomena. One might say that this cycle entails the periodic "rise and fall" of the ground surface. In winter it sinks below a snow cover that grows head-high or more; as spring approaches, this height gradually decreases until we can see the actual ground surface, not yet covered with undergrowth. With summer the vegetation grows higher and higher until the plaza seems once again to be lower than its surroundings. With the falling of the leaves, autumn restores our ability to penetrate these surroundings at eye level, at least until the snow begins to fall again... Through the four seasons, we experience the sensation of the ground rising and falling, like the ebb and flow of the tide.

    I call this cycle of natural phenomena an ecological cycle.

    Toshiharu Naka, Two Cycles
    • nature
  • The last of them all

    And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack!
    From outside in the fields came a sickening smack
    of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.
    The very last Truffula Tree of them all.

    Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
    • nature
  • I speak for the trees!

    Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
    • nature
    • conservation
  • The palette of nature

    "What nature does with its colors is invariably—the palette of nature is twice as complicated, at least twice as sophisticated, as anything any artist can ever come up with. On a couple levels.

    To start with, there are these amazing combinations of colors, filled with surprises and almost never wrong. I don't know how Nature ever conceived to put, say, those together. But, boy, are they right on the money!"

    Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
    1. ​​Colors in nature​​
    2. ​​Hues subdued​​
    • nature
    • color
  • There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

    There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
    There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
    There is society where none intrudes,
    By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
    I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

    Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
    • nature
  • Their own absence

    After a seven days’ march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foliage.

    There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.

    Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
    • nature

    Cities & Eyes 3

  • Suddenly the letter has a tail

    I believe that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I’ll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer’s sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered.

    Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
    • nature
  • All the lives to be

    And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.

    Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
    • nature
  • We have been given a standard

    We have been given a standard to use. It is there, handy daily: things as they are, or Nature itself. This makes good sense, the only sense really—Nature should be our model.

    Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics
    • nature
    • making
  • Merely ornate

    There is nothing merely ornate about nature: every branch, twig, or leaf counts.

    Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics
    • nature
    • ornament

    I might counter with the example of something like the birds of paradise‚ where being ornate and ostentatious is really the whole deal.

  • When a building has this fire

    And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety, created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself.

    Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
    • beauty
    • nature
    • architecture
  • It is going to pass

    The character of nature can’t arise without the presence and the consciousness of death.

    When we make our own attempt to create nature in the world around us, and succeed, we cannot escape the fact that we are going to die. This quality, when it is reached, in human things, is always sad; it makes us sad; and we can even say that any place where a man tries to make the quality, and be like nature, cannot be true, unless we can feel the slight presence of this haunting sadness there, because we know at the same time we enjoy it, that it is going to pass.

    Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
    • nature
    • melancholy
    • death
  • As plain as day

    The personal experience of most of us will testify to this persistence of an illusory image long after its inadequacy is conceptually realized. We stare into the jungle and see only the sunlight on the green leaves, but a warning noise tells us that an animal is hidden there. The observer then learns to interpret the scene by singling out "give-away" clues and by reweighting previous signals. The camouflaged animal may now be picked up by the reflection of its eyes. Finally by repeated experience the entire pattern of perception is changed, and the observer need no longer consciously search for give-aways, or add new data to an old framework. They have achieved an image which will operate successfully in the new situation, seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden animal appears among the leaves, "as plain as day."

    Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
    • nature
    • perception
    • images
  • Savage, hostile, and cruel

    Some may find puzzling or distasteful the parallel I am drawing between the study of nature and the study of technology. After all, nature is good and good for you, whereas everyone knows that technology is ugly, evil, and dangerous.

    A few centuries ago—say, on the American western frontier—a quite different view prevailed. Nature was seen as savage, hostile, cruel. Mountains and forests were barriers, not refuges. The lights of civilization were a comforting sight. We took our charter from the book of Genesis, which grants mankind dominion over the beasts, and felt it was both our entitlement and our duty to tame the wilderness, fell the trees, plow the land, and dam the rivers.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    • nature
    • technology
    • industry
    • infrastructure
  • Nature undisturbed

    My chief aim is simply to describe and explain the technological fabric of society, not to judge whether it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly. And yet I would not argue that technology is neutral or value-free. Quite the contrary: I suggest that the signs of human presence are the only elements of the landscape that have and moral or aesthetic significance at all. In nature undisturbed, a desert is not better or worse than a forest or a swamp; there is simply no scale on which to rank such things unless it is a human scale of utility or beauty. Only when people intervene in nature is there any question of right or wrong, better or worse.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    • nature
    • morality
    • aesthetics
    • humanity
  • Little sense of season

    The real world of technology denies the existence and the reality of nature. For instance, there is little sense of season as one walks through a North American or western European supermarket.

    Just as there is a little sense of season, there is little sense of climate. Everything possible is done to equalize the ambiance – to construct and environment that is warm in the winter, cool in the summer.

    Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology
    • nature
    • cycles
    • environment
  • Mechanisms and organisms

    "Kant described a mechanism as a functional unity, in which the parts exist for one another in the performance of a particular function.

    An organism, on the other hand, is a functional and structural unity in which the parts exist for and by means of one another in the expression of a particular nature.

    This means that the parts of an organism – leaves, roots, flowers, limbs, eyes, heart, brain – are not made independently and then assembled, as in a machine, but arise as a result of interactions within the developing organism."

    — Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed His Spots

    Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology
    • nature
    • evolution
    • growth
    • design
    • function
  • System A

    System A is concerned with the well-being of the land, its integrity, the well-being of the people and plants and animals who inhabit the land. This has very much to do with the integral nature of plants, animals, and water resources, and with the tailoring of each part of every part to its immediate context, with the result that the larger wholes, also, become harmonious and integral in their nature.

    Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth
    • nature
  • Japanese Death Poems

    A Book by Yoel Hoffman
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​The haiku​​
    2. ​​Spring snow​​
    3. ​​An entrance, an exit​​
    4. ​​Poppies​​
    5. ​​Coolness will rise​​
    1. ​​Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die​​
    2. ​​Poems of an Indian summer​​
    3. ​​He only who has lived with the beautiful​​
    • death
    • poetry
    • nature
    • melancholy
    • zen
  • The World of the Sea

    A Book by Moquin Tandon & Martyn Hart
    catalogue.nla.gov.au
    1. ​​Wordless questioning​​
    2. ​​The Beauty of the Overlooked​​
    • nature
    • taxonomy
  • Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

    A Poem by Lord Byron
    www.gutenberg.org
    1. ​​And thus the heart will break​​
    2. ​​Words which are things​​
    3. ​​There is a pleasure in the pathless woods​​
    • love
    • nature
    • loneliness
    • melancholy
  • A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams

    A Book by Michael Pollan
    michaelpollan.com
    1. ​​barnsoutbuildings​​
    2. ​​Here Be Dragons​​
    • architecture
    • nature
    • making
  • BLDGBLOG

    A Blog by Geoff Manaugh
    www.bldgblog.com
    1. ​​A World Where Things Only Almost Meet​​
    2. ​​Buttresses​​
    3. ​​The Gosling Effect​​
    4. ​​Auditory Hallucinations from Offworld Megafarms​​
    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    • architecture
    • geography
    • nature
    • science
  • Introduction to Permaculture

    A Book by Bill Mollison
    modernfarmer.com

    The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.

    1. ​​About Permaculture​​
    2. ​​Permaculture ethics​​
    3. ​​Using akido on the landscape​​
    4. ​​Permaculture principles​​
    5. ​​Design is a connection between things​​
    1. ​​172. Garden Growing Wild​​
    2. ​​Protected, yet tuned in​​
    3. ​​Hints towards a non-extractive economy​​
    • farming
    • nature
    • ecosystems
    • sustainability
    • agriculture
  • Thoreau 2.0

    A Talk by Maciej Cegłowski
    idlewords.com
    1. ​​Walden​​
    • life
    • nature
    • literature
  • Phantom Regret by Jim

    A Poem by Jim Carrey & The Weeknd
    genius.com

    And if your broken heart's heavy when you step on the scale
    You'll be lighter than air when they pull back the veil
    Consider the flowers, they don't try to look right
    They just open their petals and turn to the light

    • melancholy
    • nature
    • death
    • gardens
  • Tendrils of Mess in our Brains

    An Essay by Sarah Perry
    www.ribbonfarm.com
    Image from www.ribbonfarm.com on 2021-11-11 at 8.43.14 AM.jpeg

    A ruin and a mess.

    Watts observes that elements of the natural world – clouds, foam on water, the stars, human beings – are not messes, though the nature of their order remains inscrutable, and Watts doesn’t try to pin down its precise nature. Mess seems to be somehow a property perceptible only in the presence of human artifacts. Is this the result of some kind of aesthetic original sin on the part of humans, uncanny beings severed from the holiness of Nature? I hope not. “Humans are bad” is a boring answer.

    • nature
    • order
    • chaos
    • aesthetics
  • The Beauty of the Overlooked

    An Article by Maria Popova
    www.brainpickings.org
    Image from www.brainpickings.org on 2021-10-16 at 3.50.39 PM.jpeg

    Medusa from A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast by Philip Henry Gosse, 1853.

    Philip Henry Gosse’s Stunning 19th-Century Illustrations of Coastal Creatures and Reflections on the Delicate Kinship of Life

    “These objects are, it is true, among the humblest of creatures that are endowed with organic life… Here we catch the first kindling of that spark, which glows into so noble a flame in the Aristotles, the Newtons, and the Miltons of our heaven-gazing race.”

    1. ​​The World of the Sea​​
    2. ​​Why Sketch?​​
    • nature
    • water
  • Crown

    A Poem by Kay Ryan
    www.poetryfoundation.org

    Too much rain
    loosens trees.
    In the hills giant oaks
    fall upon their knees.
    You can touch parts
    you have no right to—
    places only birds
    should fly to.

    • nature
    • trees
    • melancholy
    • touch
  • tree.fm

    A Website
    www.tree.fm

    Tune Into Forests From Around The World. Escape, Relax & Preserve.

    1. ​​Shinrin-yoku​​
    • sound
    • nature
    • trees
    • music
    • microsites
  • Shinrin-yoku

    A Definition
    www.natureandforesttherapy.org

    Forest Therapy, also known as “Shinrin-yoku,” refers to the practice of spending time in forested areas for the purpose of enhancing health, wellness, and happiness. The practice follows the general principle that it is beneficial to spend time bathing in the atmosphere of the forest. The Japanese words translate into English as “Forest Bathing.”

    1. ​​tree.fm​​
    • nature
    • health
    • happiness
  • British & Exotic Mineralogy

    A Website by Nicholas Rougeux
    www.c82.net
    Screenshot of www.c82.net on 2020-08-03 at 10.46.26 AM.png
    • nature
  • Walden

    A Book by Henry David Thoreau
    1. ​​The quality of the day​​
    2. ​​I went to the woods​​
    3. ​​I love to be alone​​
    4. ​​Quiet desperation​​
    5. ​​A new wearer of clothes​​
    1. ​​Upstream Color​​
    2. ​​Thoreau 2.0​​
    3. ​​Upstream Color Original Soundtrack​​
    • nature
    • solitude
    • environment
    • labor
  • Life-friendly design

    An Article by Ralph Ammer
    ralphammer.com
    Image from ralphammer.com on 2020-07-27 at 5.02.21 PM.gif

    I suggest that our industrial heritage has been an important preliminary stage. The next step is to carefully examine and implement design values that nurture our joy of life. Just like our “industrial design” illustrated our industrial values, a life-friendly design could express our biophilic values.

    This optimistic design approach differs from naive nostalgia or fear of extinction. There is no way back to nature but only forward to nature.

    • nature
    • industry
    • progress

    See also: Interaction design is dead. What now?


See also:
  1. melancholy
  2. making
  3. architecture
  4. death
  5. gardens
  6. zen
  7. industry
  8. aesthetics
  9. environment
  10. loneliness
  11. life
  12. farming
  13. sound
  14. trees
  15. i
  16. learning
  17. religion
  18. walking
  19. details
  20. modularity
  21. beauty
  22. wisdom
  23. ornament
  24. perception
  25. images
  26. technology
  27. infrastructure
  28. morality
  29. humanity
  30. cycles
  31. evolution
  32. growth
  33. design
  34. function
  35. color
  36. progress
  37. geography
  38. science
  39. love
  40. poetry
  41. taxonomy
  42. literature
  43. conservation
  44. solitude
  45. labor
  46. euphony
  47. ending
  48. truth
  49. ecosystems
  50. sustainability
  51. agriculture
  52. respect
  53. cities
  54. holism
  55. form
  56. freedom
  57. constraints
  58. music
  59. microsites
  60. health
  61. happiness
  62. trash
  63. touch
  64. water
  65. order
  66. chaos
  1. Christopher Alexander
  2. Donald Richie
  3. Ursula M. Franklin
  4. Murray Silverstein
  5. Sara Ishikawa
  6. Lord Byron
  7. Yoel Hoffman
  8. Brian Hayes
  9. Dr. Seuss
  10. Henry David Thoreau
  11. Bill Mollison
  12. Yanagi Sōetsu
  13. Yuanwu Keqin
  14. Thomas Cleary
  15. J.C. Cleary
  16. Virginia Woolf
  17. Herman Hesse
  18. Italo Calvino
  19. Michael R. Canfield
  20. Toshiharu Naka
  21. Nikil Saval
  22. Kevin Lynch
  23. Lawrence Wechler
  24. Robert Irwin
  25. Ralph Ammer
  26. Geoff Manaugh
  27. Moquin Tandon
  28. Martyn Hart
  29. Maciej Cegłowski
  30. Nicholas Rougeux
  31. Shane Carruth
  32. Jane Jacobs
  33. Michael Sorkin
  34. Michael Pollan
  35. Kay Ryan
  36. Maria Popova
  37. Sarah Perry
  38. Jim Carrey
  39. The Weeknd