patterns
Dwelling in ritual
Rain Chains & Musical Drains
Intricacy, centering, sun, enclosure
Parks intensely used in generalized public-yard fashion tend to have four elements in their design which I shall call intricacy, centering, sun and enclosure.
The scale of resolution determines what is seen
The patterns of Truchet's tiles appear at first glance as variously shaped interlocked regions of black and white, the boundaries between the square tiles being submerged whenever the two regions flanking them have the same color, just as in a real floor the air or cement between the tile edges is not perceived—until one looks closely. The scale of resolution determines what is seen.
Fabric
And finally, the things which seem like elements dissolve, and leave a fabric of relationships behind, which is the stuff that actually repeats itself, and gives the structure to a building or a town.
Simple variations of the parts
Symmetry, indeed, has been grossly overemphasized in both art and science: its main value is in giving meaning to its absence, dissymmetry, without which there could be no hierarchy.
The eye is repulsed by complexity if no order is detected, but it can be delighted by repetition, translation, rotation, reflection, magnification, and other simple variations of the parts.
patternsof.design
A Website by Nick TrombleyDrawing pictures of cities
An Article by Noah SmithThis is a famous picture by the artist Imperial Boy (帝国少年), who works in the anime industry. I sometimes claim that the entire genre of solarpunk is simply a riff on this picture.
If it’s not just “trees on buildings”, where does the Imperial Boy picture get its magic? Looking at it carefully and trying to analyze what I like about it, I think that much of it is about architecture, and even more of it is about the use of urban space — about how the structures in the picture shape the kinds of things you’d do if you were there. For example, here are five things I like:
- Open, walkable multi-level retail
- River with low bank
- Walkable streets
- Varied architecture
- Shade
Collaborative Information Architecture at Scale
An Article by Brandon DornHere I describe an approach for defining new information architectures for large organizational websites managed by many stakeholder groups.
Broadly speaking, there are four general phases to the approach:
- Auditing. Begin by immersing yourself in existing content and encourage stakeholders to adopt a critical, audience-minded perspective of their content.
- Diagramming. Work with stakeholders to develop new conceptual categories that better serve audiences and organizational direction.
- Elaborating. Think through content in detail and test new categories against specific instances and edge cases.
- Producing. Prepare content teams for production using a shared database of new sitemap pages and editorial considerations that you’ve developed incrementally.
The design systems between us
A Talk by Ethan MarcotteIn the early days, design systems promised us more consistent interfaces, more collaborative teams, and improved shipping times. While they’ve certainly delivered on some of those fronts, they’ve introduced new challenges too. Let’s talk through what’s working well—and what could be working better—as we take a closer look at the systems between us and our work.
My Life as an Architect in Tokyo
World renowned architect Kengo Kuma presents an enlightening tour of Tokyo, expressing his personal thoughts and reflections on the city's most influential buildings and its rich architectural heritage.
A collection of villages
I became a 'border person', as defined by the sociologist and philosopher Max Weber, viewing Tokyo from an outsider's perspective. Observing the city while walking around its streets enabled me to discover a wide variety of location, cultures and people, and that Tokyo is a collection of small villages, rather than one big city.
...When I design a building in any city, I believe that the world is a collection of villages, instead of a group of nations.
Low wooden silhouettes
While [Kenzo] Tange aspired to verticality, we looked to horizontality, believing that pre-1964 Tokyo, with its low wooden silhouettes, was a better model for the city of the future.
Occupied by a void
Roland Barthes wrote that the centre of Tokyo is occupied by a void...it is a quiet forest that lies at Tokyo's heart.
...The centre of Tokyo is certainly a void, but one that is protected by a circular train line, the Yamanote, which forms a 40-km (25-mile) loop around it. It seems to me that this ring of steel emphasizes the importance of the void, and the depth of its significance.
Such an enormous machine
In cities across the world, industrial zones beside rivers and canals have become the focus of attention, with their unique vivacity associated with places where things are made.
...Because the area is designated as a semi-industrial zone, we were able to get away with such an enormous machine inside [the Starbucks Reserve Roastery].
A more spiritual place
In the centre of the forest is the sandō, leading up to the shrine. It follows an L-shaped curve, and is very different to the straight processional pathways found in religious buildings in the West or in China. Curves ensure that the view changes constantly, helping visitors make the transition to a deeper, more spiritual place.
The building as less important than the path
In the design of Japanese tea houses, the building is seen as less important than the path (roji) leading up to it, and tea masters of the past believed that the journey along the roji allowed participants to better immerse themselves in the slow time of the tea ceremony.
The gentle light of shoji screens
Le Corbusier, the greatest architect of the last century, noted that 'architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in light', demonstrating to what extent light has been prioritized in the Western tradition. Tanizaki, on the other hand, spoke of the important of shadows, of extended eaves. Rather than the light that shines directly into a room, he praised the soft light that penetrates a space after being reflected off the floor, and again from the ceiling.
...In Japanese architecture, the gentle light that passes through shoji screens serves a key purpose. It reaches right to the back of the room, so that the space feels bright, even without the aid of artificial light. The soft light filtering through the white film at Takanawa Gateway Station represents a form of light that was forgotten about by Japanese Modernism.
The thin lip of a teacup
To give the building a sense of the delicacy associated with such crafts, as well as a feeling of warmth, I designed louvres from white porcelain panels, and used them to cover the outer walls. The louvres are tapered, to make their tips as fine as possible. (In fact, making tips as thin as possible is one of my key design principles: the thin lip of a teacup allows a better experience of the subtleties of tea - this is always at the forefront of my mind when I pay such close attention to edges.)
Skyscrapers are frowned upon
During the twentieth century, much importance was attached to things that were big and tall, but, as we moved into the twenty-first century, I felt that being big and tall had become embarrassing.
...Today, skyscrapers are frowned upon in Japan, and are seen as the product of the mistaken mindset that prevailed during the country is period of enhanced growth.
The Metabolist philosophy
Tange put Tsukiji as the centre of his plan, which now seems grandiose and delusional. His design for the Dentsu building had much in common with the Metabolist philosophy of the 1960s, which maintained that buildings needed to continually evolve in a flexible way.
...With [the Nakagin Capture Tower], Kurokawa's Metabolist philosophy was fully realized. After it was completed, however, it became almost impossible to switch over the capsules - indeed, since its completion, not one of the capsules has been moved. As a result, the Metabolist movement has been forgotten. Yet its core principles, which sought to draw architectural lessons from living organisms, has much inspiration to offer society today.
A city of hills
Many of the stations [on the Yamanote Line] have one entrance on the uphill side and another lower down, and the neighbourhoods around them have a totally different feel, depending on which exit you use to leave the station.
The hilly areas in Tokyo are mostly made up of quiet, well-to-do residential districts, while the lower sections often have more of a populist feel, with shopping arcades and small urban factories. As a result, the atmosphere outside the entrances are dramatically different in character. Take the wrong exit, and you might find yourself lost in a completely different kind of neighbourhood than you were expecting. In Tokyo, elite and working-class cultures exist alongside one another and mix together. I think the fundamental cause of this is the complexity of the city's topography.
...Tokyo is a city of hills, with most of it lying on an alluvial plain between the Tama and Kanda rivers. It is via these hills that the upland, elite neighbourhoods are connected with the more working-class areas down below. The slopes are thus a key part of the co-existence of these two worlds, used by people to come and go between them. Kagurazaka is particularly notable in this respect.
They can smell the wood
All of the wooden shelves used for storing books were on the warehouse's first floor. We decided to keep these shelves as they were to form a library, and we also created a small lecture hall for holding talks by writers and makers. Although contemporary society is moving away from books and towards computers and information technology, people nevertheless have a strong feeling of connection to – and nostalgia for – trees and things that are made from wood. La kagu is a space where visitors can really get a sense of the culture of books. When they step inside, some even say that they can smell wood.
As a kind of gateway
Historically, Japan's shrines have been built in order to worship the gods who live in the sacred mountains or seas; They don't reside in the shrine itself, but in the space beyond it. This belief that the spirits and deities exist beyond the confines of the shrine, and that the shrine itself acts not as a centre, but as a kind of gateway, is very different to the grand, imposing churches and cathedrals of Christianity.
The majority of shrines are not found in the mountains or in the middle of the fields, therefore, but at the borders of mountain villages – which is to say, at what is seen as the edge of the mountains. The tori gate, marking the entrance to a shrine, indicates that there are gods on the other side of it.
The golden poo
On the opposite bank of the Sumida River lies the Asahi Beer headquarters (1989), a strange building with a golden sculpture mounted on top of a granite-plated black box. It was designed by Philippe Starck, and completed in 198g when the Japanese economy was still going strong. The sculpture, with no clearly defined use, is a clear representation of its time. Today, the building is known as the 'golden poo', a reference to the shape of its crowning object.
Like crossing the sea
The Sumida is a symbol of Tokyo, but is not like the Thames in London or the Seine in Paris, or other rivers that are woven into the geography of the city. Its banks were pushed back, so that the river became extremely wide and travelling across it feels liberating, like crossing the sea.
These thrown-away items
I decided to furnish the restaurant [Tetchan] with the kinds of discarded items one wouldn't normally use in interior design, from recycled LAN cables to acrylic by-products.
When using discarded objects in interior design, it gives even brand-new places the feeling that they have always been there. I think this is due to the inherent history of these thrown-away items, which lives on inside of them.
Kengo Kuma's sketches