archminute

 This article brought to you by (brand name).  Or maybe by No Name™. That's what you're seeing there in the yellow: a brand whose whole identity is based on having no brand name. You won't find any Eggo, they only make "original waffles". No Charmin either, just "bathroom tissue".  Make no mistake, this campaign of anti-design isn't concerned with actually destroying brand image (they'll happily sell you all the bright yellow merchandise you can carry), they're more so trying to convince you that not having a design somehow puts them on the moral high ground. That, by spending a single cent on marketing or packaging design, all the other companies have duped you and you'd really be a fool not to buy all this plain yellow goodness.  It is, of course, just another way to market a brand.  To stray from consumer goods and into other areas of anti-design, this is a problem that I've often had with some works of minimalist architecture. I&#

We've all heard of them.  Disasters caused by too many cut corners, too many costs saved. Maybe something as small as a backyard deck toppling over (because the builders used drywall screws instead of structural nails) or something as large as the entire roof of an apartment building flying off into the street (because they skimped on the cheap metal wind ties in the attic). By this point, we all know that there's a limit to how much corner-cutting you can get away with before you start running into unforeseen problems.  But what if you do things better than you absolutely have to? What happens if you go beyond the bare minimum to get past the inspector and spend a little extra to do things the right way?  I present to you: the unforeseen benefit.  I will personally bottom-dollar guarantee you that this fence was not built as a flood retaining, aquarium wall fence, but just look at it go. This fence was built to a higher standard than it had any need to be. I'm sure that it

Take a minute to admire this.  In my mind, incredible doesn't even begin to describe it. Frank Lloyd Wright's "Kalil House" is one of my all-time favorite pieces of residential architecture. Maybe it's not your cup of tea, and I can understand that, but you just have to wonder:  What would living in it be like?  As it turns out, there's not much sense in wasting your time with that question-- odds are that neither you nor I will ever find out. The reason for that is the same reason why the Kalil House, one of Wright's great triumphs, was a complete failure. The house was designed in his "Usonian Automatic" fashion, calling for concrete block modular construction. The idea behind this was that the building was simple to construct, like a home made of big Legos, and that the homeowners-to-be could work on it themselves to save money. In fact, almost every principle of the Usonian Automatic style was aimed toward designing inexpensive housing that f

I’ll be honest, I’m out of my depth on this one.  But the whole point of this page is giving myself excuses to read and write about interesting things, so we’re forging on. Church of the Light in Ibaraki, Japan  (Tadao Ando) How do we represent the divine on Earth? It’s an age-old question, and one that has been answered in countless ways. The Greeks and Romans sought to impress their pantheon by constructing feats of engineering, buildings of a scale befitting the gods. Acropolis at Athens The Catholic Church took a similar approach in the Gothic period by stretching what was materially possible at the time, building their cathedrals up into the heavens. The goal was for the structures to awe and inspire visitors into faith, and to this end they struck upon another pillar of religious architecture: Light. The intricate stained-glass windows and large open spaces created a sort of holy light in the cathedral at a time when many buildings were lit with dim candles. Chartres Cathedral

The folding chair.  I sort of love it, you sort of love it, we all sort of love it. Probably because it's only sort of a chair. It wobbles and creaks, it's not terrifically comfortable, and it's not devilishly handsome either. But what if I told you that the humble chair you see before you is part of an urban solution to electrify public spaces? One of the basic problems of designing a public space is that you could never in a million years conceive of all the ways that it will end up being used. You may plan for a public fountain that becomes an impromptu swimming pool. You might design a beautiful bench seating area that winds up as a bird-dropping collector more than anything else. People are going to take your space and run with it, so why not make it a little easier? Enter: the movable chair. The proposed solution by William Whyte, one of the patron saints of urban planning, moveable chairs allow the designed space to become a designable space . Benches are static and

The Purist.  If you've taken classes in architecture, chances are good that you've had one-- a professor that wears all black, writes exclusively in the upper-case, and cannot (read CANNOT) to tell you enough about the importance of  f o r m . To be fair they've probably forgotten more things about architecture than I've ever known so they deserve respect in their own right. Nonetheless, I have a bone to pick: I was taught about color, but I was never shown. Or maybe I was never encouraged, I can't tell the difference.  The list of acceptable materials for our models was as follows: brilliant white museum board, preferably with the laser-burnt edges sanded off to restore the whiteness; cool gray or, if you were feeling a little saucy, warm gray chipboard; virgin, unprinted cardboard sheets of uniform thickness; light basswood sheets and basswood sticks (for when you simply must operate outside the realm of planes). If you'd skipped that paragraph, I wouldn'