I understand that there is no lack of good Design today, but that there is a shortage of Resources and Customers to bring them to life. To access resources and “customers,” a need for so many good causes, again and again I find myself saying that we must make the values and actions we seek “fashionable”—i.e. to become something that everyone decides they want to have, to make or do…

In science education, we are promoting scientific inquiry, its products, and technology design fashionable by engaging everyone in them. As a science educator, I try to illuminate how and why a useful understanding of how the world works, within and around us, can promote actions to help them work better—i.e.healthier. Following this Conversation, I will be including a useful understanding of the technologies of healthy and beautiful spaces within definitions of technological and environmental literacy. This is, at least, one way to advance support for improved human-made environments.

Our chatter matters because, first of all, we need to keep processing and reexamine all those things that have been said in the past in our eve changing contexts (political, social, economical, environmental, etc.). In chattering we also act as filters, keeping alive those chatters of the past that still matter for our present, while burring under the rubble of words those past discourses that have become irrelevant to us. Second, we keep talking because it is in our human nature. Of course we self promote, that too is in our nature, but hopefully we have also learned enough from the discourses on ethics and talk about what we believe really matter, not, for example, what is fashionable for the moment or what may bring us more personal opportunities and such.

To have a real/positive impact on the Modern heritage of the world, the new trend on preservation process of Modernist buildings and sites must reach universal status. Debate should be encouraged so we can reach a definite and instrumental agreement, and thus end with “the lack of a clear ethic on how to preserve the ethos of modernism”

Comment by Hannia Gómez with quote by Sam Batchelor.

I have had to wear eyeglasses since I was in 3rd grade so I have spent a lot of time thinking about them.
I think architects put a lot emphasis on them for various reasons. But the root association might be seen in the self-portrait that El Lissitzky created of himself….

If you look at it closely, Lissitzky has superimposed his hand (with compass) over his eye, as if to emphasize the architect’s hand – and work, I suppose – being linked to his eye. The hand is also using the compass to draw a circle. Overall, this is a little manifesto about self-invention – the circle being an abstraction of the artist’s head. Or eye.

When asked this question I am reminded of the incredible experience of being in ryue nishizawa’s teshima art museum. this space was entirely about the physical experience, the aesthetic. Colleagues fell to the ground to inch along to follow the droplets of water, while others explored the edges and played with the way sound traveled. The light coming through the absence in the roof created a magic that one could sense as fragrance. It was truly a remarkable human experience.
On a less dramatic note, I find the work of SAANA to be about human experience- it is about a human scale and a sense of place. The ferry terminal at naoshima engaged me and my colleagues in ways surprising for a transporation hub- the mirrored pillars and the framed views of the sea. The lightness with which the roof floated inspired all of us to walk lightly. It is such responses that inspire me.
On a totally different scale, I think of the work of Greene and Greene in Pasadena California- the blacker house where one is nestled in the architecture and its craft. Another place where everyone I see wants to rub the walls and handrails with their bare hands, and to walk barefoot. The ceiling nestle one instead of mere shelter.
And finally the work of Miller Hull here in the PNW. I have only been in their public spaces, but these spaces nestle, comfort,and inspire. They offer a human experience and aesthetic that is felt through the body- a sense of scale, material, light, shade, and color. The experience starts with seeing the building from the street and pulls one through to the center and outward. It is a remarkable feeling to deeply know that the place is meant as a human experience, not merely to function as a space or otherwise.

Good architecture for sure has become the domain of the wealthy and retail brands. But there is a more promising model out there in the case of industrial design. Great product design, lead by brands like Apple, has lowered the price point of killer designs and in the process proven the relationship between thoughtful design and good business. Now my fingers are crossed that the developers that build spaces for the 99% will realize that good design is good business. Architects! let’s make them realize!

The way I see it, design is humility. And clients are the chance.

I also think that as soon as designers like Ron Arad, Marc Newson, etc. start being processed through contemporary art museums, art auction houses and places like Gagosian, then the power of a store like Moss becomes diluted.

“(Brancusi’s atelier is) a poor man’s construction of his own little paradise–cheerful, roomy, efficient, and full of things that can feel ancient, avant garde, even luxurious, often all at the same time.”