Ready to be So-So

In “So What’s So Bad about Being So-So?” Lisa Wilson Strick expresses her idea that despite proficiency, we should make an attempt to participate in things we are unfamiliar with. In fact, in today’s vying society, being amateurs for fun is unacceptable since we must be professionals of everything including our pastimes: we have to be well-equipped and to be utterly devoted. Moreover, not only do adults vie with others but so do children who regard their leisure pursuits as contests. Therefore, without remarkable achievement, most of us avert activities we cannot deal with “seriously.” However, we, like manias, take “recreation” as a way of enhancing our ability; in fact, we should learn to be tyros again, taking delight in fiddling around inventively.

Regardless of expertise, Strick’s encouragement of trying new things does arouse our concerns over the fallacy that we must treat everything as well as our hobbies with perfection. Indeed, being a specialist in a certain field is compulsory in today’s collaborative society. Thus, we are inevitable to compete with others for being qualified for the position: The position in work and even in play. In other words, we dedicate our time, money, and energy to mastering our recreational activities thoroughly. For instance, sports fanatics in running are fastidious about sportswear like “sixty-dollar running suits and fancy shoes” and those zealots in dancing vouch for “sweating through six hours of warm-ups and five-hours of ballet and four hours of jazz class.” Now “competition” becomes a stimulus for achieving great success. Nevertheless, to ensure accomplishment, we hardly try something new; instead, we take the road we have taken repeatedly.

“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” Louis E. Boone, an American academic author, writes about his opinion on strives for discovering new things. Similarly, Strick’s statement has corresponded to that of Boone: we could have enjoyed the fun trying new things; we might have raised a possibility to break our limits by trying something new; we should have taken pleasure in meddling with new things like starters. For example, without professional pursuit in sports, children could have enjoyed each other’s company from which they could learn new things together. Moreover, a housewife might have developed a foreign language skill by trying learning the language instead of spending her time doing regular chores. Finally, each of us should have played around things we first try like two-year-olds.

We might draw back when we risk our careers in trying something irregular; by contrast, we can try different things without any loss at our recreational activities. To be honest, it is crazy to treat our recreation, which is a way of spending free time for amusement and enjoyment, as a profession. The main purpose of trying new things is not achieving goals but having fun in experiencing the process of fooling around our first try. 

Iconography in Architecture

There are three definitions of the icon on which architects adopt as a usage: First, icons in the past were religious, like those devotional Byzantine paintings placed in front of the altar. The word “iconic” always carries religious overtone of veneration, of worship, of fetish. The second definition is “similitude”(形似), the technical term from linguistics. An icon, like a footprint in the sand, shares a similarity between the signifier (the shape of the foot) and the signified (foot's imprint). The third definition concerns reduction(縮化), like the icon on computer: for instance, the rubbish bin where you throw old programs is in the shape of a wastepaper basket.

You can find these three meanings even in Pop roadside architecture, for example the building in the shape of a dinosaur. It has a similitude to the large animal, it is a reduced shape, and although it has nothing to do with religion, it is meant to be spiritual and awe-inspiring in a general sense, and remind one of an eternal past, the great age of monsters, evolution, etc.

An iconic building works best when it is tied to a set of meanings that relate to the function of the architecture. We can see in Le Corbusier's Ronchamp how the church relates to the connotations of plying hands, a nun's cowl, a mother and children, and a duck and boat. Other meanings include the crab shells he used as a metaphor to design it the roof structure. Some of these meanings are convergent, on its religious meanings, and others are divergent.

Branding & Architecture

As a strategy, branding differentiates one brand from the others. Through various prospects, such as the visual identity and the retail environment of a product, branding is able to reinforce the consumers' impressions to a product. The need for branding has become prevalent in the past decade worldwide. Many fashion brands hire famous architects to design their flagship stores around the globe.

As brand-name stores in major cities over the world get bigger and bigger, design of the retail space goes beyond being a billboard for the brand image. In fact, multi-level façade that front a city corner or a plaza, present another realm of possibilities to interact with the brand. For instance, with its white glass façade, the Louis Vuitton building conjures up an image of a "stalagmite" in the city on one of the most prominent corners in New York. Interestingly, this particular image created with such a recognizable brand becomes inseparable with the city context and in turn with the city brand itself.

LV New York, a monumental crystalline stalagmite in the city, located at the corner of 57th Street and 5th avenue in Manhattan.

Hudertwasserhaus

Hudertwasserhaus is an apartment in Viena, Austria. The Austrian artist, Friedenschreich Hudertwasser, is commissioned to design the house for the government. The blueprint of the house  looks like an Expressionist's painting rather than like an architectural drawing.  But to make the concept come to reality, Hudertwasser works with two architects,  Joseph Krawina and Peter Pelikan, who assist in programming the space.  Thus, with art and science, the house possesses the quality of sense and sensibility. 

Hudertwasserhaus is a baroque-style house. It features undulating floors ("an uneven floor is a divine melody to the feet), a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows.

Yohaku-no-bi

Yohaku-no-bi, meaning the beauty of paucity, is one of the concepts of Japanese aesthetics. In an art form, Japanese artists try to create a vacant space or a blank from which viewers, with their imaginations, can see things that are spiritual and philosophical. In other words, to appreciate, viewers not only start from an art's appearance but from its blank space provided by the artists. Thus, void, emptiness, and less-is-more are the key words for the concept of yohaku-no-bi. We can see yohaku-no-bi is applied to many Japanese art forms, such as Zen gardens (kare-san-sui) and Japanese ink and wash painting (sui-boku-ga).

A typical Japanese Zen garden 

the large surface of white gravel serves as the emptiness from which viewers can excite and capture their imaginations: gravel represents ocean; rocks represent island.

Japanese Esthetics

The philosophy of life extends not only from one’s personality but also from one’s geographical distribution, cultural custom, religious belief, and ethnic heritage.With no exception, Japanese people adopt an attitude toward life in which they despise completeness but admire imperfection of things－this results from Japan’s rugged terrain locating in a fault zone, a casual location of earthquakes and from its foul weather condition such as typhoons and frostbites. Therefore, under the insecurity of living circumstances, the Japanese realize that to pursue something perfect is impractical; on the contrary, to appreciate something defective can help them to meditate upon the incompleteness and finally come to comprehend the beauty of being incomplete.

Visuals Do Talk

Words and images remain side by side with one another when conveying massages. Both are pervasive in books, posters, magazines, newspapers, and on television. However, means of communication nowadays tend to be faster, easier and briefer; that is, visual communications are a much preferable option than verbal ones. Indeed, to illustrate an idea, one picture can worth thousands of words.

Visuals are capable of arousing people’s emotions and reactions to the raised issue effectively. In fact, many people are influenced by the subject that is brought up in the visual they have encountered. For instance, the political cartoon figure, Uncle Sam, who wears a top hat with white stars on the blue band and red-and-white striped trousers, has encouraged the 38% of the population of the United States to join the army during the Second World War. Today, Uncle Sam represents a national embodiment of the United States successfully. Another successful visual propaganda is the pictorial warning printed on cigarette packages. According to World Health Organization, using graphic images are more effective than text-based health messages. There are 15,000 smokers involved in the study which compares cigarette labels. 60% of the smokers from Canada, where pictorial warning labels are required, said they had noticed the warning and 15% of them said the visual warning had deterred them from lighting up. On the contrary, countries like the United States and Australia, where requires text warnings, only 30% of the smokers from the US and 45% of that from Australia noticed the warning labels.

People relying on visuals do not necessarily have poor literacy skills. Due to a lack of texts, visuals are often regarded as a medium that performs no functions for a person’s ability to read, write, and communicate. In fact, visuals serve as a tool for learning purposes. By using visuals like graphs and illustrations, people are able to link symbols representing ideas and information to clarify meanings. For example, Comic Book Project, a program, runs in Teachers College at Columbia University, has developed a comic-based curriculum for primary education: pupils create their own comic strips as an alternative pathway to literacy. So far, the program has applied to 860 schools across the United States. As a result of the program, the positive reading and writing outcomes show the effectiveness on children’s literacy skills. According to The Comic Book Project’s survey, collected from 546 youth, 82% of the youth knew more words, 78% of them spend more time reading for fun, and 70% of them like to read. For writing skill, 80% of the youth spend more time writing for fun, 74% of them like to write, and 70% of them need less help with writing.

In all, Visuals have the power of carrying messages effectively. Since visuals are pictorial expressions of words, they are able to decode connotations of words and to help people receive messages immediately. In other words, one picture is capable of telling a-thousand-word story and facts.