The Kitchen

We rarely see kitchens in watercolors of nineteen-century interiors, for kitchens represented a place where the lower classes labored. Ornament tended to be utilitarian, in the form of gleaming copper pots or brightly pattern tableware. With quality of everyday accessories, a kitchen was recorded as a humble place of work rather than as one of entertainment.

Today in many houses the kitchen has become the grandest interior, stainless steel theaters where guests congregate to admire gleaming industrial equipment and the culinary feats of the host or hostess. Unlike the nineteen-century life, cooking has been regarded as a personally rewarding and sophisticated skill.

Thinking About What Design is

The process of design is very much like that of writing- They are all about finding sense of order to things. In other words, how things fits one and another. Therefore, I always try to define design as having to do with how things fit: How furniture fits the body, how people fit in buildings, and how buildings fit the landscape. Most of all, design is about finding the sense of fit between people, place, and things. The idea of fitting covers not only the physical dimensions, but the social one as well.

Thinking About What Home is

To get people to think about what home means to them, I often come up with a question: What room do you most fondly remember from childhood? Most of the people said the bedroom. The self-entertainment or the state of being alone sum up the appeal for the bedroom. The kitchen comes in second. For most of the people, cooking with their mothers or grandmothers became the collective memory for a family. Finally, there are the basement and the garage, where have always ignited the creative spark in adults and children when doing the crafts.
It occurs to me that the bedroom, the kitchen, and the basement reflect the three basic areas of home: the private sanctuary, the place of community, and the place where thing get made. As long as the places we live are able to accommodate these three different human activities, it can be called home.

Comfort for Homes

Most homes become more difficult to map, for they today rent logic. There is no longer a single pattern or cultural recognition for comfort. In fact, it's a matter of personal choice. Individuals can hold different notions of comfort: Some think an ideal home would be light-filled such as a glass-built house; some associate home with a place of seclusion like a cave.

Privacy, undeniably, is the basic element for home comfort. Parivacy is defined not by space, but by a specific activity and by a specific time. For example, many of us use our bedrooms as libraries when reading books and use hallways with pianos as music rooms. Moreover, with a particular time, usually late at night, many of us like being alone after other family members have gone to bed.

Thinking about what space is

What is space? Space is subject to extremes of perceptual subjectivity. It is unlimited but only measurable by boundaries. That is, space will become significant once it is defined by an individual's perception.
Space is best understood by touch. It is literally inside our bodies, with which we constantly compare our surroundings within it. Space is understood in the gut (the inner essential part) before being measured by brain. Thus, space is subject to illusion. In other words, space is imaginary.

Recalled From Sensing Things

A sensory experience has the power of recollecting our life, present or past. We recall past experiences by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling things that surround us. Personally, I am easily stirred by things related to lemons. The taste and smell of lemons arouse my feeling for a certain part of my life.

Whenever a lemony aroma wafts through the air, I always conjure up an image of a lemon tree. In my backyard stands a lemon tree with glossy leaves, balmy flowers, and tangy fruits. Above the tree, the sun shines on the fruits so the scent of lemons lifts. Around the tree, a swarm of bees gather the nectar from the golden threads of lemon flowers. Under the tree, morning dew glazes a red wheelbarrow; the shovel digs out the earthy smell of the tree’s roots. The fragrance of the fresh lemons fills the whole yard until it creeps into the living room, the bed rooms, the dining room, and the kitchen－everywhere indoors.

The lemon tree serves as a fruit supplier and an indispensable companion for me. The tree looks different in different seasons. It grows yellow and bald in autumn; it turns green and lush in spring and summer. I, particularly, love that tree when summertime, the season of lemon harvest, arrives. With a pruning shear, I am always excited about nipping the golden fruits from the tree. Because of this full-bearing lemon tree, a smell of blending, of baking, even of burning lemons always breeze from my kitchen. Most of the time, I love desserts made of lemons like crunchy shortbread tartlets, polka-dotted with poppy seeds; lemon pound cakes enlivened with a splash of fresh ginger; and puffs of lemon mousse, sandwiched between wafers－I love that soft and melting texture so much! The lemon tree gives me not only pleasure of taste but also it keeps me company. I enjoy myself drawing and painting in the shade: the leaves of the tree move slightly in the wind against the sunlight. And the moving light mixes the colors on my work. The vacillation between the leaves and the light sometimes inspires me to create a fresh piece by tracing along the dotted light sprinkles.

The lemon tree is born from the soil; of course, it will eventually be summoned back to the earth. The tree has already been there for more than ten years. It feeds me with its fruits and accompanies me with its shade. Unfortunately, this tree, a victim of a colony of termites, is going to be chopped down in this coming November. On some day this November, I will have to wave goodbye to my dear plant－Lemmie, the tree. From that day on, NO MORE will I smell its lovely smell and taste its pulpy taste! I miss having that lemon tree as my constant companion.

Whenever I come across sensing the lemony senses, mostly taste and smell, I always think of that lemon tree standing in my backyard: Every time I smell the lemony aroma, I think of it; every time I taste cuisine spiced with lemons, I think of it; every time, perhaps, I hear a sawing sound, I think of it sadly.

House at Regensburg

"Sustainability" becomes the catchword of responsible builders. The architectural profession for the first time started to think seriously about low-energy building after the oil crisis of the early 1970s. The result was a rash of experimental houses, lots of them were in rustic style to declare their "alternative", anti-industrial ideology.

The house at Regensburg is a logical design owing more to science than to sentiment. Its pure prism form and rational plan make it almost machine-like. The triangular shape is designed to collect solar energy which can be used to heat the house.

1. Winter day

2. Winter night

3. Summer day

4. Summer night