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.

The Closet

There was no such thing called closet in the eighteenth century. Clothes hangers had not been invented and that is why the
the closet was absent in the eighteenth-century houses. Without hangers and closets, clothes were hung on pegs, or were folded and kept on shelves or in chests.
The built-in closet was an American invention of early nineteenth century. Witold Rybczynski, an architect and a critic, declared that "The shape and location of the closets is fully revolved and has not been improved on since: a coat closet next to the front door, a broom closet near the kitchen, a linen closet in the upstairs hall, a medicine cabinet in the bathroom." Therefore, a closet has replaced wardrobes, cupboards, and chests, not only in bedrooms, but also in the kitchen.

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.