1000camels went and checked out the Interior Design Show in toronto today. i wasn’t expecting much, since i am so narrow when it comes to so much design. but there was some nice stuff there. ald’s exhibit was great. it was a massive wall of extruded plastic, white with ripples. we forgot our camera, so there’s nothing to show. a nice testament to their new materials lab.
we primarily went to see Winy Maas talk. he was quite good. i liked the way he spoke and many of his designs were quite engaging. however, i still walked about cursing architects. i can’t help it. i guess i’m very defensive of melissa’s work, and her field. i just think architects are walking into the territory of landscape architecture. and what makes it particularly awesome is that they all seem to think that they’ve discovered these ideas. anyway, i’m just reacting – my dislike of architects is not really worth exploring. instead, what is interesting is the kinds of spaces that these architects, like Winy Maas, are beginning to envision. i think it’s the city of the future, one in which buildings disappear (like the porosity of Stephen Holl). What remains is one thing – our public space. All private are dead ends and so, in some interesting way, public space becomes our corridors. At least when we design for everyone. The problem with private space design is that it necessarily excludes some, which means, if we want to be paranoid, there may come a time, when we cannot afford a certain path we’ve taken our whole life. what happens then?
i guess that is where my thinking is really directing me. i want to explore systems that actually program us. It sounds devilish, until you consider that that is what space is. in fact, that is a property of any cultural asset – it pushes back – it provides feedback. A sign is not benign. it aims to influence and in so far as it has influence (which we all know it does) it ‘programs’ us. so, since we live in a world which is programming us, it would seem that it is important to push back. what do we want to encourage in this world? our space delineates that. therefore, we must be careful what space we do build and how we build it.
