Beautiful Accidents

Rendered the wrong layers preparing for my thesis review and this popped up. Thought it was nice.

The Immaturity of Skills

From Immanuel Kant in Berlinische Monatsschrift, 1784:

Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Self-incurred is this inability; if its cause lies not in the lack of understanding but rather in the lack of resolution and the courage to use it without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.

I originally read this in Richard Sennet’s Craftsmen, which is excellent. I am so excited about the time I was born into and the challenges that designers have to solve. While a return to craft in total is naive and sentimental there is a great deal to learn from the perceptions of skills, both in the past and going forward.

Gaku Nakagawa is Great

Illustrator for Monocle and others just kills it for me.

Banjo Maker

My friend Lance made a couple of banjos and I shot them yesterday afternoon. Lovely.

Billykirk Visit

Visited: Willoughby Lake

The frozen glacial beauty in northern Vermont. I would recommend staying here.

In the Background: Camp Lo

It is a matter of some lore that my first engineering project was getting the stereo system to record Rap City while it looked like I was watching Duck Tales. The rap has always been an influence on my style, but there are some gems that just stand out above the rest. Everything about this is and has been cool. I wore this album out twice, you should too.

The Moulton Bicycle

Continuing the theme today: Mr. Banham was a lifetime rider of these most interesting folding bicycles. He apparently rode them through the streets of London and throughout his tenure at UC Santa Cruz. Made in the UK, they present an odd space frame structure in the center that contributes to their suspension. The company was sold to Raleigh Bicycles for a while which seems to have coincided with a decline in the brand. However, in the early ’80s the company was purchased back and made a new (reminds me of the Harley Davidson / AMF debacle). Now they are back to their old form, a part of the permanent collection at MoMA, and mad expensive. Hats off to Mr Banham for being todays inspiration and the source of much future reading here.

[1] image of Moulton in MoMA

Reyner Banham Loved America

Mr. Banham was a British architectural critic most active in the ’60s and ’70s. His passion for candid critiques is well documented in a diverse series of books written during the period. He published his love for LA (see above film), industrial American architecture, environmental systems in buildings, and even a poetic tribute to the deserts of southwestern USA. I have just started reading some of his work and have found it enjoyable and exceedingly straight forward. In a world of convoluted architectural writing it is refreshing to come upon texts with a bit of style and wit that remain readable. I also like the man’s style as he reminds me of the British Waylon Jennings.

[1] Street-Porter, Tim. P.R. Banham at Silurian Lake. Photograph. Scenes In America Deserta. Layton, Utah: Gibbs M Smith, 1982. 121. Print.

Making Your Own Way

Over the break I read several old books and articles including Ben Franklin’s Autobiography, Thoreau’s Walden, and Emerson’s Self Reliance. While all of them struck chords with me, Emerson’s was my favorite and most inspiring. I am not a Transcendentalist but there are some nuggets of wisdom here that just really hit me.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good; no kernel of corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

The essay is about individualism and not following the expectations of others / the world. This has been the theme of the past year for me as I continue to find my voice as a designer and man. Go read it.