Design annoyances...

To me the design of bespoke furniture for the interior of a house that is in the design phase can be one of two things.

1) The design of furniture that is can be easily made to fit the space with the efficiency of material, storage, function and space, using the most availible resources to the client. Or better still, designing the space for the furniture that standard furniture can be created/bought to fit the space with ease, rendering ir also suitable for the future change of furniture needs (as this will hopefully be before the time of change of the house - if it is well-thought-out design.)

2) The design of furniture to fit a space that has been put in place without the thought of furniture, even though it is a new design, thus meaning, if the space is to be adequately functional in use to the furniture, that it has to be bespoke designed and built in - making future replacement difficult as well as the product expensive and time consuming to all invloved.

In my opinion the furniture can be aethetically designed to match the interior and styels of the building in both these options, so why would one opt to carry out design in the second method?

Interesting links...

www.treehugger.com
http://www.animalarchitecture.org/
http://www.anycorp.com/
http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/
http://3ddreaming.blogspot.com/
http://www.oneplanetliving.org/index.html
http://bureau-spectacular.net/
http://www.bioregional.com/
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/
http://www.brunskilldesign.com/
http://www.sustainableabc.com/
http://blink.hdrinc.com/
http://www.permacultureproject.com/
www.earthships.net
http://students.autodesk.com

Waking Life Scene Quote

Richard Linklater's  'Waking Life'

Scene 15: 'We are the authors'

"..."On this bridge," Lorca warns, "life is not a dream. Beware. And beware. And beware." And so many think because Then happened, Now isn't. But didn't I mention the ongoing "wow" is happening right now? We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel, starring clowns. This entire thing we're involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments, flabbergasted to be in each other's presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into direct experience. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write 100 stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized that at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don't forget. Which is to say, remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream, that is self awareness. ..."

Re:Urban, Dense sustainability.

Evidently there are too many of us, all the data proves. With rising populations there will definitely be too many to live sustainably on small-holdings in the countryside. One-planet living describes this by data showing that if everyone on the planet lived like a European, we would need three planets.

Therefore the model for eco-living off-grid, in the middle of no-where - although it has a certain charm - as an idealized sustainable life needs to be erased. Cities are currently fuel guzzling, consuming swarms of potential and individual opportunity that spread their waste and destruction far and wide, but, if re-thought, re-fitted and cycled up, (looped,) they are just what we need in order to see human society into the future of human population growth.

The grid is good. It both provides everyone in small, dense spaces with what they need as well as freeing up peoples time to be spent being citizens. (One theory for the emergence of cities – those producing things not food (ploughs and shoes) for those who produce food, allowing those who produce food time to make a surplus to feed those who need time away from growing food in order to make the things needed.) – Such as Catal Huyuk on the Mesopotamian plains possibly back to 9000 years ago. (‘Cities’ by John Reader.))

Current grids are linear, with input and output waste, we need to change this to sustainable systems that are circular and effective and that everybody can contribute to, eliminating the concept of waste and creating more self-sustaining city systems. This is why the movement to micro-renewables and feed-in-tariffs is essential to the development of our cities. But is a very small part of the over-arching theme of things that need to change.

For Better or Worse: Society it has to be.

We struggle here, in this Big Society, in his Bad Economy, to find any work, to pay any rent, to make any friends…People are happy to let me work for them for free, they like my approach to design and are impressed by my portfolio, but can they pay me? No. In this Big Society, should relative worth (money) become something else (food and company – community projects – like Wwoofing?) There is no Money to be earnt, so therefore, I cannot have a home, or even rent a room, I cannot afford public transport, let alone a car, insurance, petrol, so I am stuck to the distance of my pedals and the generosity of ever-helpful friend and  So, there is another life we discussed over breakfast with my great uncle Ray (artist.) One where with just $250 one could buy an acre in the desert, (southern USA,) and for just $500 start to build shelter, collect rain water, generate electricity, and grow food, and all this in a place where a reputation is easily built, so people will trust you and always come to you for odd jobs, after a while, one could have a home, a farm, water, food, a family, a community, electricity and a lot of time to think in a beautiful country.

The discussion; I say, so one can stick with society and struggle, or turn their back on society…live and run around in the desert and relax. Ray says it wouldn’t be turning back, instead, it would be creating a new society.

These words new society don’t seem to be the case, or would they work.

Firstly, if anyone were to start a new society, it wouldn’t be the easy life in the desert described above. A society needs laws and principles on which it operates, that is what our big society is. I know we haven’t got it anywhere near perfect, no one has, but maybe it is impossible to. The history of America, (and in fact the whole history of human migration,) is a great tale of people moving to the frontier, the new lands, in order to live in a way unrestrained by where they were, essentially to make a better lives for themselves and their children, (usually away from tax,) in other words, a new society. And people are still escaping the urban rat society to live on the frontier and cultivate land and a ‘new society’ to this day. All they managed to do was create more places that people want to escape from. Ideology and utopias are prisons, real cities and societies are unpredictable. We must stay and grow what we have, as Reader says in ‘Cities’ : “So long as cities have been […], change has been the currency that sustains them – demolition and reconstruction, the recycling of investment…” We must continue the change and development of our societies rather than starting from fresh yet again.