Black and White

Of late I've been trying to improve my sketching, which means I've been down in Galt at the architecture school taking a course with some MArch students.Three hours a week you can find me out in the sunshine doodling some buildings with a ballpoint and a 7x10 pad. At first I was somewhat put off by the idea of using a cheap old ballpoint, but it is actually revealing itself to be quite the handy tool. As a side project I've been spending some time developing my B&W photo skills (get it...developing) in the architecture school's dark room. Thanks to the great help I've gotten there I can now develop my own film and make my own prints. The shot above is my Spears smoother plane, a great tool...and a pretty good photograph.

Sitting Rethought

My latest adventure is working on a chair design for an Italian furniture maker, Lago, which I can't really talk about...but what I can talk about is a cool book I found while developing the chair for Lago. The book is titled Rethinking Sitting, and is written by Peter Opsvik. Opsvik is a famous Norwegian designer that created objects like this:

In the book he basically explores the notion of sitting as being somewhat unnatural for human beings as primates. We should be swinging in a tree or balancing on a branch that is swaying in the wind. Instead of this we have adopted very static chair designs that have us rigidly positioned for hours on end. Introducing the idea of multiple positions, flexibility, and balance makes chairs more enjoyable as we transform their static nature into something more dynamic.

The point that got through to me the most was when Opsvik was talking about the somewhat ingrained importance of constantly shifting our balance. Opsvik argues that you would never stand against a wall in one rigid position for extended periods, instead we shift our weight, shuffle our feet, and generally just wiggle. The lack of movement makes the rigid standing position against the wall unnatural and painful. Our muscles didn't evolve to be constrained, they were meant to be used, to be active and dynamic. Sitting still is against our human nature it would seem (kids never seem to sit still, do they?)...

So with this idea in mind I'm starting to think a little bit differently about sitting. Maybe there are other things we should be rethinking too...