Stability and Accuracy

I had just finished reading a book about Japanese carpentry and roof construction when I took a closer look at a new building being built in Waterloo. The book is called "The Genius of Japanese Carpentry", and details the reconstruction of a Japanese shrine from the ground up. It focuses on one building and shows the detail and extreme accuracy involved in building a roof structure that will last for centuries.

The curve of the above roof is approximated by 5 pieces of lumber, they look like 2x10's from the ground, that for some reason shocks me. The 5 pieces aren't even evenly spaced, there are three 12' pieces followed by a short 4' piece then another 12'er...I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly with the master carpenter in Japan...

..and in other exciting news...dimensional instability in wood is a BIG deal! A lovely exaggeration of this was found in my garage, where two identical pieces of wood do a nice job of showing what happens when one is saturated with water and the other isn't. Just another reminder to pay attention to grain direction and dimensional change!

Sprints

Cyclists know what a town sign signifies, a time to throw it into your big ring and hammer to the line in the hopes of winning the sprint finish into a sprawling metropolis like Wellesley, Crosshill, or Lisbon. I'm thinking of doing a series of these town signs, rural Ontario sort of has a hold on me it seems...

I also found this nicely balanced farm on a dirt road I usually use to avoid the highway. There's a nice little gravel climb at the end, and at the top there's this farm.

Sketching

Here are a couple of sketches I did in and around Galt for the sketching course I'm taking. Everything is done with ballpoint pen, something I didn't really like at first, but is now growing on me.

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...

Ey

My time here in France is just wrapping up, but I'm still coming across some incredibly beautiful landscapes. The Col d'Ey isn't the world's biggest or hardest climb, but the views are just wonderful. I know that I'm a cycling nut, but there is just no better way to experience a country than on a bike.

Bears (or any quadruped really)

I was thinking about design and the idea of what makes an object really something special. It's somewhat obvious that some people are more critical when examining objects than others, but it's always surprising to me to hear someone complement a piece of furniture that I look at crookedly because of its poor workmanship or strange proportions. Does art or design really play an important role in our lives as a source of enrichment, or are we as a society so choked with cheap chipboard crap that any solid-wood piece of furniture automatically becomes worthy of esteem...sometimes it seems that way to me, but maybe I'm not generous enough to the idea of subjectivity and personal taste.

I don't claim to be a great photographer, but when I take a picture I put effort into its composition. I turn on a light, I make sure I walk the extra ten feet so the power lines aren't in the shot, I adjust my film speed, waste a few frames, check to see if things are centered, turn the object around to get the best angle. Composition is something I think a lot of people who don't actively "create" don't worry about, or maybe they just don't understand it. For me composition is the hardest part of furniture building, but that's not to say that the skill needed in construction is something I've mastered, just that composition is really hard.

Here's a table I drew up while thinking about the way that a bear lumbers along a path in the woods. All the legs should be tapered, but really what I was trying to convey with this sketch is a sense of motion...