Dysfunctional furniture
Bannisters that you can slide down. Children would see this straight away and slide down to their heart’s content. But adults would sooner think of stairs as just something which connects you between downstairs and upstairs.
This is a dysfunctional use. It’s not making anything more efficient, and it’s not something direct. It’s not something obvious, it’s just “fun”.
Nobody is making bannisters that you can slide down.
Or a swimming pool. 1st use is swimming in it. But there’s lots of extra, “unnecessary stuff” that is fun to add. People don’t just buy “necessary” stuff, that is logical.
Here’s one with lots of different possible sitting positions:
There’s no “obvious” way to sit, so you just sit how you like. There’s no set “scene” in which to act, instead, you have to make the scene, together. It’s creative, similar to how William H Whyte views street views.
Here, the floor level is changed. It’s unnecessary, but fun. There’s less space, but the space is more inviting. We have created houses, but we’ve grown from living in forests and jungles.
Active aging and Social Housing for older people
“Active aging is a concept that comes from the World Health Organization and is nothing more than offering equal opportunities to older people. It should be understood that older people are not related only to disability or functional limitation. The idea that they are experiencing a residual phase of their life is a very dated stereotype and far from their reality. Rather than worrying about keeping the elderly continuously monitored and cared for, what should be acted on are the environment and the services offered in the form of small assistance, when needed and when required. The buildings considered in this project are always strategically placed within a network of neighboring public services that respond precisely to these needs.neighborhood services by initiating a dialogue with the city district which is very interesting and beneficial for the entire city.”
- good connections to services
- small form of assistance available when needed, and when required
- “middle ground” between house and nursing home
Still though, the images here aren’t “social” — where do people congregate? It doesn’t look attractive to congregate in the middle court. It looks dead. Something needs to be in the centre, (like glasshouse), to encourage people out of their homes, and into a social venue.
Stacking knowledge
Zen changed the way I witnessed everything around me. Feeling, often, in a different way.
This led me to see music in a new light, feeling the vibrations, and seeing how it interacted in with what I was feeling, rather than just hearing.
This led me to see sex in a new light. If my chakras were being activated by vibration, and I was feeling in a new way relative to my body, what was the experience of sex, relative to chakras?
This knock-on effect of understanding, taking understanding, and pooling it across to new areas to look for analogies and comparisons is similar to Leonardo Da Vinci’s method.
Here, there is no set “route”, of going forward, getting more and more complex. Things happen randomly, analogies are drawn, one thing leads to another, and relative positions are constantly being considered, altering relationships between them.
In this sense, there are no subjects, because subjects implies that there are set parameters for approaching the world, through which we might work. But Da Vinci’s approach is to do the opposite. To break down subjects, to remove these parameters by drawing comparisons between absolutely everything and anything, where applicable.
But the assumption here is that everything, everything is applicable to everything else in some way, it’s just a case of finding the relationship betwen them.
On these grounds, one could devise a game, where two random things are drawn out of a hat, and people have to connect them.
