Friday, October 23, 2009

Norman Foster & Dr Seuss: Constraints and Inspiration

Interesting article about Norman Foster and the tiny sliver of a building he is designing in the Bowery. He has come up with an ingenius use of an elevator to do it. Foster said he had managed not to be daunted by the notion of stacking galleries with such a circumscribed footprint on top of one another; instead, Mr. Foster said, “it’s a case of the constraints finally becoming the inspiration."


The constraints that limit you can actually lead to the inspiration. Freedom isn't always about having no boundaries, it's more about being able to run free because you have them... Like sheep on a cliff... without the fence they aren't free. (Or they're free to leap off the cliff and die I suppose.) But with the fence they can be move about freely without fear... even run. Anyway all that rambling on about sheep and fences and fear to say... limits sometime make you cleverer.

Take Dr Seuss for example. The Cat In The Hat came about because his publisher challenged him to write a beginning reading book with only a limited vocabulary. It has only 223 different words. (The word cloud shows the words he used, minus "the", "and" and "I".) With a tiny pile of short words he created a classic.

Seuss found the limited vocabulary challenging and, after a period of frustration, simply chose the first two words on the word list that rhymed: "Cat" and "Hat".

Monday, October 19, 2009

cluttered desks

"If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
—Albert Einstein

Uh-oh. I sort of have an empty desk. All clear and lovely. But the clutter is off to the side. Or pushed to the back. In a neat pile of clutter. So that's alright then. I think. Is it?

where AM I?

back to my site?
back to twitter?

back to my super duper blog?
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