Elsewhat

Every so often you run into a book about a topic you know next to nothing about, and it practically jumps off the shelf and into your life. The Japanese House is such a book. It recounts in great detail all the design elements of a traditional Japanese house, including layout, gardens, and the particular art of screening things from view, as recounted in the following excerpt:

Your first experience with the Japanese art of screening is likely to occur as you approach a building. Here, in the entry courtyard of Isecho in Kyoto, Your approach is indirect. As you pass the main gate, you know the entry must be behind the small garden, but you have to go around it to be sure-and the circular form invites you to go around. Thus, even before you are in Side the building, you find you have participated in an aesthetic experience.

This is obviously not a readily available book, but it is available at the Internet Archive.

On my recent trip to New York City I was lucky enough to visit the Cooper Hewitt design museum, a favourite place in the big apple. There I found this one hands-on strategy of getting kids to map their emotional experience of the museum using coloured markers.

From their accompanying text:

On this wall, students share their field trip experiences by choosing a ribbon color representing their felt emotion and placing that ribbon in their borough location. Students are mapping their “data”-emotions represented by ribbons-to NYC’s five boroughs.

As the school year progresses, this wall will tell the ongoing story of what our K-12 community members from around the city experience when visiting Cooper Hewitt’s galleries.

As is my custom these past couple weeks, I went to see a design exhibit in the last few days of its run. The previous was W.E.B. Dubois at The Cooper Hewitt in New York City. This time it was a women in design exhibit at Montréal’s Musée des Beaux Arts—Parall(Elles).

Organized in collaboration with the Stewart Program for Modern Design, this major exhibition celebrates the instrumental role women have played in the world of design through a rich corpus of art works and objects dating from the mid-19th century onwards. In addition, it examines the reasons why women are underrepresented in the history of this discipline and encourages an expanded understanding of what constitutes design.

Chaise Sauvage by Jay Sae Jung Oh

Exploded Chair by Joyce Lin

On until May 28, 2023.

I’m lucky enough to be heading to this show in New York City this weekend. Dubois’ infographics are stunning and hugely important. On display until the end of May 2023. Learn more →