Slowly Going West
I’m in Iowa right now, relaxing amidst the corn and swine. Did you know that Christina is an Iowan too? Ask her about the butter cow sometime - everyone should visit the Iowa State Fair at least once in their life.
This week I’ve been reading some of the literature on space/place. Don’t bother with A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time or The Experience of Place, but do consider Rudolf Arnheim’s The Dynamics of Architectural Form and Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Next is The Poetics of Space.
Also, I found this great little booklet in a used bookstore here in Des Moines. It’s by Paul Mijksenaar, called Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design, and it contains the clearest discussion I’ve yet read of the whole “form/function” hairball. Did you know that it wasn’t actually the architect Louis Sullivan who coined the phrase “form follows function”? It was the sculptor Horatio Greenough, and he was talking about clipper ships. Paul wrote Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design, which I’ve heard is good as well.
So, places. I’m going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area for the next week, 12/31 through 1/6. I have no plans other than seeing friends and eating well. If you’d like to meet up, drop me an email at chad at the domain name above. I’ll have my Hiptop/Sidekick, so I’m always in touch.