3 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2022
    1. this story of the Montgomery ward complex, that's that's along the river. And Montgomery Ward is, you know, kind of long gone as a company. But there's this one, the headquarters building was this kind of generic, um, rectangular, modernist building. But they had these four concrete post on the corner and I passed this building all the time. I'd never cared much for it. And then the architecture of the curator on the boat, the docent said that, Well, the reason why that building is the way it is, is that the Montgomery Ward Company sort of prided itself on its egalitarian hierarchy. And they wanted to build their headquarters so that there were no um, VPs fighting over who got the corner office. And so they made a building with no possibility of a corner office at all.

      Montgomery Ward complex built with no corner offices

      In a reflection of the company's values, its headquarters was built without the possibility of corner offices. The design of the building eliminated them as possibilities.

  2. Jun 2022
    1. Gall's Law is a rule of thumb for systems design from Gall's book Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail. It states: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

      This feels like an underlying and underpinning principle of how the IndieWeb which focuses on working real world examples which are able to build up more complex systems instead of theoretical architecture astronomy which goes no where.

      Reference: John Gall (1975) Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail p. 71

  3. Oct 2021
    1. Regenerative Ventures

      Out of the Trimtab Space Camp course with the Buckminster Fuller Institute in which we were exploring world building with Tony Patrick, Langdon Roberts, Jeremy Lubman, Elsie Iwase, and I gathered to think about how we could become involved in regenerative ventures. This was our initiative, in which we met weekly to think about how we manifest who we are as a more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. The thought was that architecture grows out of values, principles, and intention.