What do you learn at school? What can you get from attending lectures?
I have been wondering about this question while doing the same thing over and over again, trying to get a higher grade and the recognition from my teacher. But I was wrong. I didn't get the whole picture. Going through my education at Michigan State University studying landscape architecture, my experience was traditional in the beginning. But it changed as I progress from a freshman to where I am now, a super senior. Our education is to focus on collaboration and learning from each other. We learn by doing projects either by ourselves or in groups. Our teachers are there to guide us instead of feeding information into our brain. At least for college students that's not the point of the education. I did this graphic while I was taking a design theory class in the summer. What we need to do is to define problems before solving it. I think this applies to real-world problems too. In a world as complicated as ours, there is no instruction or solution to any "problems." We learn to solve problems, but ultimately we need to find the problems. And that's the hardest and most time consuming part of our project. I still remember how hard it was to do projects in the beginning. We had no clue and everyone was saying it was not hard if you figure it out quickly. We always make wrong estimates about the time we need to finish a project. Now we know that the process before solving the problem is what we learn here, isn't it? Or it's a process of problem-solving?
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Our world becomes more fragmented, the internet gives minorities a place. Sitting on the bus, I feel weird. Some people talk, they know each other already, but most of them listen to music or look at Facebook or just random stuff. It is good because the internet connects us. 10 years ago, I don’t know what is happening in the US. There are pen-pals at that time.
Sometimes we check social media because we are just bored. I do it sometimes without even thinking about it. But should I? I think we get bored because we need information, new information. And taking a walk outside gives me tremendous ideas. I think it is because it is nature, and it is changing all the time. There are so many LIVING things. I can feel the trees, the grass, I can see them moving with the wind, I can smell them, touch them. They are tangible. If taking a walk is like watching a movie, then it is an interactive and innovative movie. I can control where I go, and my body. Everything is unexpected, and it will not repeat. Familiarity is another thing. While I like Jazz, we often times just don’t need any surprise. That feeling is a feeling of home. Repetition, familiarity, the things that don’t change make us comfortable, and that I think is associated with home. It comes from our shelter, our home, and a stable and safe place to be. Jazz certainly has surprises. We like to see new things sometimes, but we also need a feeling of home. Our emotions, our spirits other than the physical existence. Spring has just arrived in Michigan, but it was still too early for most of the plants. Around the end of March, we went to the nature area by the Grand River. At Woldumar Nature Center, we noticed some green sprouts coming out of the ground. What are they? “They are called Wild Leeks or Ramps,” Karen said, “they are edible.” But what are other edible things we can find in the woods? We can find different types of information on the edible plants or parts of plant online nowadays, flowers, mushrooms, clovers, ramps, acorns, Dandelions, Cat Tails, berries, syrups, Wild Asparagus, Stinging Nettles, to name a few. But instead of going into details of how to identify them, why not think about our relationship with nature through the perspective of food? I usually eat three meals a day, but how often do I eat food from the wild? In Michigan, we have easy access to the woods, but since I was not raised in Michigan, unlike some of my classmates who live “in the woods,” the woods become mysterious. I’m not confident to gather food in the wild, so I get food from grocery stores, but in China, I do eat food that is “wild”. I remember my grandma sometimes harvest a kind of weed (which looks like a kind of mustard) in the countryside, or in the park to make dumplings. She also uses the flowers of pagoda tree, together with flour, to make a delicious “stuffing.”
Plants not only make us not hungry, but it can also be used as a folk remedy. In China, herbs date back to Shennong, literally Divine Farmer. Shennong belongs to a group of mythological and sage-like emperors said to have lived some 4,500 years ago. Shennong has been thought to have taught the ancient Chinese not only their practices of agriculture but also the use of herbal drugs. In Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants, Samuel Thayer argued that the earliest agriculture in humans started with the co-evolution of foragers with their wild plants. He went further to point out that the benefits of today’s foraging can be different from those of our earliest ancestors. We twenty-first-century humans may not depend on foraging in the wild for our existence, but we gain in innumerable ways-from developing a deep connection to nature to celebrating biodiversity’s rich tastes and culinary bounty. (This is an excerpt from a book review) There is industrial agriculture, there are farmer’s markets, and there are city dwellers who seek to reconnect with nature by selecting organic products and local sources. It’s true that wild edibles have a different taste, there is also an idiom in China “ ” which loosely translated as “delicacies of every kind”. People love to have different experiences, and sometimes the idea is expressed through the food we eat. Regarding wild edibles, should we eat some of them simply because they taste great (such as wild leeks)? I know some became very expensive and went into extinction because people over harvest them. We should think of it in a sustainable point of view. Shadow can be in the texture, shadow suggests volume from a 2D image. But what if there is no shadow? Not any shadow? The intensity of color, the line weight, the texture, all that gives dimension to an ordinary image. Shadow is one of the dimensions.
Just like we enhance technology, drawings tend to approach reality-at least in a period. Oil paintings are real, then come the impressionists, then we move to abstract art. There is also technology that goes in the middle. As technology advanced, things become more real. Just like games advanced, we can experience a more "realistic" world. GTAV is is a great example. But after amazed by the experience, what's left with us? The process is important, but we are not here for purely entertainment, we seek for meaning. I think meaning does not lies in the reality itself, but the story. That's why I start to question photos. You are amazed by the information that you extract from a single photo, or realistic paintings, or rococo decorations, ... But are we amazed by the information, or are we fooled by it? Browsing social media keeps us going, but what are we left with? It flows in, and it flows away. I'd rather look at a photo like this and imagine. Advanced technology limits us, and blinds is in some way, so we have to travel away from it as well. Moving to another place simply to try to experience, but go to the Internet and social media is not what travel is all about. Just imagine. Or examine a zen garden for a minute. But not too long-you will get lost and get bored on that as well. And we don't like to get bored. Well, it's not easy to make our brain function well. Wood, wild, forest.
It's me inspired by J.B. Jackson's writing. There was not a boundary, now there is. It becomes our territory. It becomes functional, just like every other man-made structure. Forrest for sound barrier, for crops, for recreation. It's like a movie and a spoiler, or seeing the plan above. We like, but fear the wilderness, just like the prehistoric men. But it keeps things interesting. What is repetition? It's something familiar. Why do you not like Jazz music? There is less repetitive notes. Why do you like it? Because we learned it, we conquered it, and now it's repetitive. But art is mysterious, and we don't like it. But we should create it, because it's just like nature, or the wilderness. It's unknown, and you don't know what God had created. The art does not speak to you in that way. Or you like art because of its realness. Reality does not entertain us that much, we get bored as well. Let's look into the words, I'll look up the word in Chinese and see if someone has studied it. This article is me trying to make sense of the way we do site design. The first part is circulation. When you think of ecological design or the role of landscape architecture, you would consider the relationship between human and nature. Looking back on the way we design in the modern age, it appears to me that there are 3 types of site design. You either start from circulation, or art, or ecology.
We are online, but we are looking for human interactions. Why does a vlogger have more views than music views, such beautiful music performances? We are looking for communications. So we watch daily videos just to seek refuge of our mind. We need someone to talk to us. We are interested in what others think, what other’s lives are. We are online, but we don’t have a place to gather, like a central plaza. We are online, but we wander around, just like wandering in the street. On the internet, it’s just bits of information, maybe useless. You walk by. Hot topics and comments are sort of like gathering place for discussion, but not. You comment, and you are gone. Blogs are more intimate, you have a place to show yourself, though they are simple and maybe the web design is not efficient. The web design nowadays favors simplicity, but it takes away the human aspect of it. Everything is smooth, with only the information. Yes, we are overloaded with information, but we really need some characters in it. Less is less. It’s good for some time, but look at what modern architecture goes through. We need to reflect on this.
Built system have a purpose, but nature doesn't. So why do we design something that has a purpose? People like nature, but why do they want to enjoy a designed place instead of nature which doesn't have any purpose at all? Is it biophilia, or love of nature?
Talking about biophilia, how do you explain when people does not like a real nature? Do you want to live in a totally wild place, or have some convenience? Do you enjoy the hot sunshine, or do you prefer sitting in a room full of glass windows? Don't you need sun cream? |
Mike HouFull-time designer thinker, part-time explorer dreamer. Archives
August 2017
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