From the architect. Deconstruction. Culture.
The traditional tea ceremony is used from concept and vision to design, structure and atmosphere, creating a beautiful and delicate presentation. The perspective along the ceiling border to the pillar structure conveys dynamic interaction. The large wooden plaque in the hall implies Eastern Heritage and thus extends the continuity of cultural connotation.
Prologue. Arts and crafts.
Listed in a symmetrical order, the value principal is derived from a metaphor for the spatial texture of oriental residence. A return to natural convergence is subtly weaved into the ceiling line for a sense of relaxation and release. The materials are reflected with an ecological perspective, integrating old concepts with new to generate a sense of freedom and coexistence with the urban environment.
Contemplation. Colorful rhythm
Peacock blue, lake green, and mustard yellow saturation, fusion lines and staggered surface relationship, and a background with subtle oriental heritage all extend the continuity of space and connotation. The interpretation of the contemplation of environmental heritage blends old and new concepts and matches them to the pattern of ritualistic attempt. In the process of the interactions between the products and consumers, human implications are highlighted. Aesthetic implications are used to show functions, routes and displays, restoring the original entrepreneurial spirit.
Too much to do, not enough time.
This is a perpetual problem for a lot of people, but it seems to be especially pronounced during the holidays. With holiday events, shopping, travel, family visiting … things tend to pile on top of our already busy lives.
But no matter what time of year it is, the problem is the same: our list of tasks is neverending, and our days are too short.
How can we deal with this in a sane way?
I’ll offer five suggestions that work for me.
1. Use this as an opportunity to practice mindfulness. In the middle of your stress and feeling of being overwhelmed … you have the opportunity to be present. When you notice yourself feeling this way, drop in: notice how your body feels. Take a second to observe the physical sensations of your surroundings (sounds, light, touch sensations, etc.). Notice how your body feels as your mind is spinning with anxiety or busyness.
No, stress and overwhelm are not the two most pleasant feelings, but they’re also not the end of the world. And if you see them as an opportunity to practice, to learn, to get better, then they can actually be good news. They are your teachers, and this is your time to be mindful.
You don’t have to spend a whole minute dropping in, but just take five or 10 seconds. Just observe how you’re feeling, observe your surroundings, observe how your thoughts are affecting you. Just notice, briefly, and in that short time, you’ve woken up from the dream we’re in most of the time.
2. Realize that you can’t do it all right now. You might have 20 things to do, or 100 … but you can’t do all of them right now. You probably can’t do them all in the next hour even. How many can you actually do right now? One.
This reminder is meant to free us from the idea that we need to do everything right now. We can’t. So instead, this allows us to focus on just one thing. Just pick one task, and focus on that. Because the others, as urgent as they might seem, can’t possibly be done right now. You can delegate them, eliminate them, defer them, but you can’t do them all right now. So focus on one, and give it your full attention. This is the most helpful way to work, in my experience.
3. Pick a high impact task to focus on. When we’re busy, we often get into the mode of doing a lot of small tasks really quickly. It feels like we’re knocking a lot of things off the list, which can feel productive. But it’s just running around like a chicken without a head.
If you’re going to focus on just one task, it’s best to make it a good one. Something that will have a decent impact on your day, your work, your life. That probably isn’t answering a bunch of unimportant emails or checking Facebook messages. One important email that will close a deal, move along a key project, help someone’s life … that’s a higher impact task. For me, writing is almost always the highest impact thing I can do. It’s hard to figure out what the highest impact task might be, but if you give it some thought, you can see which ones are probably not that important, and which ones are more important. Pick one from the latter category when you can.
That said, you still have to do the smaller tasks. Answer the other emails, run the errands, clean the kitchen counter. I like to take care of those between the bigger tasks, as a way to take a break. Do something important with focus, then relieve my brain by cleaning or answering a few emails. The key is not to procrastinate on the bigger tasks by doing the smaller ones.
4. Be present with this task, with intention. Once you’ve picked an important task, set aside everything else for now. You can’t do them all now, so be here with the one you’ve chosen. Breathe. Set an intention for this task: who are you doing this for, and why? For me, I am often doing my work tasks for you guys (my readers), but I do personal tasks for my family or to help myself. Set a simple intention: I’m writing this article to help my readers who are struggling.
Then let that intention move you as you focus on the task. Be present with the task, noticing how your body feels as you do the task, letting yourself melt into the doing of it, pouring yourself into it as fully as you can. You might get the urge to switch to something else — just notice that and stay with the urge, not letting yourself follow it unthinkingly, then return to the task when the urge subsides. Remember your intention, then let yourself be fully immersed in the task.
5. Practice letting go, with a smile. Having too much to do, and wanting to get it all done as soon as possible … can actually get in the way of doing. This desire to get it all done is an obstacle. Luckily, it’s a great practice to work with this obstacle!
The practice is letting it go. Notice what you think you need to do (your ideal), and let go of it. Instead, tell yourself you don’t know, and instead be open to the reality that’s right in front of you: you can only do one task. Be open to that idea, and the stress will be lowered.
And as you let go of your ideal and open to the reality, smile. Be grateful for the moment you actually have, rather than wishing for the one you don’t have. Smile, and be happy now, rather than waiting for happiness to come at some unspecified date.
In the end, will these suggestions clear away your to-do list? No. You’ll always have a lot of things on your list, and not enough time to do them all. What this does is help you to deal with that fact, and make you more mindful and focused in the middle of that reality.
Life is too short to spend most of it stressed out by an unchangeable fact. We don’t have to waste our time and mental energy worrying about too much to do. Instead, we can smile and be happy doing what we can do now.
Casa O is a residential project located in the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara, designed with the objective of using the total permitted area of construction. Formally and functionally is composed of two modules differentiated by its material properties.
The dark ground floor module houses the public areas of the house, giving access to it through a wooden hallway, which unifies the pedestrian and parking entrance and whose height receives the visitor in an intimate environment. Once this first contact with the dwelling is approached, the main door opens to a double height space, illuminated by a window to the east and in which the entrance hall focuses the visual perspective towards the olive tree in the backyard.
This is a unique space, which openly gives way to the dining room-kitchen, arranged in such a way that it becomes a single space of coexistence and opens completely to the patio located in the back easement of the house.
The upper floor, materially conceived in brick, houses the private area and is composed of three rooms.
The main room, located to the south, overlooks the Club House of the planned community, is reached through a corridor that visually communicates the public and private areas through the double height entrance and through the window to the east frames the views to the Flamboyant tree located outside.
On the opposite side, the corridor ends with a small hall covered in tzalam wood, which serves to give access to the two secondary rooms to the north. The three bedrooms have their own bathroom and take advantage of the north-south orientation of the home to give natural lighting and ventilation to them.
“If you took the whole world and collapsed it into one little ball, you’d find it here, in this city.”
In this video from the Louisiana Channel, Daniel Libeskind talks about the chaotic beauty of and his love for New York City. Born in Poland, at the age of 13 Libeskind immigrated to New York, where he witnessed both the building and the collapse of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. Intimate with the site, Libeskind was later tasked with designing the masterplan for the World Trade Center’s reconstruction.
Check out the video to hear the architect discuss the tolerance, complexities and fascination of his adopted home.
Via Louisiana Channel.
Daniel Libeskind on Immigration, New York City, and ‘the State of the World’
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Spotlight: Daniel Libeskind
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Antelope Valley – California – USA (by Rennett Stowe)
Frozen Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park 📸: @kylegoods
Share your best pics with us ! #travelcanada
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#canada #explorecanada #britishcolumbia #bc #explorebritishcolumbia #yohonationalpark #emeraldlake #winter #snow #mountains #landscape #nature #beautiful #wanderlust #adventure #destination #canadiandestinations #viewsaddict #stateofshots (at Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park)
This Project is located between two blank walls in Colegiales, a neighbourhood of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The request consists in 8 apartments. This particular lot presents the building code R2B1, and is located in an area characterized by a low residential density and a distinguished neighbourhood character.
To respect the urban profile of the immediate context, we decided to give space in prediction of the growth of an existing linden tree on the sidewalk, right in front of the building. To do so, me moved the main facade two meters back from the municipal line, generating a private access atrium, extending the public space into the private acces of the building.
The housing volumes have been lifted to leave the ground floor free for the access hall, common spaces and parking lot. Starting from the first floor the building is structured in two blocks separated by a central courtyard.
On one side of this outer space are the circulations, both the vertical (elevator and staircase) and the common horizontal walkway to access each apartment.
The dimensions of the central patio ensure the correct illumination of the units and the necessary privacy between them as well.
It’s in this articulation of the voids that the rereading of the code allows interesting resources at the spatial level: lateral galleries are offered through the constructed volumes, avoiding the tipical façade/front balconys.
This allows to enlarge the expansions and to generate a new third interior facade that guarantees an optimal illumination and enlarges visually and environmentally the space of the living-room.
It also refers, at the typological level, to the side patios against existing and defining walls of the “casa-chorizo”, very common in the neighbourhood.
The building consists of 8 Apartments that are distributed by typology in the two main volumes, one that gives to the front that contains a two-roomed apartment each floor, and the one in the back has three-roomed apartment instead.
All the houses are articulated in the same way: bedrooms and bathrooms on one side, on the other one, an open area with living / dining room and kitchen and finally the expansion through outer terraces, that function as the exterior half-covered expansion of the living areas.
This expansion generates a greater visual amplitude, improves the in–out relation and provides greater lighting and natural ventilation.
In 2014, Snøhetta was announced as one of two winners in a competition to design new banknotes for the Norwegian Bank. Now, after 2 years of development, the first bills have been produced and are nearly ready to begin full circulation.
To coincide with the occasion, Norges Bank has released a series of videos explaining the design and production process. Check them out below.
The new notes follow the chosen theme of “The Sea”, with front sides featuring realistic depictions on nautical scenes conceived by graphic design studio Metric Design and Terje Tønnessen, and backsides displaying the pixelated motifs created by Snøhetta.
“Titled ‘The beauty of boundaries’, the design celebrates the country’s coast as a fundamental element of its identity, heritage, and industries. The cubical pattern constructs the coast, the horizon, and the motive; just as humans construct our societies on the coast,” explain the architects in a press release.
The new currency will rolled out in several stages, beginning with the 100- and 200-krone notes on May 30, 2017. The 50- and 500- krone notes will follow approximately one year later, with the 1000-krone note to be issued last, in autumn 2019. Given the complex production process, these dates are subject to potential delays.
Learn more about the design of the banknotes in this four part series produced by Norges Bank, featuring interviews with Snøhetta designers Henrik Haugan and Moa Nordahl (in part 3):
Part 1: Why do we need new banknotes? (3 min)
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Part 2: Why was “The Sea” chosen as the theme for the new banknotes? (6 min)
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Part 3: What’s behind the choice of motifs for the new banknotes? (8 min)
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Part 4: The long road from design proposals to actual banknotes (10 min)
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You can learn more about the new bills and the rollout schedule, here.
News via Snøhetta, Norges Bank.
Snøhetta Designs New Banknotes for Norway
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