What is the difference between the Great Lakes and the ocean? A scientist will tell you that the ocean contains saltwater, of course, and a vast ecosystem; the moon’s gravity also exerts a greater pull on it, establishing the tides. Asked the same question, a gifted novelist — indeed, a master — will tell you less, but also more. Twenty-eight-year-old Henry James, gazing for the first time on Lake Ontario in 1871, described what he saw this way: “It is the sea, and yet just not the sea. The huge expanse, the landless line of the horizon, suggest the ocean; while an indefinable shortness of pulse, a kind of gentleness of tone, seem to contradict the idea. What meets the eye is on the ocean scale, but you feel somehow that the lake is a thing of smaller spirit.”
James’s essay is part of a new collection, Travels with Henry James, which brings together twenty-one gems of his travel writing between 1870 to 1879. The irony of the book is that the author — so famous in his novels for depicting society in Boston and New York, Paris and London, along with the minute gradations in his characters’ thoughts — writes most movingly, as a travel correspondent, when his subject is nature. After viewing Lake Ontario, he proceeds to Niagara Falls, where he is most struck not by the raw power of the plunge but by the beautiful arc of the water: “[I]t flows without haste, without rest, with the measured majesty of a motion whose rhythm is attuned to eternity.” If only James had lived to see the centenary of our national park system, which has protected scores of similar treasures across the country, and especially in the West.
Travels with Henry James does not see the West; in fact, James never even approached the Mississippi. Although the mountains of Wyoming and the mesas of Utah might have set his pen on fire, one senses that the urbane and waistcoated James could not have endured truly wild frontier. He confined his American itinerary to a half-dozen locations in the Northeast. James presented the resulting travel essays to The Nation as a sort of audition for a broader assignment to Europe. The magazine wisely agreed, sending him to England and then the Continent, where he filed travel reportage throughout his thirties. He took in towns and cities, cathedrals and frescoes, never overlooking the denizens of these cultured lands: women in their frocks, men checking their pocket watches; the fashionable and garish, the gauche and homely. Nothing goes unobserved by his generous eye.
He is more democratic in his tastes than a reader of novels like The Ambassadors or The Portrait of a Lady might expect. Some of the grand attractions of Europe leave him cold. “There are people who become easily satisfied with blonde beauties, and Salisbury Cathedral belongs, if I may say so, to the order of blondes.” Several of James’s favorite vistas in town are not in the fashionable quarter but at the seaport or near the tracks. He is certainly no muckraker or bleeding heart, and still less a contrarian; he simply pursues the line of beauty where he finds it. This includes the “mouldy-timbered quiet” of old Newport. Through these pages he wanders and pauses, searching out the new and the unexpected. “I can wish the traveler no better fortune than to stroll forth in the early evening with as large a reserve of ignorance as my own, and treat himself to an hour of discoveries.”
The English countryside holds a special appeal — James writes of “this interminable English twilight, which I am never weary of admiring, watch in hand” — and Paris is Paris, but nothing compares to Italy. Here James finds the intersection of beautiful country, structures, people, and light. While observing an open-air theater rehearsal on a Roman afternoon — too far away to hear but comprehended through “the generous breadth of Italian gesture,” he captures the magic of the country in a few simple lines. “It was all deliciously Italian — the mixture of old life and new . . . the dominant presence of a mighty architecture, the lounges and idlers beneath the kindly sky, upon the sun-warmed stones.” I can think of no other writer, except perhaps Saul Bellow or Vladimir Nabokov, with so sure an ear for the music of prose.
Beyond the light it sheds on the master himself, this collection wonderfully expresses the sheer pleasure of travel. Visiting Stonehenge, James seems not to want his day to end. At leisure, with the new and the beautiful in prospect, a person can forget all troubles and bathe in the warm glow of happiness. “I can fancy sitting all a summer’s day watching its shadows shorten and lengthen again, and drawing a delicious contrast between the world’s duration and the feeble span of individual experience.” The only thing that would improve such a day is the company of this book.
The Barnes & Noble Review http://ift.tt/2fDQkvG
The intercultural education center is located in an attractive urban location not far from the historical district of Tübingen. The direct proximity to the riverside as well as the view of the castle are characteristic of the particular situation of the property. Inspired by the pavilion structure of the surrounding existing buildings, an ensemble of two differently sized buildings emerged: the two-storey primary school and the smaller, one-storey children‘s home. Both houses were designed on a square floor plan with a pyramid roof and are connected via a common, covered entrance area.
The two pavilion-like solitaires create a high permeability in the outer space due to their open arrangement. The result is a “school landscape” through which the important paths and perspectives are preserved as far as possible. Due to the location and topography of the property, the striking roof surfaces can be experienced as a fifth façade. Splitting the entire cubature into two smaller buildings creates a child-friendly scale that supports the desired clear orientation.
Children can enter the school and the children‘s house through the shared, weather protected access. Together with the switchable multifunctional areas, the cafeteria and the seating sections, here you will find space to interact and to meet. On the ground floor of the children‘s house, a multi-purpose room and the administration is located at the entrance, the group rooms open to the landscape tot he East. The primary school welcomes the students on the ground floor with more public spaces such as cafeteria, communal area and library.
Characteristic of the atmosphere in the interior spaces of both buildings is the large, square skylight in the roof, which functions as a large „light shower“ providing plenty of natural daylight in the center of the buildings. In order to open up this open learning lands- cape filled with zenital light with the seat step, the classrooms and classrooms, which can be used in a variety of ways, are located on the upper floor of the school.
Around this, filled with zenital light, open learning landscape the classrooms are situated. This zone is multiple usable and connected to the open staircase with seating steps.
Both houses have a façade of cedar-wood shingles, which by their small size and warm material language strengthen the scale and atmosphere of the ensemble. Both the children‘s house and the school are built in timber construction, only reinforced concrete has been used for the floor and floor ceilings. All materials were tested and carefully selected for their pollutants and primary energy requirements.
Despite the high energetic demands of a passive house, which has already been formula- ted in the competition, the technology appears as an unpretentious and integrative part of the house: the two solitaires offer quiet, concentrated spaces, which give the children a high degree of identification.
Congaree National Park in South Carolina protects a watery wonderland of old-growth forest, including some of the tallest trees in eastern North America. Travel by canoe or kayak through 15 miles of wilderness on the Cedar Creek Canoe Trail – be sure keep an eye out for fall colors and wildlife like river otter, birds and maybe even an alligator! Photo courtesy of James and Jenny Tarpley, the park’s 2014 artists in residence.
OMA has released images of their masterplan for Feyenoord City, Rotterdam, after the plan was approved by city’s mayor and alderman. Developed for the Feyenoord football club, the project will consist of a redeveloped mixed-use district centered around a new 63,000 seat stadium for the team located along the Maas River.
The stadium will serve as the starting point for business development in the area, linking to the rest of the Rotterdam-Zuid district through a walkway and generous public space. A new active artery, called “The Strip,” will connect the new arena with Feyenoord’s current stadium, De Kuip, whose history will be preserved by its conversion into apartments, commercial space, an athletics sports center and a public square.
The renovated “Kuip Park” will contain more than 89,000 square meters (958,000 square feet) of green space for sport and leisure activities, as well as 700 residential units.
In total, the masterplan will add 180,000 square meters (1,938,000 square feet) of housing in a variety of typologies; 64,000 square meters (689,000 square feet) of retail and commercial space, including a cinema, restaurants and shopping; and 83,000 square meters (893,000 square feet) of various public program elements including a “sports experience” and urban sports fields.
“With the development of Feyenoord City, OMA contributes to the next phase of development for the city of Rotterdam, our home town. We help to connect parts of the city that were isolated and difficult to reach; we designed a piece of city around the Feyenoord football club and its new stadium, which will connect people through sport and community,” said David Gianotten, partner-in-charge at OMA.
“With this design, OMA fulfills our strong desire to develop a sport city that is unique in the Netherlands and northern Europe.”
News via OMA.
Working hard, craving for success, achieving more and more – just to realize one day that you are tired and drained of energy, mechanically doing your job and counting hours and minutes until the end of your workday. This is a common scenario for employees in many sectors, but mostly in banking, insurance, and financial services. Job burnout is now ranked a “syndrome” – a medical concept next to melancholia and depression.
Burnout is known by its negative effects on productivity. However, its most severe consequences affect mental, emotional and even physical health. Sebastian Beck from Suddeutsche Zeitung tells a story of a once successful manager, now a patient of a neurological rehabilitation center: after working 60 hours a week for years and even going to the office with his leg broken, he ended up scheduling made-up meetings and fleeing from the office through a balcony. Among physical effects of burnout, atony, hypertension, and gastrointestinal problems are the most frequent ones.
Sebastian Beck from Suddeutsche Zeitung tells a story of a once successful manager, now a patient of a neurological rehabilitation center. After working 60 hours a week for years and even going to the office with his leg broken, he ended up scheduling made-up meetings and fleeing from the office through a balcony. Among physical effects of burnout, atony, hypertension, and gastrointestinal problems are the most frequent ones.
Social effects are an important part as well. Constant stress and fatigue make you easily irritable, and who would blame you for being not nice enough to people if you are totally worn down?
Another reason for cynicism and irritation is depersonalization. It manifests itself in alienation from people with whom you need to interact, and in bitterness towards them. People who experience it report that they feel like they are watching themselves act in a play. They remember what they should do and say, but they just don’t care anymore.
A product of high pressure and too much responsibility, burnout is nowadays a valid excuse for low mood, irritability, and short temper. Anna K. Schaffner in her Exhaustion: A History explains how the concept of exhaustion has been changing over centuries.
According to her, today it actually hints at success: if you are exhausted, it means that you are in demand, everyone needs you. So, there’s no shame in being frustrated and apathetic because it is not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, exhaustion now tends to be understood as a badge of honor.
While depression is rooted in the mental and emotional state of a person, burnout phenomena are presumably related to constantly high productivity and stressful workplace conditions; something that is typical for hard-working and irreplaceable employees, mostly in management positions. As such, job burnout has become a status thing. “Only losers become depressive. Burnout is a diagnosis for winners, or, more specifically: for former winners” – concludes Sebastian Beck.
See Also: 15 Symptoms You Are Depressed (Even When You Think You Aren’t)
Burned out or just tired? We often cross this line without noticing it. Sometimes our weariness and apathy are inspired by a common trend to be busy and tired.
So how do you know if your fatigue has turned into something that already requires urgent actions? Take a simple test to understand your degree of exhaustion.
As we now see it, job burnout can have serious physical, emotional and social effects, such as lack of energy, decreased productivity, anxiety, sense of futility, and family conflicts. And it will not go away by itself. If you do nothing about it, the consequences will grow like a snowball.
Here are some simple tips to help you avoid the severe burnout effects.
1. Replenish your personal resources.
Take care of yourself. Don’t let your work take too much time of your life.
Good sleeping habits, hobbies, and connecting with people you like helps a lot in preventing and overcoming burnout consequences. Stress-relieving activities and practices, such as yoga, meditation, walking,and listening to music can also help you relax and find your emotional balance.
2. Analyze your current activities and figure out which of them make you feel weary and frustrated.
It is also useful to know how much time you spend on frustrating activities every day. A simple timesheet software can be useful here as it helps you structure your daily activities and calculate the time spent on them.
3. Re-prioritize your tasks and revise your workload. Limit the time you spend on tasks and communications that exhaust you. Consider reducing your working hours. Delegate some tasks to others when possible.
See Also: Suffering From Anxiety? This Is How I Deal With Mine
Hardly any job is worth your health, peace of mind, and emotional stability. If you are not happy with your workload, your duties or work environment, perhaps it is time to pause and take on activities that relieve your stress so that you don’t end up drained of your inner resources.
The post Keep Calm and Don’t Stress: Recognizing and Preventing Job Burnout appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
From the architect. Tranquility and movement
We’ve been working on a art-inspired hairdressers salon interior on one of the most busy streets of Zurich. The brief said that their ambitious clients should forget about their jobs and problems once they get their hair done. It’s a highly personal and very demanding service and the atmosphere is a huge part of the experience.
There was obviously a huge difference in mood from the hectic and noisy street outside to the laidback music and the repetitive sound of high quality scissors inside. It seems that time passes in different tempi.
The quick pace of the outside can be considered distracting for what the hairdressor wants to achieve but at the same time we don’t want to neglect the surrounding since we were interested in a very specific solution. We developed a pattern that is both – unhasty and intricate at the same time. It remains interesting since it changes it appearence depending on the perspective of it’s observer. It’s the result of an elaborate series of prototypes done with a local carpenter and inspired by contemporary graphic art (like the beautiful painting by Emilie Ding) or classic modern stage designs (like Roman Clemens’ work).
Spatial Installation
The delicate wood interior was partly prefabricated using CAAD and CAM technologies but also involved a lot of handcraft. We managed to develop some refined and invisible longitudinal connections between pieces of 3mm MDF wood. Everything had to be as thin and precise as possible to not spoil the perspective effect. It took a lot of testing and developing before everything was assembled within 6 days of work. It’s more of an installation then a classic architecural approach but we believe the precision and the site-specific approach creates something very timeless here.
As a customer you spend between 1 and 3 hours in the . You move slowly inside the patterns space – so it unfolds it’s rich variations when you change direction of view. As a cardriver or pedestrian you see the ceiling kind of „transform“ while you move by rather quickly because you change the angle of view more drastically.
Since this geometric perception phenomena is the dominating spatial idea – all the other elements of the salon are stripped to their very functional minimum. The lights and the plugs hang from the ceiling. Black wires not touching neither floor nor ceiling. Nothing comes out of walls since we wanted this temporary – artgallery like space. We also designed a specific series of mirrors for the salon which always comes in symmetrical pairs. While there is the mirror on the frontside – the back serves as a table to place magazines and drinks. The existing column in the back of the space is thicker then it should be from a structural point of view. But it gives weight and centres to the whole space – it is a welcoming disturbance to all the repeating parts and emphasizes the thinness of the wooden ceiling and walls.
CBS has announced they will produce a television adaptation of the 2016 book, “A Burglar’s Guide to the City,” with a storyline that centers on modern-day Robin Hoods led by a talented architect. Written by futurist Geoff Manaugh of BLDG BLOG, the book serves a blueprint to the urban fabric’s various potentials for crime. Manaugh uses architecture to study structures and their weak points that could allow for a possible break-in (i.e. elevator shafts, walls of high-rise apartments, gaps in museum surveillance).
The book even references real heists that have changed its readers’ day-to-day perspective on architecture.
“A Burglar’s Guide to the City shows that architecture is too important to leave to just the architects,” said architect Bjarke Ingels about the book.
Executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Justin Lin and Heather Kadin, and co-executive producer Paul Grellong will head the development of the series. Grellon, who wrote the script, is also well-known for Revolution and Law & Order: SVU. CBS has currently committed to producing a “put pilot” for A Burglar’s Guide to the City, which is an agreement that guarantees the network will air the show or face providing significant monetary conpensation. CBS will then review to consider adding it to their full lineup of shows.
A Burglar’s Guide to the City spent two consecutive months on the New York Times Month Bestseller list for crime. At the time of its publishing, Paola Antonelli, the Senior Curator of Architecture & Design at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote, “In his new book, elegant, perverse, sinuous supervillains maneuver and master the city like parkour champions. I see the TV series already.”
Her hypothesis has now become a reality.
News Via: Deadline
Washington D.C. – USA (by Juan Llanos)
