Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Peninsula offers many ways to discover Maine’s rugged coast without the busyness of Mount Desert Island. Photographer Will Greene caught this amazing #sunset photo while working this summer at the park. For more great photos of Acadia from summer interns, visit http://on.doi.gov/Acadia.
Do you follow your bliss?
There is a moment in people’s lives when they realize that things aren’t as they should be. Somewhere in-between the daily routines are gaps are things that simply don’t connect or make sense.
Most people choose to bury their heads in the soil like an ostrich and ignore these impulses. However, there are those few who are too curious. For them, these questions are like splinters in the brain and the more they choose to ignore them, the more painful they become.
These splinters have followed mankind throughout civilization. Mystics refer to them by many names but they all have a common thread because they lead individuals to a magical place called “BLISS.”
We all in some way have been presented with an opportunity to leap into the void to pursue something far greater than our small minds could imagine. However, fear, anxiety, over thinking or comfort zones force us to turn down the call of nature which could ultimately transform our lives.
For Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, it was the call to sell everything they had and create a little box with a screen that would change the way people all over the world use technology. For Walt Disney, it was taking every risk imaginable in creating animated characters that would change family entertainment forever, and for Nelson Mandela it was sacrificing his life and following the call of freeing his people from the chains of apartheid.
Growing up, I was always encouraged by my elders whether it be my pastor, parents or school teachers to just be myself. They always stressed the notion of not trying to be something or someone that I’m not which made perfect sense since we were all created in a unique and special way. Striving to follow in the footsteps of someone else made you a fake, a counterfeit, or as folks back in South Africa would say a, “Fong Kong.”
But looking back now, I disagree. If I had taken their advice, I’d still be a shy, awkward individual afraid to face the world.
So my question is, if someone is unhappy with who they are and what they are doing with their life, should they just simply shrug their shoulders and blindly accept the notion that they were created this way?
Well I say NO!!
Don’t be yourself; change and be who you want to be. Your life is like clay in the hands of an artist. You shape it accordingly to what you want it to be.
If you are a shy, reclusive individual and you hate this characteristic about yourself, then do everything you can to change this. Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “If you are sickly, surround yourself with the healthy. If you are shy, surround yourself with the gregarious.”
Bonaparte is pointing out a valuable solution in overcoming your deficiencies. He understood that we are weak in certain areas but also strong in some.
The best way to overcome those shortfalls is to learn from those who possess the traits we admire. The biggest problem with people is that they surround themselves with people who share their common interests and values. The danger of doing this is that they cut themselves off from the vast pool of information and skills transferred in daily life.
See Also: Be the Change You Want To See in the World
The most difficult thing to do in life is to be completely honest with yourself and admit that you aren’t who you think you are. Our ego is a cloud that obscures our ability to recognize who we truly are.
And when I say “Truth” I mean recognizing yourself with all your fears, delusions, addictions, insecurities and not hiding from them but truly understanding that they make you who you are. The world is merely a thought, and most of our thoughts have been molded and conditioned by our parents, teachers, television, friends and family.
The ability to let go of all those things you learned and see things as they truly are is a long and extremely difficult process. The answers you seek in this life are within; all you have to do is trust yourself.
See Also:9 Things to Let Go to Find Ultimate Happiness
I love my mother and father with all my heart and would move the world for them, but I have realized that their advice and counsel isn’t always the best for me. When making life-changing decisions, your parents aren’t always the people to turn to for advice simply because your parents have a paternal instinct wired in them, to protect you till death.
Their purpose is to protect you from potential danger or failure in life. This is great for raising a little toddler but the problem with this at a later stage in life is that it hinders the growth factor of the child.
Parents impose their fears and anxieties onto their kids, and understanding this is extremely complicated. The reason they don’t see this is because it’s coming from a good place.
But the reality is that they are cutting you off from following your true call in nature of pursuing this mythical journey which is faced with danger, insecurity, fear, and self-doubt. The obstacles you face on this journey are important ingredients which are essential in building a person of self-reliance.
When I say “Follow your bliss” I am in no way being oblivious to the challenges individuals have had to overcome or continue to face such as abuse, addiction, physical disability or the lack of money and education. This notion is simply my personal observation of a mysterious world which no one has the answers to. How you choose to look at it is a defining factor. If you see it as a world of hate, fear and misery, then that is what the world will be.
I personally choose to joyfully participate in the sorrows of life. Sometimes it hurts so much that we want it all to end, but that’s part of the game as the Taoist would say, “the Yin and the Yang”.
Like a good tennis game, you have to participate and play as if your life depended on it. If you lose, you go over to congratulate your opponent by shaking his hand. If you win, you graciously celebrate while remembering that without your opponent, the game would not be possible.
“Following your bliss” is something which deeply resonates with me. It’s a journey of abandoning what T.S. Eliot called, “The Waste Land” which is that life of going through the paces in life and simply existing from paycheck to paycheck.
It is following your internal impulses of doing what you were destined to be or do. Whether it is a poet, musician or scientist, “following your bliss” is following that quiet intuitive voice inside which leads you to something that ignites a sense of awe and wonder inside. As Joseph Campbell would say, “It’s not about finding the meaning of life, but rather the deep experience of it.”
The post Follow Your Bliss appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
From the architect. 1200 Intrepid is a LEED Gold office building shaped by the encounter between Robert Stern’s master plan of rectangular city blocks and James Corner’s iconic, circular Central Green Park.
The building’s double curved, pre-cast concrete façade bows inwards to create a generous urban canopy that responds to the ‘shock wave’ of the park’s circular running track, activity pods and planting vignettes – rippling outwards like rings in water to invade the building’s footprint. Shaped by the city grid, the cornice and remaining elevations return to the orthogonal design of the Navy Yard’s master plan, forming the building’s double curve and melding the neighborhood’s two dominant forms.
Referencing the Navy Yard’s maritime history while providing much needed natural light, a functioning periscope penetrates the core of the building, projecting views of the Navy Yard basin into the center of the elevator lobby. Visitors and employees can admire the mothballed ships sitting in the adjacent docks while embracing Central Green Park – connecting the building and its inhabitants to their surroundings.
http://www.archdaily.com/799118/1200-intrepid-bjarke-ingels-group
On November 3, TheatreSquared Executive Director Martin Miller and Artistic Director Robert Ford unveiled the completed plans for the company’s new permanent home, a 50,000 square-foot building in Fayetteville, Arkansas designed by London-based theater planners Charcoalblue and New York–based Marvel Architects. The new building will include two theaters, a rehearsal space, staff offices, design workshops, a community space, a 24-hour cafe/bar, three levels of outdoor public space, and a separate building housing eight guest artist apartments.
Charcoalblue worked to preserve and enhance the sense of panoramic immersion in the current space, adding 100 seats to the theatre’s base seating capacity while only deepening the room by one row, said senior project manager Clem Abercrombie. I’m proud to say this is one of the most intimate, yet immersive, theatre spaces Charcoalblue has designed.
The theater achieves acoustic isolation with an acoustic envelope composed of board-form concrete, shielding the performance spaces from the noise of downtown Fayetteville. Meanwhile, the assemblage of volumes integrates the theater with its surroundings: the theaters and rehearsal space project out from the building’s facade, and the outdoor areas are designed for transparency to the community at large.
TheatreSquared is the professional regional theater of Northwestern Arkansas. Named one of the nation’s foremost emerging theaters by the American Theatre Wing, founder of the Tony Awards, TheatreSquared has expanded its audience tenfold in the last five years and now hosts 40,000 visitors annually. In 2015, TheatreSquared was chosen as one of three inaugural beneficiaries of the Walton Family Foundation’s Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, which funds the development of public spaces by renowned architects. Since launching in 2015, the Program has curated a group of 36 architecture and landscape architecture firms to participate in all phases of design projects aimed at elevating the quality of Northwestern Arkansas’s built environment while complementing the region’s rich architectural history.
News via: TheatreSquared
http://www.archdaily.com/799035/theatresquared-reveals-designs-for-permanent-facility
Naples – Florida – USA (by Garen Meguerian)
💙 To Ana, 16 on 500px by Jose Barbosa, Leiria, Portugal☀ Canon… http://ift.tt/1U9N9Kv
Half the fun of going on a trip is in the planning: picking out restaurants, dreaming about the sights, and mapping out new destinations to explore. The internet has made the process so much easier than ever before.
One of the most valuable tools at a trip planners’ fingertips is Pinterest. Yes, Pinterest.
The social media platform has more than 100 million active monthly users. It has always been a great place to find inspiration and organize online information. Since debuting buyable pins last year, it’s also become a great place to shop.
Travel brands are getting in on the fun by providing spaces for pinners to collaborate on travel plans, food, and entertainment. The Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts’ Pin.Pack.Go campaign, for example, invited individuals to collaborate on travel-themed boards and offered insider tips and advice.
Even if you’re still in the dreaming stage of planning a vacation, Pinterest is a great place to start preparing. The platform is filled with stunning photos of exotic locales, so look around to get inspiration.
Here are some other ways to get started:
Once you’ve settled on a destination, create a mapped board. These use geolocation metadata to display photos’ locations on a map. It’s a useful feature when documenting a road trip or planning an itinerary.
For example, a mapped board can show you whether attractions are within walking distance or help you determine the best order to do things. Be sure to scope out mapped boards from other users who have gone on similar trips.
To get trip ideas, find boards dedicated to your destination. Explore beyond travel guidebooks and magazines. When you find an appropriate board, be sure to also check out any related pins to discover photos, videos, and anecdotes from others who have taken similar trips.
See Also: Strange International Laws Every Tourist Should Know
Similar to search engines, Pinterest users have varying terminology for similar things. For example, “food in Las Vegas,” “places to eat in Las Vegas,” and “best Las Vegas restaurants” are all search queries in pursuit of the same thing. In other words, it’s essential to vary your search terms to find everything Pinterest has to offer.
Once you’ve worked through the planning stages, it’s time to pull the trigger and book your trip. If your hotel or airline is on Pinterest, it will likely have direct links to booking for each location. If you saved pins for travel necessities like sunglasses or snorkel gear during the planning process, use the blue “Buy It” button on each pin to purchase directly from the site.
See Also: 21 Top Travel Apps and Tools
Whether you’re exploring a tropical island or simply visiting relatives, traveling takes research and preparation. Pinterest’s visual layout and shopping features make it an ideal place to plan and book your next getaway.
The post Use Pinterest to Plan Your Next Vacation — Here’s How appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Forest Lodge is a private home located in New Forest, Hampshire, England. It was designed by PAD studio in 2015. Forest Lodge by PAD studio: “Located within a clearing of New Forest Woodland PAD were commissioned to design a bespoke contemporary mobile dwelling. The mobile dwelling conforms to the 1968 Caravan Act and will be capable of being lifted once erected. The air tight, highly insulated dwelling is constructed to..
This article by Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, the cofounder of Snøhetta, was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as “Opinion: The Next Great Public Spaces Will Be Indoors.”
Maybe with the sole exception of railway stations, public space is generally understood as outdoor space. Whether in the United States or in Europe, especially now with heightened concerns around security, there seems to be this determined way of privatizing everything that is indoors, even as we are increasingly aiming to improve access to public space outdoors. But in the layered systems of our cities of the future, we will need to focus on the public spaces that are found inside buildings—and make them accessible.
In 1748, Giambattista Nolli made this wonderful map of Rome where he only had two distinctions—what was private and what was public. Whether it was indoor or outdoor, whether there was a church space or a plaza, it didn’t really matter. It told a different story of the city. There are some examples from today—the roof of our Oslo Opera House is outdoors, for instance, but it’s on the building and publicly accessible. Opening up the Louvre and trying to let people walk through it 24 hours a day—as with the museum’s recent takeover by the artist JR—is another way of not making a distinction between indoor and outdoor public space.
These kinds of programming decisions are essential to the way new architecture typologies develop, and architects should definitely have influence on them. In certain situations, accessibility to indoor public space is enough. In other situations, you have to define the program for the particular indoor or outdoor spaces to be adequate. To use the example of the roof of the Opera House in Oslo again, it was basically programmed only for one thing, and that’s to be walked on, for a promenade. But on occasion, it could be reprogrammed to hold an outdoor concert. Or it could be reprogrammed against the original intention by skaters or by a biker who actually drives his motorbike up and down the roof.
Maybe the outdoor can be programmed in such a way that it unlocks the possibility of the public spaces indoors. There’s always a bit of urban planning in designing interiors. There’s always a bit of interior design in an urban space. There’s no question that interior architecture is professionalizing itself as well—interior architects are not seen as decorators of interior space anymore. The same is true of landscape architects. And those are only the traditional design professions.
Every architect doesn’t need to be trained in every specialized profession, but what is lacking is an overall understanding of how people should collaborate. That’s why we’ve introduced transpositioning as a working method in our office, where you not only sit around tables with a lot of specialists, but you actually swap professions during creative workshops. The only thing that can save the essence of architecture is some kind of collaborative model like this.
By adopting this model, both in education and practice, I think we would be better equipped to fully understand the effects of programming. We are usually generalists enough to understand that a change of use is sometimes demanded and that we shouldn’t try to desperately hold on to certain kinds of programming. But the profession itself should, in my opinion, really contain that kind of knowledge, simply because it’s so tightly connected to the actual design task. How can we change the relationship between buildings and the public unless we’re directly involved in programming ourselves?
Kjetil Trædal Thorsen is a founding partner at Snøhetta. The firm’s recently completed projects include the Ryerson University Student Learning Centre in Toronto and the expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
http://www.archdaily.com/799165/the-next-great-public-spaces-will-be-indoors-are-architects-prepared
