Susavvy

Christopher Williams

Subtitled:  “The shape of natural and man-made things – why they came to be the way they are and how they change.”  This is one of my favorite inspirations for thinking about deep structure.  Beautifully illustrative, Williams ponders on form as a response to stress:

Structure is the way to achieve the most strength from the least material, through the most appropriate arrangement of elements within the best form for the intended use, and constructed from  the material most suited to the kind of stress placed upon it. Structure is focused in one direction: getting the very most from the very least

Much good design shares this economy of form in the design solution to human problems. Favorite illustration, highlighting similarities between the animal world and the forms that people create:

The Practical Cogitator

With a tip o’ the hat to Charles P Curtis Jr and Ferris Greenslet, this is my place to reflect on what learning and living is for.

First published during World War II, the Practical Cogitator or The Thinker’s Anthology was intended for the pocket of a soldier in the trenches, a condensed, far-ranging, provocation to thinking about what’s most important in life when life seems at it’s most precarious.