TED WELLS' "living : simple," a website and podcast, takes architecture as its starting point and then ventures widely into related areas of design including interior space, objects that define the experience of space (like chairs), and the built environment.
One of Wells' consistent themes is the overreliance by many architects and designers -- perhaps most, these days -- on computer-generated imagery (CGI) to spice up otherwise dim and dreary structure and products. When experienced in person, the actual buildings and objects do not live up to the clients' or users' expectations that are formed when computer effects obscure the essence of the structures they depict. This is often intentional, as it's apparently easier to become a master of CGI than a master of space, as a truly gifted architect must be.
Wells' 10-15 minute podcasts are informative, thought-provoking, well-narrated, and framed by comfortable music that sets the stage but never intrudes on it. He's now in our links.
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
