Changing architectural ideals as illustrated through child literature

2016-08-23T14:22:00-04:00

In this fascinating piece by Rumaan Ali for Slate, he explores how children's picture books offer a fun historical survey of the ideal architecture and interior decor for each place and time, spanning from the early 20th century to contemporary times. Although the books usually incorporate some element of fantasy, the throw rugs, furniture, and division of space tend to be reflective of the real world of that era.

As Ali writes about the "Best Storybook Ever" by Richard Scarry:

"The silhouettes of the sofas in the living room and the attic den are similar. This is not a home of ostentatious decorative gestures, but one of comfort, a faith in the modern culture (the television, the record player, a single book, from the Book of the Month Club, no doubt, left out on the coffee table). We see the home at the start of the day: one son lacing up his shoes, mother working on breakfast. The house is awake, alive with an optimism about what the day, the decade, the century holds for the peopl...

O’ Mighty Green

2011-06-08T07:43:27-04:00

0. Introduction
Sustainability currently shares many qualities with God; supreme concept, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; creator and judge, protector, and (...) saviour of the universe and the humanity. And, like God, it has millions of believers. Since we humans are relatively simpleminded and suspicious and need evidence before belief can become conviction, Green has come to represent sustainability; has become its incarnation in the human world. But sustainability, like God, might not have a form, nor a colour…

1. Emancipation
In a desperate attempt to give shape to an all-encompassing ideology the Green proves to work as the quickest and easiest representation of sustainability. The Green is the only symbol able to keep pace with today’s lack of patience and hunger for images; a Lady Gaga-Sustainability: effective, noticeable, creative, sensationalist. In a persistent effort to become the allegory of Sustainability, Green has been emancipated as its caricature.

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Changing architectural ideals as illustrated through child literature

O’ Mighty Green