I just learned of San Francisco startup Ponoko via TechCrunch. I’m still trying to understand the details, but the concept rocks.

From what I can tell so far this is the premise. Upload your design for a product and Ponoko, which has a factory in San Francisco, will make it for you. You can sell your blueprints for other people to make and can also use the website to market your designs, which Ponoko will build and ship to you to ship to the purchaser — at least that’s how I’ve understood the process up to this point. The home page of their website shows links that direct to Your own personal factory (”How to make”) or and an Online showroom (”How to sell”).

They claim the process of on demand creation will cut down on the waste of overproduction, and also grants the desires of shoppers who may not find exactly what they are after in the aisles of big box retailers, lined with mass produced products. A service definitely worth checking out. I might try it out and see if I can’t successful plug my table design which I referred to earlier this week.

I’ve been fascinated with various forms of large-scale transportation since I was very young. I grew up in a non-descript western Nebraska community that boasts the worlds largest rail classification yards. And after my first time flying — first time old enough to remember, anyway — I became infatuated with commercial aviation. Any time an airplane, small props such as the Beechcraft 1900 in the case of the North Platte airport, flew within hearing I would look up. Thankfully this wasn’t very often in the small town, or I might have acquired a permanent crick in my neck. More reflection on my interest in aviation is in this post from June of last year.

I don’t fly all that much, but in the last five weeks I set foot in airports for two separate trips. My layover was in Memphis in both cases. The Memphis airport is a dreary place to be (the one point of promise was the real-live art hanging on the walls). In the concourses ceilings are low, corridors are narrow and the tiled walls are a drab brown-gray. It may be the ugliest airport I’ve been in.

But a lot of airports look like this, bland and uninviting. Situation Terminal, from The New Yorker’s website, tackles the question “Can anyone design a nice aiport?” The story lays out a bit of airport design history, suggesting the logistical nightmare that is a large airport and tight finances fostered a more or less pragmatic approach to terminal and concourse design in the last thirty to forty years. Attempts at reinventing the airport were, while perhaps visually interesting, failures in function. The New Yorker cites Eero Saarinen’s efforts at JFK and Dulles in this regard.

“Since then,” the story says, “airport authorities have been wary of letting any architect have a say on what should go where. Now most architects don’t get to do much more than give the main concourse a big, swooping space with natural light — like the one in the new American Airlines terminal at Kennedy airport — which acts as little more than a distraction from the banality of the rest of the terminal.”

There are, however, two shining examples of a better way to design airports according to columnist Paul Goldberger. Norman Foster’s Beijing Capital International Airport’s Terminal 3 is the airport rethought, successfully according to Goldberger. Apparently the space is intuitive and logistically more sound than the comfortable — even if archaic — model airports presently defer to.

I’m not so keen on the aesthetics from what I can tell in the architects renderings, though, or the 500+ photos uploaded to Flickr. It looks like a very large commercial building, like so many other airports, from what I can tell. Sure, it appears as though the architect specified some attempts to cover up the generally cold underlying structure, but based on the images I’m finding online the attempt was futile. The one exception is the Ground Transportation Centre. This space actually looks pleasant to be in.

The second example of a new airport architecture Goldberger’s piece cites is Terminal 4 in Madrid. The column doesn’t say much about function in Richard Roger’s Barajas Airport project, but the images lend me to believe this is, overall, a much more inviting environment than Terminal 3 in Beijing.

My own experience lies more with smaller venues, such as the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (XNA) or Lincoln [Nebraska] Airport (LNK). In many ways these smaller airports are much nicer to fly in and out of, even if there aren’t as many restaurants to choose from. I often wonder if the hub and spoke system major airlines use to get people from place to place is less than optimal. I suppose — that is, I hope — the airlines have seriously considered alternatives to this model at some point in their history. With all of the financial trouble most of them are in right now, one would think this might be a good time to revisit a variety of innovative options in order to say afloat and gain and edge on the competition.

Today is one of two weeks of cleanup performed by the city in Siloam Springs. Place anything you want to dispose of by the road and by Friday it is supposed to have disappeared, carried off either by the official crane-truck or by citizens hunting for treasures.

And there are some treasures. Two houses down from my own were two pieces of furniture that caught my eye, one a decent looking table top. Both were gone within hours of being placed roadside. I didn’t even wander down to examine them after thinking about the storage nightmare they would create — this on a weekend I spent cleaning and organizing. In fact the pile in front of that particular house dwindled down to almost nothing before being restocked this morning with a beastly, legless pool table among other odds and ends.

This post, however, refers to the darker side of the twice annual junk-fest. I couldn’t help but think of the wasteful society we live in as I passed by pile after pile of stuff. Regular readers know this rant already. In our mass-producing, mass-consuming culture little consideration is given to how many of these trinkets will end up in landfills. With the environmental movements of recent years this is changing to a degree, but very slowly.

Take the chair in the above photograph for instance. We’ll ignore its lack of aesthetic appeal in this particular dialogue. First off it’s not in that bad of shape. Why is it being thrown away; did the owners trade up? The dog got a hold of one corner and the fabric is a bit faded, but most college students would love to have this in their dorm room. So it might be missing its feet; what are bricks and two-by-fours for!

I can imagine, just by the looks of it, that is a cheap chair — like so much factory fare in our day and age. The company’s bottom line drives design and choice of materials. Everything has to be as inexpensive as possible in order to maximize profits to pad the CEO’s bonus and keep the shareholders happy. Further, the shorter the life-span of a gadget or appliance the sooner it will need to be replaced, thereby ensuring future sales for the company — so long as they can create brand loyalty and/or attract new buyers.

Can’t companies come up with ways to create more enduring products and still make money (Or do we first need to get them to agree to make less money?). Do consumers need to be convinced it’s worth it to spend a little more for a chair or dining room table (or house, for that matter) that possesses some staying power?

I must admit that I’m not all that into Sunday morning church services these days. So when a series of Powerpoint slides (yay) began to play in front of the congregation yesterday, I only paid half attention — at best.

The slides, as I recall, exhorted people in the pews to give something to God during the service, not expect something from it. In other words, don’t complain about the music or the color of the carpet; just sing and pray and give back to God.

Of course, I may be butchering the meaning of the slideshow — only paying half-attention and all — but that’s beside that point here. The point here is the thought that struck me towards the end of the announcement: “What if there’s something to people’s expressed (or unexpressed) distaste for certain aspects of a church service or building?”

What if such complaints are an affirmation of the importance of beauty, of aesthetics?

Generally speaking, I don’t condone church-hopping on account of ugly carpet or even redundant praise and worship music (a pet peeve of mine); as we all know thanks to countless email forwards laden with Christianese, “There’s no such thing as a perfect church.” But the fact is that our environment does influence us and music is an enigmatically powerful art. The fact also remains that different people will always own different aesthetics, and attempting to satisfy all at the same time is unrealistic.

How do we reconcile or approach personal aesthetics within a community setting such as a church? Perhaps we poll people:

Circle the color of carpet you prefer:

Navy
Aqua
0000FF
Turquoise
Royal blue
Cornflower blue

I’ve quoted Architect Daniel Lee before, and I’ll do it again here:

“It is possible to worship God in a gymnasium or lecture hall, because if people are truly seeking him, God will meet them there. But to worship in such architecture is to suggest that our purpose is either recreational or cerebral. We should build spaces crafted specially for a human-divine encounter with God.”

Or, it seems to me, perhaps we shouldn’t build sacred spaces at all. New Testament instruction dictates that we as Christ-followers regularly assemble. It doesn’t say where or how often or how many songs to sing — or necessarily to sing at all — to my knowledge.

Adding: As smitten as I am with the idea of house churches, my interest in the visual environment and architecture supersedes my suggestion that we forgo church buildings altogether. I believe they can, in appropriate cultural context, serve as a witness to the surrounding community as well as significantly encouraging — if well-considered — meditation and communion with our Holy God.

I learned this weekend that my father finally has a closing date for a building in downtown Grand Island, Nebraska. He’s been looking for a couple of years now. His original idea was to find a place with room for an apartment upstairs and store frontage downstairs. I mentioned his interest in downtown real estate in an August post as well (The building mentioned in that post, which he made an offer on, didn’t pan out.).

Without rehashing the myriad of details he considered while looking for a commercial property, I present to you the structure he finally has a contract on — the elegant building in the middle of the picture:

Amenities include marble stairways to the second floor from the street and alley, a bonafied civic shelter comprising 2/3rds of the basement (complete with thirty empty water barrels) and rental income totaling $900 per month. It seems his patience paid off as he found a building slightly under his budget. The drawback is that the store frontage is being used by one of the renters — who have three years left on their lease — so he will have to peddle his antiques from the second floor for the time being.

This post isn’t so much about this one building though as it is about the ruination of once stately downtowns in American communities. Compare the above photograph to the following historical photo of the original bank building:

The original facade is presently obscured by modern renovations allowing for two street level entries. These economy grade renovations seem to pay no attention to the well-crafted, elegant pilasters and cornice they so haphazardly obscure. The same goes for so many buildings in the area. Look in the first picture at the wild green building to the right of my father’s [future] property, and compare it to the same building in the second photo.

Ugh.

My complaint here is not so much a distinction between modern and more classically influenced architecture as it is a distinction between quality of craft and design. The modern overlays on these buildings look cheap, cheap in the sense of it’s not going to last. They also exhibit poor form in not paying respect to their surroundings. The bright green steel and glass structure seems to completely ignore the materials and colors around it, looking like a flakey marketing gimmick nestled among more serious contenders. One of the things that was made very clear during the two years I studied architecture in college was the importance of the plot. My professor went so far as to suggest we take our sleeping bags to the vacant lot assigned to us and spend the night there.

The modern iterations and modifications also seem to, largely, lack attention to detail. Sure, modern architecture is generally spare — indeed, often cold — in comparison to classical, but it doesn’t have to look like a shoebox with cutouts for doors and windows.

I’d like to help my dad take that stark tin awning off of his little building someday, and I hope the former glory of these buildings is still intact under their present clothing.

From the latest issue of Real Simple:

Two of this year’s “new” shades — sage and curry — sound decades away from the avocado green and harvest gold that distinguished so many interiors in the 1970s. But guess what? The colors are exactly the same.

Wait — so there are no new shades under the sun? Not really, says Patricia Verlodt, president of Color Services and Associates, a color-consulting firm in Wonder Lake, Illinois. When color experts like Verlodt devise palettes for their corporate clients, they draw from a vast bank of existing shades, renaming their picks to pique interest. (Harvest gold? Ho-hum. Curry? How worldly!)

Verlodt searches constantly for fresh ideas, consulting flower and rock guides, cookbooks, baby-nam books and even maps. “People think of places when they think of colors,” she says. So move over, linen white, and make way for next year’s Tuscan beige. (page 247)

I’ve never understood how they, whoever “they” used to be, got away with calling those colors gold and avocado. That green doesn’t look like the skin or meat of any avocado I’ve ever eaten. But it looks less like sage! Renaming the old harvest gold curry seems to be a more appropriate tag.

I’ve mentioned before how there’s no such thing as a bad color, but there are poor applications of colors. Apparently the above snippet refers to paint colors and not appliance colors. Regardless, I feel the need to warn Patricia and her decision making peers to keep these colors — whatever they’re called — off of kitchen and bathroom appliances!

These are very poor applications of these colors.

Last night I watched Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore as I stuffed and sealed envelopes. I figured it was a good background film, one that I didn’t need to pay all that much attention to. It surprised me with some witty dialogue and a plot revolving around an artist’s struggle to conform to commercial interests or fight for the better song — the “right” song in the words of Barrymore’s character.

Hugh Grant’s character leans towards making a living as ’80s pop band has-been. Drew Barrymore’s character gave up on her writing after being maligned in a novel by a former professor, but she retains an ideal of artistic integrity. When it comes to their art, most artists I’ve known personally — those who are painters and sculptors — hold dear this ideal. They shouldn’t make artwork that other people like; the viewers should like what they make.

When it comes to my own ceramic creations and mixed media sculpture I create whatever it is I like to create. This is what’s natural when I’m in the studio. I don’t think about the fact that I’m affirming the aforementioned ideal.

When it comes to my fervent interest in architecture I freely acknowledge the importance of the client. Architecture is no less of a tactile art, but serves a different and obviously functional purpose that modern visual art does not. Even so, one of my favorite quotes is attributed to the French architect Le Corbusier: “Treat your clients like children.”

While this saying, taken by itself, comes across as more than a little obnoxious, it holds some truth. The architect, and likewise the painter or potter, is (hopefully) good at what he or she does. Every person has knowledge in their respective field worthy of respect. Looking upon one’s clients as children does not necessarily mean you summarily ignore there interests and input. In a healthy family, parents will love their children and respect their opinions — even if the opinions are discarded in the end. The loving parent wants the best for their child.

I’ve no idea where these two examples, my interest in sculpture and my interest in architecture, come together in the realm of an artistic ideal. Perhaps they don’t. A painting is a much more static object than a building, though no less important in an artistic sense. Part of why I’m so drawn to architecture is the need to engage so many different disciplines — I’ve said this before on this blog — in order to do it well. People must interact with a building, even if it’s in a completely utilitarian and unobservant manner. A sculpture or painting is, frankly, much easier to ignore.

I need to think on this a little more.

So here I am snacking on a box of Wheat Thins:

Why on earth does a cracker have corn syrup in it? I ate from the same box yesterday — in fact it was my lunch — without noticing. I must have been hungier yesterday. Today I noticed how ridiculously sweet these crackers are. It’s not a cookie, it’s a cracker. Reading the ingredients, I discovered that a tomato basil flavored cracker (both savory flavory) contains both “sugar” and “high fructose corn syrup,” among a bunch of other big, scientific, un-food sounding words.

I stopped eating the crackers. Yes, I’m trying to avoid eating foods with corn syrup because it is bad for you. But the reason I stopped eating these crackers is because the sweetness ruined the taste. I’ve also stopped eating ice creams containing corn syrup. The syrup makes the dessert sticky and less like a good home-made ice cream.

Some sweetness isn’t always a bad thing in savory dishes. A staple in my house is curry; we use coconut milk as a base which adds a nice sweetness and flavor, without corn syrup. But corn syrup in crackers is plain dumb.

I recently renewed my cell phone contract in order to get all of the rebates for my wife’s new phone; her old one has given up the ghost.

I also purchased a new phone to take advantage of the myriad of rebates, not wanting to be forced in to paying the ridiculous cost of a new cell phone were my own scratched up model to die in the next two years. While I joked about waiting for the iPhone’s release this summer, my strategy in choosing a cell phone was really very simple: Pick the phone with the largest buttons.

Indeed, I did choose the phone with the largest buttons from among the 12 or so rebated options at our small, local Cingular store. The Samsung Sync boasts a very thin profile and wonderfully large screen for a clamshell, and also bears the largest buttons I’ve seen on any recent cell phone.

My fingers aren’t fat, but they certainly aren’t as dainty as my wife’s. How do other guys do it, use the miniscule keypads provided with so many phones? I made do with my somewhat chunky old Sony, however the Samsung functions much more easily.

I have a feeling my priorities are very different than most people’s when it comes to things like this. Sure, I’m kind of excited about the half decent camera and Bluetooth capability the Samsung comes with, but in the end it all came down to the size of the buttons on the keypad.

I’ve had this sitting on my desk for months now: “Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School.” I’m finally getting around to sharing it. I saw it first at the Design Observer. Some good information here, especially for all of you grinding your way through classes (Spring Break is almost here!).

All of them are good, but numbers 2 and 4 I find particularly pithy.

The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School
by Michael McDonough

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
Talent is important in any profession, but it is no guarantee of success. Hard work and luck are equally important. Hard work means self-discipline and sacrifice. Luck means, among other things, access to power, whether it is social contacts or money or timing. In fact, if you are not very talented, you can still succeed by emphasizing the other two. If you think I am wrong, just look around.

2. 95 percent of any creative profession is s**t work.
Only 5 percent is actually, in some simplistic way, fun. In school that is what you focus on; it is 100 percent fun. Tick-tock. In real life, most of the time there is paper work, drafting boring stuff, fact-checking, negotiating, selling, collecting money, paying taxes, and so forth. If you don’t learn to love the boring, aggravating, and stupid parts of your profession and perform them with diligence and care, you will never succeed.

3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
You hear a lot about details, from “Don’t sweat the details” to “God is in the details.” Both are true, but with a very important explanation: hierarchy. You must decide what is important, and then attend to it first and foremost. Everything is important, yes. But not everything is equally important. A very successful real estate person taught me this. He told me, “Watch King Rat. You’ll get it.”

4. Don’t over-think a problem.
One time when I was in graduate school, the late, great Steven Izenour said to me, after only a week or so into a ten-week problem, “OK, you solved it. Now draw it up.” Every other critic I ever had always tried to complicate and prolong a problem when, in fact, it had already been solved. Designers are obsessive by nature. This was a revelation. Sometimes you just hit it. The thing is done. Move on.

5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
In design this means “draw what you know.” Start by putting down what you already know and already understand. If you are designing a chair, for example, you know that humans are of predictable height. The seat height, the angle of repose, and the loading requirements can at least be approximated. So draw them. Most students panic when faced with something they do not know and cannot control. Forget about it. Begin at the beginning. Then work on each unknown, solving and removing them one at a time. It is the most important rule of design. In Zen it is expressed as “Be where you are.” It works.

6. Don’t forget your goal.
Definition of a fanatic: Someone who redoubles his effort after forgetting his goal. Students and young designers often approach a problem with insight and brilliance, and subsequently let it slip away in confusion, fear and wasted effort. They forget their goals, and make up new ones as they go along. Original thought is a kind of gift from the gods. Artists know this. “Hold the moment,” they say. “Honor it.” Get your idea down on a slip of paper and tape it up in front of you.

7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
Overconfidence is as bad as no confidence. Be humble in approaching problems. Realize and accept your ignorance, then work diligently to educate yourself out of it. Ask questions. Power – the power to create things and impose them on the world – is a privilege. Do not abuse it, do not underestimate its difficulty, or it will come around and bite you on the ass. The great Karmic wheel, however slowly, turns.

8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
The world is not set up to facilitate the best any more than it is set up to facilitate the worst. It doesn’t depend on brilliance or innovation because if it did, the system would be unpredictable. It requires averages and predictables. So, good deeds and brilliant ideas go against the grain of the social contract almost by definition. They will be challenged and will require enormous effort to succeed. Most fail. Expect to work hard, expect to fail a few times, and expect to be rejected. Our work is like martial arts or military strategy: Never underestimate your opponent. If you believe in excellence, your opponent will pretty much be everything.

9. It all comes down to output.
No matter how cool your computer rendering is, no matter how brilliant your essay is, no matter how fabulous your whatever is, if you can’t output it, distribute it, and make it known, it basically doesn’t exist. Orient yourself to output. Schedule output. Output, output, output. Show Me The Output.

10. The rest of the world counts.
If you hope to accomplish anything, you will inevitably need all of the people you hated in high school. I once attended a very prestigious design school where the idea was “If you are here, you are so important, the rest of the world doesn’t count.” Not a single person from that school that I know of has ever been really successful outside of school. In fact, most are the kind of mid-level management drones and hacks they so despised as students. A suit does not make you a genius. No matter how good your design is, somebody has to construct or manufacture it. Somebody has to insure it. Somebody has to buy it. Respect those people. You need them. Big time.