01
NOSTALGIA
A parallelogram of sunlight shifts across the room, framing an orange cat stretched out in outrageous repose. The light continues to move. It does. Tracking space, the hours, the years. And the room will change, sconces replaced, a plump sofa nudged away from the window. The inevitable assemblage of books and pebbles and dings — an implicit agreement between room presence and human presence. When the light moves, the cat moves with it. When the cat is no longer there, his light remains.
02
CONTRADICTION
Paradoxes in style, personality, reference, and vernaculars make our work — and design at large — richer, weirder, alive. Where else can the fine science of function rub up against the sublime?
03
WILLFUL SELF-EXPRESSION
Michael Graves gives us endorphins. Andrea Branzi makes our brains race. Builders and tinkerers and thinkers who "do, undo, and redo" (Louise Bourgeois, 2000) their work set to no schedule, no trend, no higher power other than the nagging bark of desire. We design with their principles at stake: to hone a point-of-view, to resist what’s lazy, to be what we do.
04
EVOLUTION
Years can take shape as a water stain, a perfectly round, crisp disk that morphs into uneven terrain. It can be a relationship, built over spaghetti and cross-country moves, all while the earth rolls decades around the sun, oblivious, to us coming home. It can be the accumulation of noticing the world too, how the memory of a place lands suddenly, contradicts itself, then scatters. Years is about letting the layers show. To allow our experiences and inclinations to change and enliven our spaces. Each swatch of color and whimsy and disappointment and joy insisting: We are here. We are here.
05
PATIENCE
Patina
Sun tea
Il pranzo della domenica
Moss growth
Ideas
Mopping
A peony can take a week to bloom
Buildings
Forgiveness
Watching the paint dry
Asado en barbacoa
Spiderwebs
06
HA-HA-HA
07
POETRY
A room, like a poem, is an exercise in possibility. Constrained by the economy of the page, it doesn’t presume to know what’s next, but follows inquiry and curiosity as it gradually takes shape. Places this idea in conversation with another. Not as declaration, but as feeling. Not to etch beauty into stone, but to change it. And, in turn, be changed by it.
