4D Design

Today we dive into the world of how we build and why. And why are we all getting so sick? It's time to look at our building envelope the same way we look at food labels - we are being poisoned while we work and sleep. This is a re-presentation of a talk given at CIRSx in Phoenix / Tempe in June 2025. Original Slides Here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j7zhgh0q4ctkkwormt3mf/CIRSX_Magis.pdf?rlkey=kfdoki5xbu8gga5g8gyjwjaok&dl=0

EPISODE 25 - ORNAMENT Ornament has always had an important meta function within the human psyche. It has been "outlawed" for the past 100 years. RESOURCE LINKS https://www.gadarchitecture.com/en/ornament-in-architecture https://www.artforum.com/features/louis-sullivans-ornament-209337/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354067x13515937?journalCode=capa https://medium.com/the-thinking-of-design/ornament-as-an-abstraction-of-society-853bb29cdf08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmydPmwrKA https://dreamswork.co.uk/portfolio/how-ornament-is-functional/ https://designmanifestos.org/adolf-loos-ornament-and-crime/ AK links: Four D Design - Organic Architecture, Geometry of Nature www.fourddesign.com Star Tile - Multidimensional Ceramics www.star-tile.com Star Tile Studio - Joshua Tree, CA https://g.co/kgs/DUMmCLh Contact: ak@fourddesign.com WHY DO WE USE ORNAMENT? - SIGNIFIER Social signaling - and this changes over time! Example tattoos - British nobility 1900-1920 Historically it was the demarcation of class and status - governments had rules about what colors and types of clothing could be worn, so that people could never be socially mobile- Ornament on clothing has always been important for the military and in battle, people wore family crests / telling others who they were The same went for houses - all ornament had meaning that could be learned (this is western) Heraldry WHY DO WE USE ORNAMENT? - SOCIAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL Belonging is so important that people will go into debt to buy clothing that lets them fit into a social group, or a car, or jewelry etc - people are wildly craving belonging, and ornament is a way to show your tribe. OTHER REASONS: Repetition causes peace - relaxation of the nervous system By creating the ornament, the maker can embody the energy of the thing that might be feared Establish historic continuity - memory, legacy. Spiritual Side of Ornament - Adornment, Defense, Totems, Enhancing Consciousness. META FUNCTION, embodied practice Adorning parts of us that are vulnerable - defensive and actively stating who we are / calling in our guides. HISTORY OF ORNAMENT Industrial Revolution - 1851 - now possible to make cheap ornament / mass production Attempt at standardizing the language - Owen Jones "Grammar of Ornament" - huge interest in revival of styles / what we would now call Cultural Appropriation.. started with Archaeology around 1750, people discovering ruins, Marie Antoinette wearing toile / chinoiserie In victorian era, people started ascribing a moral judgment to the ornament - Augustis Pugin: ornament should be flat if the floor is flat, not 3d etc.. can't be inappropriate. He was a CATHOLIC in England - super religious, championed gothic revival because it was faith-based John Ruskin - wrote on architecture but also on geology, botany, ornithology etc - polymath Said that the moral condition of a society could be determined by the ornament - ornament was being incorrectly applied- Shows what is leading up to the birth of modernism, nothing happens in a vacuum. What Happened - Loos, Modernism and the 1920s As both Sullivan and Lévi-Strauss indicate, ornament (as well as other factors) becomes a language of social structures, social experience and even social contradictions. It signifies the status and position of the building, which is itself a representation of the importance of its "owners" and users. Here the manipulation of the image, or in architecture the adding of ornamental beauty to a structure, may increase its relative desirability and value. For buildings are models of ourselves and our society, communicating through form and organizational system the character of that society. BUILDINGS REFLECT THE VALUES AND VALUE OF THE OWNER. MODERNISM - WHAT HAPPENED? Adolf Loos Ornament and Crime The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects", Loos proclaimed, thus linking the optimistic sense of the linear and upward progress of cultures with the contemporary vogue for applying evolution to cultural contexts.[2] "The child is amoral. To us the Papuan is also amoral. The Papuan slaughters his enemies and devours them. He is no criminal. If, however, the modern man slaughters and devours somebody, he is a criminal or a degenerate. The Papuan tattoos his skin, his boat, his oar, in short, everything that is within his reach. He is no criminal. The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons where eighty percent of the inmates bear tattoos. Those who are tattooed but are not imprisoned are latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. if a tattooed person dies at liberty, it is only that he died a few years before he committed a murder." Where do we go from here - how do we start? (HUMANS ALWAYS START OVER WITH FORMS FROM NATURE) Architectural adornment or ornament, like cooking—that most basic transformation of nature—is a way of being in and representing the world simultaneously, a world that in Sullivan's words "procreates man's own personality, that fits him, that he might feel at home with himself," a world of natural objects transformed by the hand of man. This is why Sullivan defined the architect's task in a manner that reveals his belief in man's transforming power: the architect as the agent who brings nature into community. James Trilling - The Language of Ornament Harvard-trained art historian, former Textile Museum associate curator, and independent scholar James Trilling expands here on many of the highly original themes that appeared in his The Language of Ornament (2001). He offers intriguing new views of the modernist movement in art and architecture, its puritanical hostility to ornament, and its manifold relationships to the history of technology, science, and industry in the phenomenon known as modernization. Trilling is a passionate advocate of ornament, and he makes a fervent plea for its revival, largely on the grounds that it gives pleasure and "makes people happy" (p. 227). Ranging widely across cultures, time periods, disciplines, and topics, Ornament: A Modern Perspective is a densely layered book of formidable learning, imagination, and complexity. The argument is deceptively simple and difficult to summarize; as Trilling writes of Comte (p. 177), "it is rarely possible to give the bare bones of a utopian vision without making it sound naive." Ornament for Trilling is a specific, intricate concept. He spends part 1 of his two-part book explicating this concept, by which he means the use of motifs and patterns by skilled artists/craftsmen, "the art we add to art" (p. xiii), in the creation of one-of-a-kind objects laden with cultural meaning and symbol, esteemed as art by collectors, connoisseurs, and knowledgeable art historians. In part 2 Trilling traces the links between modernism and the rejection of ornament. Though the focus is on the period since the pivotal Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851, his book includes an impressive intellectual history [End Page 418] of the many ways in which ornament was repudiated as idolatry and artifice in numerous societies long before modernism. But after the triumph of mechanization and the ascendancy of efficiency, materialism, and positivism, the leading theorists of modernism thoroughly devalued and assaulted ornament. The most famous instance was Viennese architect and critic Adolf Loos's 1908 essay that seemingly equated ornament with crime. Modernism's visionaries instead exalted functionalism and simplicity in architecture and design. They saw ornament as wasteful, inefficient, and, after the Industrial Revolution, as the product of dehumanized, debased workers far removed from the ideal of the skilled artisan/craftsman of the prefactory era. Modernism's subsequent long reign among intellectual and cultural elites (despite the thin, pale revolt of the postmodern movement), Trilling argues, has now all but blinded us to ornament, erased it from our collective memory and from art. Early modernist theorists sought to jettison the wealth of inherited patterns and motifs rather than welcoming their incorporation and reworking, as traditional crafts had done. (Ironically, one of Trilling's most original arguments is that modernism in fact had its own ornamental style, employing materials that had pattern and texture and creating art rooted in indeterminacy, "labile, ambiguous, unpredictable" [p. 217].) Trilling's mission is to restore understanding and appreciation of the rich, lost world of artisanal ornament. His book addresses artists, architects, designers, their clients and collectors, art historians—tastemakers and all who care about taste.

An assortment of resources / stories about Paint. https://www.earthdate.org/episodes/the-colorful-history-of-paint History of Pigments - they all have a specific time period Can look at the history of art through pigments Basically people always paint if they can! https://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html#google_vignette Things not always good for you! (or even will kill you or destroy your internal organs: Lead White https://zotapro.com/blog/lead-paint-history/ https://www.paint.org/about/industry/history/ Pigments are Organic or Inorganic - and now we have Synthetics. https://burnaway.org/magazine/a-history-of-paint-part-one/ https://www.greenbuildermedia.com/blog/a-deep-dive-into-non-toxic-paints-and-vocs https://www.roepaint.com/everything-need-know-alkyd-paint/ https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/is-paint-bad-for-the-environment https://www.earthpigments.com/natural-earth-ocher-pigments/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_ZC2BhAQEiwAXSgClnbwPlFU_PivAwZXUEDpoKvJxwIMjW9w6zgntUXe2LKt-iLlpmfBNxoCgsQQAvD_BwE AK links: Four D Design - Holistic Design www.fourddesign.com Star Tile - Multidimensional Ceramics www.star-tile.com Star Tile Studio - Joshua Tree, CA https://g.co/kgs/DUMmCLh Email Me: ak@fourddesign.com

Do you ever treat rooms in your house differently because you know that guests will be coming over? What do you change about the rooms and why? Today's talk is an exploration of the psychology (and physical reality check!) behind designing spaces in our own home for Guests, either real / specific or imagined. AK links: Four D Design - Holistic Design www.fourddesign.com Star Tile - Multidimensional Ceramics www.star-tile.com Star Tile Studio - Joshua Tree, CA https://g.co/kgs/DUMmCLh Email Me: ak@fourddesign.com

Today's episode is an introduction to minimalism and the concept of styles being influenced by everything that came before it - that design can be a reaction to the previous generation, and minimalism can be seen as a response to excess consumption or decoration. We'll look at the origins of Minimalism, its current place in popular culture, and see it through different lenses. Below are a few links / additional resources. Influences from Japanese tradition[edit] See also: Japanese architecture The idea of simplicity appears in many cultures, especially the Japanese traditional culture of Zen Buddhist philosophy. Japanese manipulate the Zen culture into aesthetic and design elements for their buildings.[30] This idea of architecture has influenced Western society, especially in America since the mid 18th century.[31] Moreover, it inspired the minimalist architecture in the 19th century.[24] Zen concepts of simplicity transmit the ideas of freedom and essence of living.[24] Simplicity is not only aesthetic value, it has a moral perception that looks into the nature of truth and reveals the inner qualities and essence of materials and objects.[32] For example, the sand garden in Ryōan-ji temple demonstrates the concepts of simplicity and the essentiality from the considered setting of a few stones and a huge empty space.[33] Proposed as a tool for Freedom: https://www.theminimalists.com/minimalism/ https://www.breakthetwitch.com/minimalism/ New Yorker article - link below https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/03/the-pitfalls-and-the-potential-of-the-new-minimalism IS IT A PHASE THAT WE ALL SHOULD PASS THROUGH? True minimalism, Chayka insists, is "not about consuming the right things or throwing out the wrong; it's about challenging your deepest beliefs in an attempt to engage with things as they are, to not shy away from reality or its lack of answers." I suspect that some recent converts to minimalism have already come to this conclusion. Underneath the vision of "less" as an optimized life style lies the path to something stranger and more profound: a mode of living that strips away protective barriers and heightens the miracle of human presence, and the urgency, today, of what that miracle entails.

Both the hexagon and the Merkaba symbolize the number 6. It is the first perfect number, meaning that 6 is both the sum and product of its factors: 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 1 X 2 X 3 = 6 https://www.britannica.com/science/perfect-number The number 6 is the symbol of the Law of Correspondence, i.e. as above so below. In other words, it is the equilibrium between the microcosm and the macrocosm which mirror each other. It also represents the concept of fractals which are repetitive patterns that can be scaled to any size. In the Merkaba, the descending tetrahedron represents Spirit or the divine feminine principle, while the ascending tetrahedron represents matter and the divine masculine principle. It symbolizes the embodiment of the Divine (your light body, your soul) into the organic form. In this state, creation naturally occurs and it becomes easier to connect with higher frequency beings and Source. https://www.flowerofsound.com/the-hidden-meaning-behind-the-hexagon https://www.aurahealth.io/blog/spiritual-meaning-of-a-hexagon https://www.soul-flower.com/blog/hexagrams-meaning-sacred-geometry HUICHOL art - the truth of space time https://www.museumofbeadwork.org/blogs/news/teaching-tuesday-huichol-beadwork

Today's episode looks at the history of the "Architect" in the modern sense and the decisions made along the way that created a divide between the people who use buildings and the people who design them. Architects are notorious for having their own language, with some words that are necessary and some that are not. This episode takes the entire issue apart piece by piece, and ultimately proposes a way forward. Some further reading (very entertaining!) https://slate.com/culture/2011/02/architecture-speak-an-essay-on-the-ridiculous-way-architects-talk.html Great interview / rant against Archispeak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSbYH8AC-Yo https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/seven-words-architects-should-never-use-william-schmalz-faia-csi- About Architects being terrible https://archinect.com/forum/thread/150052085/why-are-there-so-many-rude-architects https://blog.miragestudio7.com/dear-architects-i-am-sick-of-your-shit/1307/

EVERYONE can learn design thinking. I know this as a fact, being a professor of design - the steps are simple and it just takes an interest in the field and a willingness to learn. Classes start soon at 4D Design: In-person workshops in the Joshua Tree area and virtual classes coming soon! www.fourddesign.com/classes

General Info: (Everyone has Cognitive Biases!) https://www.scribbr.com/research-bias/cognitive-bias/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases LISTS OF COGNITIVE BIASES + LOGICAL FALLACIES: Cognitive Bias Codex https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_%28jm3%29.jpg https://www.designhacks.co/ Critical Thinking Cards https://thethinkingshop.org/products/critical-thinking-cards-deck

The big secret: you don't need to know how to draw to enter the design world! Today I'm telling personal stories of not knowing how to draw at all, having no art background, and how I finally found my footing and skills in the world of Architecture. I also explain what is important in design drawings, and what different types of drawings exist in the world. Drawing is a truly a skill that can be learned, and there are countless online resources. Here are a few of the many platforms for creating your own floor plans, from free services to paid subscriptions. https://www.edrawsoft.com/ad/floor-plan-maker-edrawmax.html These have 3d imaging (for those of you who think better in 3d) https://floorplanner.com/ https://www.livehome3d.com/ Note: I have not used these platforms so this is not an endorsement, just a reporting of things I found online. What I use for floor plans: Autodesk Revit 2024 (BIM Modeling) and Chaos Enscape for 3d Rendering. Complex Geometries: Rhinoceros

Symmetry is one of the most common, primal and powerful ordering systems available to us in the world of Design. My intention is to take you through the basic concepts that you would be taught in architecture school, minus the late nights, fluorescent lighting and bad coffee! It all has its origins in Biology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_in_biology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateria Bilateral Symmetry in Nature https://biologydictionary.net/bilateral-symmetry/ BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH DESIGN? We recognize symmetry more quickly than any other type of ordering system. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6458647/ which gets into Unconscious Inference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_perception TYPES OF SYMMETRY IN ARCHITECTURE https://www.mi.sanu.ac.rs/vismath/kim/index.html https://insights.jonite.com/the-art-of-symmetry-in-architecture Symmetry and Well-Being (this is a very good article! https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/10/12/249 Symmetry is satisfying - do you look for symmetry in design? https://slate.com/culture/2008/05/why-is-architectural-symmetry-so-satisfying.html We need to be aware of symmetry because it's literally controlling our movements sometimes - have you ever aligned yourself with an axis? Look at camera angles in photos and see the power symmetry has over us. Symmetry IS us.

Here are a bunch of links about the Fibonacci Series - the amount of information online is close to endless. Some of these are quite basic and some are more advanced. Enjoy! What are Fibonacci Numbers? https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/fibonacci-sequence.html How to Visualize This https://math.temple.edu/~reich/Fib/fibo.html How the Phi Ratio works in Nature https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/nature-golden-ratio-fibonacci.html Golden Ratio in Architecture https://westburyjoinery.com/blog/golden-ratio-architecture/ https://illustrarch.com/articles/13472-golden-ratio-in-architecture.html AMAZING INFO ON THE FIBONACCI SERIES https://r-knott.surrey.ac.uk/Fibonacci/fibmaths.html Mathematical Proof - Drawing a Pentagon using the Golden Rectangle https://www.anirdesh.com/math/geometry/pentagon-construction.php https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL9VN8ELH1M WE HARDLY KNOW ANYTHING - References The entire rainbow of radiation observable to the human eye only makes up a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum – about 0.0035 percent. This range of wavelengths is known as visible light. https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/visible-light-eye-opening-research-nnsa And we are 99.99% empty space - basically swirling energy balls that stick together. https://www.sciencealert.com/99-9999999-of-your-body-is-empty-space And 95% of the matter in the universe is currently unobservable. https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/big-questions/what-universe-made