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By Mark Lundegren

I’d like to introduce you to an alternative building technology of sorts, one called the Y-beam.

Y-beams are fairly easy to use, require no heavy lifting or specialized machinery, and almost always prove unexpectedly powerful when employed in building and design. In practice, Y-beams can be used by anyone and in any type of construction. Indeed, Y-beams even may be the most transformative, cost-effective, and simplifying design and construction technology ever created!

Modern Building Created Without Adequate Y-Beam Use?

Now, you’ve probably heard of an I-beam already, which of course rhymes with Y-beam. But there the similarities definitely end. While I-beams are structural elements that have the shape of the letter “I” in cross-section, by contrast Y-beams have no particular shape. Similarly, while I-beams are usually rigid and straight, Y-beams are completely flexible and can be bent or molded to any design imaginable.

As a practical matter, Y-beams can be used during any phase or aspect of construction. But they are best employed early in the building process. By this, I mean at least beginning with site and foundation preparation, and ideally well before this – in the design and site selection process. On the other hand, perhaps the least desirable use of Y-beams is after project completion, even as this may be their most common use. That said, Y-beams can be successfully used in retrofitting or redesigning existing projects that were envisioned or built without them, or without enough of them.

Continue reading “Modern Building With Y-Beams”

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By Mark Lundegren

Whether we are designers, building owners, or renting space, we all have a waiting, frequently overlooked, and remarkably flexible way to stretch our construction and furnishing budgets.

This nearly universal opportunity – literally to create money and materials from thin air – is waiting in front of all of our eyes. Or rather, it is waiting behind our eyes, in the way we use our eyes to look at the world.

The creativity-requiring but resource-leveraging design tool we have in mind is called Wabi-Sabi, which is a Japanese phrase roughly meaning naturally-aged. The term was coined to embody a design tradition that emerged from and is often favored by Japanese Zen culture, reflecting and embodying its special emphasis on attentive life. Importantly, however, this part aesthetic and part philosophical sensibility can be seen as a re-naturalized design or artistic outlook that has re-occurred in various forms across many human cultures and settings.

Naturally Elegant Wabi-Sabi Tea-Cup

If you are not familiar with Wabi-Sabi, the elegant but decidedly irregular tea-cup above will give you an immediate feel for and introduction to this old and important artistic tradition. It clearly highlights the Wabi-Sabi school’s special emphasis on seeing beauty in things that are natural and aged.

Over time, Wabi-Sabi art and design has become highly elaborated and, with this elaboration, sometimes quite expensive. But this needn’t be the case. In reality, beautiful and disheveled – or beautifully disheveled – and useful Wabi-Sabi objects are usually all around us, are often free or nearly free, and generally can be fashioned with just a bit of curiosity and creativity. All it really takes is an acquired and re-naturalized taste or artistic sense – one that sees natural objects and natural aging as beautiful.

Continue reading “Wabi-Sabi: Beauty On A Budget”

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By Mark Lundegren

There has been a long trend toward larger homes and more things to put in them, and therefore toward larger closets and storage spaces too.

In many upscale dwellings in the developed world, closets now can be enormous and even rooms in themselves. The use of full basements is common as well, creating the potential to match the entire footprint of a home with stored possessions.

But a new and growing counter-trend is gaining strength, questioning the wisdom and even need of this inherited design and lifestyle trajectory. It asks us to consider the optimal size of our homes, and equally the amount of storage space and storable things in our lives.

The Ethos Of Conscious Vs. Conspicuous Consumption In Action

Central to new thinking about the ideal amount of personal space and storables in our lives is the idea that we will naturally fill the space we have…whether it is intended for daily living or housing possessions that do not fit within the regular scope of our day-to-day lives. This space-filling can be the product of the normal goals and inertia of materialist living, or simply from feeling unsettled with and motivated to act on the presence of significant unused or unclaimed space around us.

Though there is limited research of these potentially life-altering domestic phenomena, anecdotal evidence from portraits of large home life today (see here for an example) suggests that we tend to make a good and happy use of a set maximum amount of space and possessions per person. If we strive or are driven to obtain more things and/or more space, we can regressively and ironically overshoot this natural maximum and reduce total quality of life via our added efforts, however well-intentioned they may be.

Continue reading “On Storage, Space & Stuff”

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By Mark Lundegren

One of the biggest contributors to successful buildings is the design and placement of windows, including glazed doors and skylights.

While this is measurably and undoubtedly true, the topic of windows is often only a secondary consideration to architects, builders, and building owners…mistakenly taken up after, rather than concurrently with, the planning of walls, roofs, and their structural underpinnings.

We’d like to spend a few minutes discussing some window essentials, to inspire and help you to make superior design and building choices in this crucial area.

Window Elegance Without Efficiency & Efficiency Without Elegance

The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a leader in the integrated use of windows in modern building design. Influenced by traditional Japanese design practices, as his Rosenbaum House above suggests, Wright recommended that window design and placement be part of our overall thinking about a building’s shape and fabric, and the ambient space that floors, walls, and ceilings naturally combine to create.

Wright in particular abhorred design thinking that led to the conceptual cutting of holes in preordained and immovable walls for windows and doors. Instead, he encouraged seeing these building elements in a more holistic way, where permeable and solid materials flowed harmoniously from one to another in designed patterns, each element possessing an intrinsic beauty while contributing to a larger design scheme.

Continue reading “Windows On Our World”