Unusual Angles

A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.

Guillaume Apollinaire 

Spoken like a critic...but the point sticks.

So much architecture is just  awful because it follows a certain set of standards that clash with nature.  More often than naught, function over dominates form.  Sad but true, blah architecture costs less because it requires less skill to build.  

It is when these things deviate from the standard they become eve candy.  Of course deviations must follow some form of reason and return your eye to the standard just as dissonance in music creates just enough conflict to return you to sweet resolve.  And life...well, a life that lacks at least, a little adversity,  a little danger or a little thrill is no life at all.  Without these we would stagnate and not improve.

In nature, what would a forest be if all of the trees stood exactly the same height?  Would mountains be beautiful if they all formed perfect isosceles triangles?   The creation's beauty rests in its anomaly.

As we maneuver through life and through our travels we acquire the finer things as we go.  The finer things stand out from the mundane as they make our surroundings more organic.   They help us reconcile the fact that we need shelter with the fact that  we need the natural world.

When it comes to our living quarters, we need little anomalies to disrupt the monotony because we can't be outdoors every waking moment.

In a nutshell, we live better when our homes reflect nature.  Sometimes we accomplish this through furniture, sometimes we just go with the lines of the attic frame when we convert it to living space, and sometimes we make things out of pure imagination.

J.C. Sutherland