This type of construction to which you refer, and which prevailed over the last decade, was designed to be cheap and fast to build, with parsimonious allocation of living space – the minimum possible to provide the greatest return in a frenzied property market. There was often a disconnect between the architect, property developer/builder, and end user when it comes to defining the style, with little real collaboration between them. Where this did exist, it amounted to not much more than giving the prospective buyer a choice between magnolia or white, or if they wanted to varnish the floorboards!

Most recent apartments and houses use panelled doors, profiled trims, PVC and other bog standard materials, all thrown together with little attention to detail. These houses and apartments always have a traditional/contemporary feel to them because of the layout and choice of structural building materials – which limit the style possibilities for the end user.
The minimalist style is, even in theory, totally at odds with the general attitude to building in Ireland over the last few decades.

As for the “piece (being) intended to sit in contrast with the relative chaos of mass production? That this contrast serves to highlight its simple beauty.”
I think that the comparison will only highlight, rather depressingly, that we are conditioned to surround ourselves with so much mass-produced crap.

Enjoy your Grace Youngeun Lee bin, and I hope it fits in with everything else …

Maybe you could give it a coat of magnolia? (:P

Anthony

I’m about to become a teacher. How can I be a good one?

The best teachers I remember from school had three things in common:

(1) They had high standards. Like three year olds testing their parents, students will test teachers to see if they can get away with low-quality work or bad behavior. They won’t respect the teachers who don’t call them on it.

(2) They liked us. Like dogs, kids can tell very accurately whether or not someone wishes them well. I think a lot of our teachers either never liked kids much, or got burned out and started not to like them. It’s hard to be a good teacher once that happens. I can’t think of one teacher in all the schools I went to who managed to be good despite disliking students.

(3) They were interested in the subject. Most of the public school teachers I had weren’t really interested in what they taught. Enthusiasm is contagious, and so is boredom.

http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html

I guess their marketing campaign can be seen differently by different persons. For me, it put a smile to my face and it felt good to be acknowledged, while for someone else it could look like spam.

I am curious now so I would like to ask another question:

How do you see this type of service design and marketing campaign? Do you consider it spam or would you feel good to be acknowledged?

BUT – also potentially illegal under the data protection laws of Ireland if the original form you completed did not state that your details could be used to contact you for promotional purposes in the future.

Of course, this may have been flagged on the form that you completed and I’m not suggesting that The Science gallery have done anything wrong but it is something that any organization collecting people’s information should be aware of as I have seen 2 cases where a complaint to the Data Protection commissioners has led to organizations needing to delete their contact lists completely.

But I’d love to talk to you about ideas for working with young people sometime.

I am a great believer that innovation processes are for the purpose of helping us achieve our goals more effectively and reducing the cost of a trial and error process. If “standardisation” is a way of communicating best practice and reducing the linguistic fluff and jargon that surrounds innovation then I am supportive.

Watching with Interest
Ed