Tag: design

Demolition

~ poolsidelaureate ~ Leave a comment

One thing the residents of Barcelona will tell you is that the city is constantly “en obras.”  Which means that wherever you are, turn a corner and there will be some kind of construction work going on. Things age, materials decay, and sometimes, property simply changes hands and new owners have a different idea. 

Demolition

They're tearing down the castle
that stood across the street.
Each morning when I leave the house,
such rubble at my feet!


A gargoyle's head, a family crest,...
the rotten stone must fall.
It seems that what we really need
is another shopping mall.

Someone sold the title
and a heritage was lost.
The change will bring a profit,
but it can't outweigh the cost.

Starry night

~ poolsidelaureate ~ Leave a comment

On a trip this summer, I had the chance to admire a collection of quilts. The technique of quilting actually requires a lot of pre-planning, design and calculation – very rational stuff. But the visual result can be wild and dizzying, as the colors play off each other and invariably the whole is somehow greater than its parts, something that the quilter must see before the quilt exists. Back home, I began a series of quilt designs on my iPad, and walking to work one morning, the first two lines of this poem came to me.

vincent quilt_shape

Starry, starry night

We love the works of madmen
for saying what we don’t dare:
that Life’s a swollen yellow room,
with a pair of crooked chairs,
a narrow bed where restless dreams
have led our hearts astray.

How brave! The man who looked outside
before the break of day
and saw the quilted sky of stars
turned into ferris wheels!
He gave such beauty through his pain.
The art of madmen heals.

Design

~ poolsidelaureate ~ 1 Comment

The other day, as I was photographing cyclists riding up and down Rambla Catalunya with total indifference to the  “bicycles forbidden” signs, I saw that I had captured something much more interesting….. Design is everywhere.