The Visible Landscape Workshop demo defines an information landscape as a “space that allows you to peruse information by navigating in and out”. Here, the conventional mental model of reading as linear processing is challenged, creating a dynamic interface of type. Similarly to Christopher Alexander’s patterns, wherein public areas are at the forefront of a…
The magic of turning 2D to 3D
We all know that the experience of watching the video Information Landscapes is on a 2D Screen, but we have the feeling that we are moving around through the video. I definitely have the feeling that I am in a building filled with content. Think about that! Before getting into the room, the audience is…
From 2D to 3D
Muriel Cooper and her team built the Visual Language Workshop as a typographic landscape that gathered information to get organized in a virtual reality map. In the “identifiable neighborhood” pattern, Alexander suggested that “people need an identifiable spatial unit to belong to.” I think it’s also true in keeping the same identifiable qualities of 2D…
John Maeda: Intersection of Art and Technology
John Maeda (born 1966), is an executive, designer, and technologist, whose work exemplifies the intersection between business, design, and technology. His education began at MIT, where he studied Computer Science, and later received his Ph.D. in design at Tsukuba University’s Institute of Art and Design (Willis 2010). His artwork ranges from explorations in technology producing…
The Visible Language Workshop & Alexander’s Patterns
In the Information Landscapes – from a demo reel from The Visible Language Workshop, I mentioned that all information, diagrams, and texts are displayed outside. But they are divided into several parts and classified based on their attributes, just like what Alexander mentioned in the Small Work Groups: “When more than a half dozen people…
Arata Isozaki
Isozaki is a Japanese postmodernist architect, urban designer, and theorist. He is known as a thinker in the Japanese architecture area. Isozaki was born in Oita on the island of Kyushu. At the age of 14, he witnessed the tragedy of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing. After the defeat, Japan was short of sources, and…
Pattern languages in Modern Design
Work community to slack According to #41 Work Community from Christopher Alexander’s patterns, Alexander proposed a theory that workspaces function as communities. He stated five relationships about these work communities which help form activity nodes and still can be seen in modern technology platforms. For the five relationships he mentioned, It reminds me of some…
Xia Peisu
Xia Peisu was born in Jiangjin City, Sichuan Province in 1923. Electronic computer expert, one of the founders of Chinese computer industry. In April 1960, China’s first homegrown electronic digital general purpose computer, the Model 107, went live. Xia Peisu, the machine’s engineer and designer, had just made history. Xia is known as the “The…
Ruth Kedar – a Designer of Google Logo
The playful and simple logo design of one the most profound company is Ruth Kedar. Ruth is an ideator, a hands-on designer, art director, creative director, mentor and speaker whose work has been showcased and recognized both in the United States and abroad. [1] Education Ruth Kedar holds a bachelor degree in Architecture and Town Planning…
Online Collaboration Pattern
Work Community to Teamwork In the Work Community, Christopher Alexander mentions the different jobs can be placed in one workplace community. In teamwork, as the community is transferred from the physical environment, there are no boundaries for staff who play different roles and jobs. Engineers, project managers, and designers can work together. Also, in Teamwork,…
Patterns & Spaces
Christopher Alexander had come up with many pattern designs for communities and public spaces. The one design that really stood out to me was his work community design. Christopher thinks that if people are spending as much time living in the workspace as they are living in their homes, then the workspace should be treated…
Healthy Workplace Practices
Christopher Alexander’s Patterns from A Pattern Language went over many cases and ideas he has about community and learning opportunities. In March of 2020, the world was struck with Covid19 which led to new forms of communication being created in need of a solution to talk to one another. We are forced to use apps…
Architecting Space to Digital Workplace
Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language inspired me to view architectural design in a completely different way. Before, I have never considered a workplace or a neighborhood that can be such a critical space for connecting people and improving their wellbeing. I always assumed that the architect’s job is to design and build appealing and functional buildings. Therefore,…
Bonus Writing – Space and Architect
Dimension It is surprising that information landscape had already depicted AR experience. The space that was able to move around, while maintain the reality like of the space and texts. What they get right was the move from 2D to 3D space, where user can move around to explore and pull out data. The legibility…
Interaction Spaces Within the Internet
Patterns from a Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander talks about the interactions between people in different spaces and architecture. One of the chapters, Work Community, closely talks about communities or gathering spaces in the workplace. Alexander talks about how a workplace should have clusters of workplaces, where each cluster would have its own public space,…
Christopher Alexander patterns – similarities and differences
Work Community to Slack First of all, tech companies tend to be decentralized, which makes it easier to communicate, connect and work within team. Christopher Community of 7000 pointed out the similar pattern was decentralize and close proximity of the work space. The visible location – by being visible makes it easier to reach out…
Relevance of Architecting spaces and interactive design
Christopher Alexander’s architectural thoughts about working communities and interaction design, which seem to be unrelated majors, are actually closely related. Christopher Alexander’s concept of working community is in accordance with slack’s design. Alexander wrote in # 82 Office Connection, “Trips need to be short enough so they are not felt a nuisance.” In Slack, we…
Demarcation of Work and Life
In Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, he outlines various concepts in architecture that may be replicated to fit various contexts dependent on the inhabitants needs and behaviors. In more ways than one, these architectural patterns have persisted to the design of software. Rather than inhabiting spaces physically, digital users’ physical actions are responded to with…
Alexander’s Design Patterns
Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language described a practical architectural system in a form that a theoretical mathematician or computer scientist might call a generative grammar. It provides 253 patterns describing towns, neighborhoods, houses, gardens, rooms, and western structures. In Slack, there are large groups that contain all the IxD students and professors, also there are…
Visible language in space and architecture
The demo from the Visible Language Workshop reminds me of “Method of loci”. The method of loci (loci being Latin for “places”) is a strategy of memory enhancement that uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. People imagine putting all the information in a palace. And to classify,…
