Tracey Bashkoff: Have you ever made photographic portraits?

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Of live people? No–I’m not interested in living people at all. [Laughs]

Interesting pictures that Sugimoto took of diorama’s. He mentioned that:

“I made a curious discovery while looking at the exhibition of animal dioramas: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I had found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real. ”

Some podcasts here

The portraits are great as well, especially the way they were created:

“In the sixteenth century Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), Flemish court painter to the British Crown, painted several imposing and regal portraits of Henry VIII. Based on these portraits the highly skilled artisans of Madame Tussauds wax museum re-created an absolutely faithful likeness of the king. Using my own studies of the Renaissance lighting by which the artist might have painted, I remade the royal portrait, substituting photography for painting. If this photograph now appears lifelike to you, perhaps you should reconsider what it means to be alive here and now.”

Yesterday in the Nikkei Weekly there was an article on Japan’s new prime minister Abe and his view towards the future of the growth of the Japanese economy. No doubt about it the economy is growing, however, the population is getting older. This creates a difficult situation for Japan. How to sustain growth when you will not have enough people to do the work?

The answer according to Abe is raising productivity. In the Nikkei article it is mentioned that on a scale of 30 Japan is number 19 in terms of productivity. Banking and construction seem to be doing the worst. Anyone trying to open a bank account in Japan would not dissagree.

Construction is hopelessly unproductive. This morning I was on a construction site since 7:30, at 9:00 the first contractors came. After a lengthy discussion they started in worked until 10:00 and went off for a break for about 30 minutes, and then after some work, it is off to lunch again, in the afternoon another couple of breaks and a whole day is spend on the site (and charged to the client).

Furthermore, the simplest task is being performed by double or triple the number of people actually needed. How many times have I not seen this scene: two “security boys” to direct traffic, two to three “suits” (quite often salesmen) that basically don’t do anything except for watching the work being done, and then a few more to do the actual work. A few “ladder-holders” might be needed as well. I am not kidding, last month at the station in Denenchofu where I live there were, well counted, 7 people busy “changing” the train table. A board of 1×1.5 meters could easily have been changed by one person.

I am not sure yet about Abe politics, but I think he has seen what I see far too often and I am sure that with productivity he is onto something.

(To be continued)

Reputation is extremely important to me. When we are talking to prospective clients, I urge them to speak to my clients of projects that we have finished. Not only so they can hear how we, van der Architects work, but also to understand our process.

Today, I had the pleasure to take this even further a making a presentation together  with the client to an audience at JLL’s Executive Exchange seminar. Not just sales talk, but a real, case study.

Thank you Enomoto-san for this!

I will be presenting a case study at the Executive Exchange on Friday 20th at the Conrad Hotel in Tokyo. This will be the first time that I will make a presentation of a project together with the client.

Contact me for further information.

Today, I had a great lunch with my friend Ryo Nakagawa . He took a book from Cahan as a present for me, and pointed me to the their webiste which shows their offices as well. It is a Flash site so you have to click first on “Company” to see it.

I like what is written at “Work”: “In the corporate environment our clients inhabit, anonymous corridors and windowless confernce rooms are the norm. Yet, very often, what’s going on in this world is some new form of business that may revolutionize the way in which the world lives and works. So how do you communicate this excitement of that to a company’s audience?”

I could not agree more, if as a company you want to express your widget through your widget only? Or should you express this through the attitude of your employees and the space all of this takes place in? Damn YES!

Design is emotion. It talks to our senses, and sometime in its most extreme form it does not make sense any more. When Stendhal went to Italy, he suffered a case of temporary madness or, in his own words:

“I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty … I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations … Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call ‘nerves.’ Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”

This reaction to the overwhelming amount of art, architecture and history is called Stendhal’s syndrome, tourist disease or Jerusalem syndrome.

Gaziella Magherini wrote a book about the Stendhal syndrome, in it she observed that
during the mirroring between the art and the subject a sublime, aesthetic, and uncanny event occurs. The art experience hooks a repressed trauma beneath the conscious sea of the subject rapidly pulling the trauma to the surface. The subject acts much like a distressed fish out of water.

Kevin Roberts of Saatchi and Saatchi wrote a book called Lovemarks which looks at people’s emotional relation with products, or “loyalty beyond reason” as Roberts calls it. We buy products not only out of necessity, but as a way to express ourselves. The clothes we wear, the car we drive, the vodka we drink, are all becoming part of our extended selves. Isn’t it normal that we start to feel emotional when we go shopping, overwhelmed with the variety of products and choices?
Early modern architects and designers tried to remove the emotional aspect from the design of cities, architecture and products. Le Corbusier spoke of the house as a machine for living, and wanted to start from zero, tabula rasa, a purist and fuctionalist design. However, I believe that we leave this all behind us and will see the emotional, humanistic aspect of design becoming dominant. (again)

An interesting article in this month’s HBR on sleep and performance. Professor Dr Charles Czeisler , an expert on the biology of sleep talks about the fundamental biological issue of sleep.

He points out the importance of employees that are well rested as crucial to their performance.

“…our ability to sustain attention and maintain peak cognitive performance has to do with the total amount of sleep you manage to get over several days”.

Lack of sleep over prolonged periods of time not only leads to reduced performace, but is similar to cognitive impairment levels equivalent to drunkness.

“It amazes me that contemporary work and social culture glorifies sleeplessness in a way we once glorified people who could hold their liquor… The analogy to drunkenness is real because, like a drunk, a person who is sleep deprived has no idea how functionally impaired he or she truly is.”

Studies have shown that the 20 minute power nap in the afternoon is really a way to regain power and a booster for productivity.

A recipe for a cool office:

bean bags,
dogs,
Free lunch,
Bikes,
Lunch learn Fridays
Average meeting 8 seconds.

Take a look at these video clips of Skype’s cool offices.

Their chair problem is quite funny.

Le Tigre: Deceptacon (DFA Remix)
The Rapture: Sister saviour (DFA Remix)
Soulwax: e talking
Cassandra Complex: Moscow Idaho
Tuxedomoon: No tears
Snowy red: Don’t lose control
Two Lone Swordsman: Faux
Rockers hifi: Going under
That Petrol Emotion: Big Decision (Extended version)
Shriekback: Lined up

I stumbled upon this in Marunouchi today. An interesting idea that when taken further than the few patches on the walls of this construction site, could yield a very interesting office tower indeed…