Problems are typically richer than our preconceived notions about how to solve them. We can learn this the hard way, by failing and then failing again but failing better. But there are often shortcuts to be found if you are willing to spend more time mapping the landscape.

For apprentices to learn effectively, educators must, in a sense, let go of control. Instead of controlling the transfer of knowledge through lectures and curricula, they need to focus on ensuring apprentices have meaningful access to the environment, handing out appropriate tasks – and trusting the learner to extract knowledge out of what is going... See more

. The Rotumans did not see children as people who needed to be brought up - they did not need to be helped along by adults - but were more akin to some kind of dogs. They sniffed out what was useful and valued in the culture, and then they devoured it.

Today’s terror of short-termism — which, with fatal consequences, we mistake for freedom — destroys the practices that require time.

But when architecture falls out of sync with the conditions we live in, home begins to feel more and more precarious. The reason we dislike contemporary architecture is because it fails to achieve this essential purpose, to, as the architect Antonio Sant’Elia put it, “freely and audaciously harmonize man with his environment”.

Like reality TV and video art installations, McMansions are inherently postmodern. Postmodernism, to paraphrase the philosopher Frederic Jameson in an essay on the subject, involves the commodification of culture, art, and, ultimately, of one’s lifestyle. Postmodernism removes context from subjects, weakens or eliminates historicity, and effaces th... See more

Architecture is not an economic commodity that can be corrected by market forces, nor an engineering problem that can be honed towards an optimal solution. Architecture is a spiritual ethic, one that both shapes and is shaped by the ambient zeitgeist of the society it stands in.

Except, in the process of regurgitation, writing does more than just reproduce experiences—it amplifies them. When we write, we apply our own seasoning, enhancing their flavor profiles and textures through the lens of whatever mood or mindset we are in the second time around.

Beyond a muscle, writing also acts as a membrane —something that straddles our inner and outer worlds.