Steyn Viljoen
@steyn
Designer at CustomerOS. Gardener. Dad. Write at Viljoen Space about product, gardening and parenthood.
Steyn Viljoen
viljoen.space
We’re more interested in beauty as an emergent property. We want new ways of understanding beauty, and we’re increasingly rooting them in our ethics. We want to encourage the beauty found in the aliveness, or the kindness, or the gentleness of what we do as landscape makers. How things look, in this view, is slightly less important.
Brian Sholis • The Frontier Interview—Terremoto
People who are good at solving poorly defined problems don't get the same kind of kudos. They don’t get any special titles or clubs. There is no test they can take that will spit out a big, honking number that will make everybody respect them.
Adam Mastroianni • Why Aren't Smart People Happier?
An unkink hose feels like…
The freedom to know your version of enough. Take a pause, any kind of pause at any kind of time and not beat yourself up for it.
Light speed clarity.
The freedom to not set huge radical business goals just cos everyone else is, cos it's just not your time to over-hustle.
Spaciousness.
The freedom to politely decline the
... See moreIf you make lists of lofty goals, it can be easy to leave them to accumulate, as happens sometimes, into a mountain of to-do ’s and notes and half-forgotten plans. Dreaming alone is seductive, even a little sweet, since it lacks the pain of trying. So it feels proper to prize attempts more than dreams. You should have ideals, but you cannot only... See more
Simon Sarris • Efforts and Goals and Joy
However, as I crossed the threshold, excitement gave way to disappointment. Instead of feeling connected to the natural world, I found myself strangely isolated within the confines of the glass walls. The minimalist aesthetic that I had admired from afar now felt cold and impersonal up close.
It was then I realised architecture is not about creating structures that are aesthetically pleasing or merely functional: it’s about designing spaces that evoke emotion and resonate with the human spirit. The Farnsworth House may have been a triumph of modernist design, but it lacked the warmth and humanity architecture should embody.
If you know to look, you can feel the difference between software crafted with care for its users and systems of vacuous tradition that just happen to be good at producing the vapid fodder of convenience.
Robin Berjon • Retrofuturism
Questions to stay in sync with how people feel when they use your product