Design Icons - what is your favourite?
Posted by: erik scothron on 10 July 2006
What makes a great design? Form and function in harmony? What is your favourite?
Here is a thing of terrible beauty
Here is a thing of terrible beauty
This one is mega loud. The strings are there but they are vibrating so fast you can't see 'em. It's sustain, see. 
This isn't mine, but mine is just like it.
This isn't mine, but mine is just like it.
Last one..honest. 
Frank Lloyd Wright is my favorite Architect by miles, and this house in my opinion was his masterpiece. I love it, and I think it has been an inspiration for Architects ever since. I visited Oak Park in Chicago last year to walk around his studio and nearby houses and was in heaven. I think home has a special place in everyones heart and to be responsible for it's design is an enormous responsibility and can affect harmony in peoples lives. I don't think anything can be more important than this personally.
Frank Lloyd Wright - Falling Water - 1935
Frank Lloyd Wright is my favorite Architect by miles, and this house in my opinion was his masterpiece. I love it, and I think it has been an inspiration for Architects ever since. I visited Oak Park in Chicago last year to walk around his studio and nearby houses and was in heaven. I think home has a special place in everyones heart and to be responsible for it's design is an enormous responsibility and can affect harmony in peoples lives. I don't think anything can be more important than this personally.
Frank Lloyd Wright - Falling Water - 1935
quote:Originally posted by Rasher:
The Strat of course is probably even more of an icon.
quote:Originally posted by BigH47:
It's got to be red like Hanks' though.
I certainly agree Strat! But this one:
Living in harmony with nature. These simple designs do it for me.
Haiku Houses' designs are linked with the past. The 16th century feudal period of Japan was one of high culture and of great respect for nature and beauty. Haiku Houses' designers and architects have distilled the best of that period's traditional architecture, especially the minka, and redefined it using the finest materials available. The grace, simplicity, modesty, and restraint of the modern Haiku House conveys a sense of purity and serenity.
The Haiku House provides a physical spaciousness that invites nature into the house. Numerous windows allow the sun to light the heart of the house. Natural airflow freshens and cools the homes atmosphere. The various woods and large Douglas fir poles help provide a feeling of living among the trees in the forest. Each Haiku House has a Great Room and a Grand Veranda. These design features help create the ultimate experience of a free and open home.
The Great Room is made possible by the pole-and-beam structural system, which can support the great expanses of roof without intervening walls, thereby providing exhilarating, unobstructed spaces. In a Haiku House, you can have any floor plan you desire. Unlike today's conventional housing systems, Haiku Houses' structurally enginerered framework of poles and beams support the entire house. Thus there are no load-bearing walls in a Haiku House and the walls can easily be rearranged, allowing you to customize any floor plan to suit any design.
Haiku Houses' Grand Veranda gives unique expression to the Japanese architectural concept of intermediate space or engawa. The sweeping veranda allows the external elements surrounding the house and interior of the house to blend into one environment. Haiku's Grand Veranda encircling the house expands the house in all directions. The wide overhanging eaves provide a physical and esthetic sense of flow and freedom of movement and of circulation while offering complete protection from the elements. The large eaves also protect the house from excessive sun and from rain and snow, while the elevated height of the veranda provides for optimal enjoyment of all views in all seasons.
Beyond the great strength and beauty of Haiku Houses' visual presentation, the Douglas fir poles themselves are fundamental to the solid structural system–one of the strongest known. These beautiful, round columns are integral to the entire master frame of the Haiku House. They suggest the simple elegance of the Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine.
Haiku Houses' master frame has demonstrated a versatility and stability against a battery of natural forces. The 14" poles are stronger, pound-for-pound, than steel, and are up to 18 percent stronger than square posts. The poles are very resilient and are, therefore, inherently well suited to withstand stress of any kind. The individual poles and connecting Douglas fir timbers are by themselves quite massive. Though formidable in strength, the master frame, forms a graceful appearance by itself, and when completed, imitates timeless architectural feeling of the traditional Japanese Country House.
Haiku Houses provides owners a unique opportunity to achieve a lifestyle in harmony with nature. The Haiku House utilizes only sustainable and replaceable natural resources. The Haiku House lies "gently" on the land, yet protects against the potentially destructive effects of the sun and harsh weather. Most importantly, the Haiku House is designed to provide maximum enjoyment of its natural surroundings.
Over the last several years there has been growing recognition of a needed change from the sterility of our cities and our conventional houses–a need for a greater connection to nature in our city streetscapes, our work environment, and in our homes. We at Haiku Houses affirm this need and strive to build a renewed connection between natural architecture and the well-being of the spirit.
Haiku Houses has also responded to the centuries-old, deep desire to live in a place that nurtures the mind and the spirit as well as the body. The modern loss of a sense of community and losss of the extended family as well as unimaginative housing helped produce alienation, stress, family breakdown, and illness. Most of our connections with the natural world–with the earth, with a spiritual community, and with natural places that were once easily accessible–have been lost and the need for the solace of natural things too often ignored.
The Haiku House is designed to help re-establish those connections that can nourish us mentally, spiritually, and physically. When we live in a house where we are surrounded by natural beauty inside and out, and when we have regular access and interaction with that environment, we can consciously and unconsciously begin to allow such beauty and rhythms to re-emerge in our daily lives. It is possible that a sense of unity with the world around us that has been too long buried or ignored can be reawakened and rekindled. We can choose to be nurtured by our home. The home becomes a haven–no longer just a house–and we find ourselves beginning a healing process.
Haiku Houses are custom crafted for easy assembly. Some of the best wooden farm houses of 16th century Japan are preserved today as national treasures in Japan. These structures are inspiration for all Haiku Houses. Haiku Houses continues to research, engineer,and develop comparable Haiku House designs. Architects, engineers, and other specialists continue to contribute their expertise to the creation of this quality product. That commitment to excellence continues today.
For every Haiku House, each timber is custom crafted to give the feeling of a completely handmade structure. The Douglas fir poles are lathe turned and sanded. They are notched, drilled, and given a protective coating. Each beam is shaped, and cut to our precise requirements, to assure quality as well as ease and speed of assembly.
A Haiku Houses master frame consists of the large poles, beams, rafters, girders, posts, joists, and the connecting steel joinery. Also available for a Haiku House is all wood joinery instead of steel plate joinery. The master frame is assembled in a manner similar to post-and-beam construction, which saves considerable time and cost.
You can build a Haiku House anywhere. Because of the uniqueness of Haiku's building system, the Haiku House is adaptable to any location and is often the only feasible solution for an otherwise unbuildable site. The massive poles enable the Haiku House to be built on a steep grade as well as in a flood plain, or in tidelands. The height of the Haiku House provides an extended view of the house's surroundings.
(All of the above pinched from their website)
quote:Originally posted by Chillkram:
Nah, this one.......
Hendrix, A great Strat I happily agree. But destroyed ...again and again.
You can buy a Mexico White Strat in any guitar shop tomorrow. You can't a 'tatocaster'.
The reason why for me Rory's trademark 'tatocaster' (1961 sunburst) is such an icon is in the very fact it 'became part of him' with each square millimetre of chipped lacquer, being used by him at every gig and studio recording over 30 years.
Eventually of course (sadly) it outlived its owner. And I, for one, think it should have been buried with him.
James
quote:Originally posted by Rasher:
Last one..honest.
Frank Lloyd Wright is my favorite Architect by miles, and this house in my opinion was his masterpiece. I love it, and I think it has been an inspiration for Architects ever since. I visited Oak Park in Chicago last year to walk around his studio and nearby houses and was in heaven. I think home has a special place in everyones heart and to be responsible for it's design is an enormous responsibility and can affect harmony in peoples lives. I don't think anything can be more important than this personally.
Frank Lloyd Wright - Falling Water - 1935
Rasher does that water run under the fabric of the building?
Beano
The blue bowling ball and the coca cola bottle remind me of this botched attempt at iconic imagery in a 40 year old comic 
The stratocaster seems familiar. But not the hands.
The stratocaster seems familiar. But not the hands.
Thanks James, I got it completely wrong. The only strat I could come up with right away was this Hendrix/Zappa one:
and it's not even remotely similar.
and it's not even remotely similar.
I had one exactly like this when I was a kid.
Mark
I'm definitely a leg man and I prefer the mini skirt, but as a design icon this is right up there.
