Grail house

In the absence of decorative distractions, one might concentrate on the minds movement … stripped down I have found more freedom… but how do I know if it’s real?

Is it true that when you walk into a sparely decorated home… you occupy a mental space different from a littered, older home… full of antiquity.

If this stripped down home that is bland and basic.. is painted in a consistent, unassuming color or mode of whites without accent walls… does it “allow” us to feel different and react differently?

Thinks of your own home–strip away–see your home without a myriad of pictures and photos and decoration of colors chosen from swatches at paint stores of days past, how would you feel as your are greeted by yourself if you didn’t have all these symbols to wrap yourself in?

What does each of these images say… to you… if they were are part of your hosts’ home?

Stop and let your eyes roam each image below…as an exercise.

Consider what ideas are attached to each for you…and maybe why they are there?

: White Oaks, River Bank, Water and Reflections in Chicago

What is the “design” of this object doing for it’s owner’s home it’s related to?

If I hung a painting of the “White City” (statue Overlooking Pond above) what would that say about me? “I live Chicago”, “He is nostalgic,” “He is smart”? “He has read the best seller The White City?” etc.

Consider that we pick our belongings that we display carefully–and our ego has a hand in most of it.. in ALL of it. Yes, ALL of it.

If this is true.. start to think: What would your home be with no ego? …

DESIGN IS DESIGNING WHAT?

Ego is wound up in our identity.

Design… creates identity.. usually…

What is the design “sending a signal” of to me?

When we approach a house we are often greeted with elements of “curb appeal”… an edged trim of grass along the walk, a pile of landscaped stones, evergreen bushes… perhaps even some wild grass and “natural plants” in the front yard.

All of it speaks a language of who is inside… before we meet them.. or reminds us who the person is inside as we visit them over and over again.

Is the person who lives inside playful? Serious? Successful? Unique? How much money do they make? Do they flaunt it? Are they tight wound?

No ego… can it exist?

Imagine for a moment… walking into a home with no mission statement.

For that matter… how would feel if you had no cues from someone as you met them as to who they are? Just a face.. with eyes… a warm smile… or a serious brow.

If a home were this ubiquitous… what would it look like?

Would host and guest find their focus on one another – perhaps we would spend more time in eye-contact?

I posit here — not that I am sure about it–more as an inquiry than a statement of fact–that each word, each gesture is rendered richer and more significant if spaces are consciously stripped of ego to a more bare level.

I experience this when I “feel” the openess of mind if I walk in a home and the bookshelves are only 25% full, and the walls have more open space and the floorplan is sparely populated. It’s just there.. as a feeling… and I don’t intellectualize the feeling…

I just feel and react differently in that space. I’m not sure everyone else feels this way? I am wondering about that.

Heinrich Engel understood the source of the mysterious effects of symbols to inter-relate our achievements…

Now if I actively threw out all my furniture and built all my furniture in OSB “cheap” plywood to “take ego out of my house” this would likely be just more ego. Just more of me trying to show I’m not being driven by “looking good” and thus, I am still trying to be something.. something like “unique” or “frugal” etc.

So it’s not about doing anything… but being present.. and then having things around you that keep you present–and maybe encourage others to be present.

Ralph Adams Cram could only describe in bewilderment, tbe explained the phenomenon of how we, in the west fill our homes:

[The individual interior room] provides an environment that requires man’s presence and participation to fill the void. Room in the Western residence is human without man’s presence, for man’s memory lingers in the multiple devices of decoration, furniture, and utility. Room in the Japanese residence becomes human only through man’s presence. Without him, there is no human trace. Thus, the empty room provides the very space where man’s spirit can move freely and where his thoughts can reach the very limits of their potential.5

I would argue that to convey a feeling of success is to “design well”. An ordered garden. A “harmony” of hedges or pavestone or exterior facade colors. All of it usually is “designed” for our ego’s consumption. It’s endless.. so don’t even try to outrun it. And.. just enjoy the inescapablility of it all. Give in to your humanity… and there.. in that self knowing.. there is a birth of a moment… a little moment of large connection with those you’ve invited into your home. So.. it’s a state of being. Not of decoration. But I am hoping you will find a way to have the “design” find you, push you to more of these moments.

I believe it is largely the focus of much design to convey — signs of success.. and this is the type of design to be aware of. To be humorous about. To be a bit “mocking” of. The attempts to be “modern” are what they are… and the attempts to be “pure prairie style” are what they are. Just be in the inquiry.. asking what the design is.. and what it is not.

We are circling around on this here.. I know but it can’t be said. It can only be circled. The space does not exist in language… it can’t be “designed” by letters and words. It is just circled and once in awhile.. it engages us if we remain in the inquiry. And in our homes our design can keep this inquiry going.

Yes, signs of success, symbols of “having made it” are always comfortably wrapped in an air and elements of authenticity that are unique to us. For me, such “authentic” things are a “home made dining room table”. One of my values is “frugality” and I like to brag that my dining room table “would cost $6000 and I made it for $200″ There is a bit of “I am unique” written all over me when I slide into that mode of being. That “being right” and “looking good” mode. That’s my way to be the “mind driven” side of Phil Buoscio. I like mocking myself… to shake me out of my “act”..

I have been reading about Zen designers and one of the main breakthroughs I believe they discovered is that design usually is an expression of the mind’s effort to convey the “singular quality of dignity and importance” by decorating your home with past success, with symbols of your “ways of being right and unique”. Getting the design’s style “root” that surrounds you in your home is a initial acknowledgement of what your are embedded in. If you are insulted by the suggestion that your Crate and Barrel living room and Wicker Porch is merely an ego expression — then you are stuck in it pretty deep. If you find this blog entry offensive… you might be in the same way stuck in your mind. Defending an entrenched, comfortable mindset. Interior design can be to create “an absence of decorative distractions” but it has usually been used to enhance ego relations. Capitalism thrives on desire–and creating more desire is what our ego is so good at.

How are you to break free for more moments per day of “desire” if your home is surrounded in posters of travel, of food, of extravagance, of past moments of success that you desire to be repeated?

Challenge yourself to create a platform anew. White walls for awhile. Nothing for a few months? Does that idea scare part of you in what it would take away?

Consider that a “stripped down home” allows one must concentrate on his own mind and on the minds of others present.

When I heard about the “un decorate movement” I was very curious. But as I researched some of the undecorators I also realized they were just carrying another “ax to grind” by pulling off their trim and leaving holes in the walls, and leaving scars of old in floors. When it becomes a effort to be “unique” for the sake of it, “stripping down” or “undecorating” can in itelf be a disguised effort of more ego-driven design.

What I am after… is to notice as I enter homes and participate in the design of homes… to get clients, to get friends to allow me and them to be Host and Guest and find a way that the environment actively directs out focus to be on the part of each of us that is greater than our egos.

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Putting it in practice…

Does anyone have examples of where a room deliberately enhanced, broke down the barriers of separateness between you and your guest?

Has a room or a kitchen or a sofa… allowed you to escape your individual “identity” to join with someone.

Please submit visuals if you have them… and perhaps moments of escape…

Here is one from me to start it out.

I designed my home, which has a run of windows to face the river. Regularly, I experience an excitement to sit by the window looking at the water. I live in Chicago and there is a busy city around me but the water, and the white oaks hovering the banks create something of a non-languagable euphoria. To try.. when I sit there I feel less like working. Less like worrying. Less like tending to even myself. Just like sitting. Pressure’s off. Here is a pic

White Oaks, River Bank, Water and Reflections in Chicago

Making Home

I wanted to establish the space in the atrium of our new home as one with vitality and light and color. I looked for light fixtures and knowing ai always have a penchant to spend thrifty and to have a fresh “unique” creative approach I struggled for what light fixtures I could place to deliver the ambience I envisioned.

One day at Ikea I had a glimpse of their paper lights – and thought of my daughter att home with her interest in paints lately and generally expressing herself and though a family art project was in order.

So for the cost of $180 I bought two medium sized paper lamps and one large one and bright them home.

The babysitters and our daughter slowly experimented with colors over weeks and eventually we hit upon a theme.

Now I will think of my daughter at this age for the many years to come. I sprayed the paper with a thin coat of no vic polyurethane so the lights have longevity and Izzy can look up at her 2 year old inspiration.