Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/donald-judd-and-the-blooming-of-reality/26238/ en-us Design Observer Group 2011-05-09T17:26:13-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
Yes, architects and designers should turn their attention to opening ways for people experiencing art and architecture to engage the world around them and draw it into themselves for nurture.
The penetrative insight that he and the authors he reviews have made show how works that at first may seem obvious or impenetrable can, with engaged awareness, yield important insights about new ways of looking at the world and our work within it. They show what can be achieved by sustained attention and open awareness and acknowledging the observer as part of the action and the setting as part of the work

These insights have grown from particular forms of access; access to the works themselves, to the archives related to their creation and to the education, technical skills and funding required to make such fine, carefully honed observations. The specialness of all this leads us to a level of understanding that cannot be and is not expected to be an every day occurrence.

Extending these attitudes into the larger culture, making more of the world susceptible to attention and to multiple ways of being absorbed and understood - and, frankly, played with - remains the great challenge. To open such a world of observations to larger numbers of people within the places we build will involve being open to what others bring to their perceptions. Imaginative attention can then draw things and the actions they incur into significance.

Learning how to induce and sustain thoughtful attention for the qualities of our objects, our cities, our places, buildings and landscapes, requires various modes and levels of exploration, both rigorous and joyous, thoroughly informed, fresh, vital, deeply reflective and seldom dismissive.

I’m reminded of Mayor Joseph Riley’s recent exhortation, at the National Mayors Summit on City Design in Chicago, that Mayors and the planners, architects, artists and engineers who design parts of the city need to “stop thinking that they are designing objects and instead realize that they are designing opportunities....opportunities in peoples’ lives.”

Opportunities for fresh personal insights, for community understanding, for urban performance, for providing lasting economic value and for nurturing human well being across the spectrum; these are some of the “Opps” that come to mind as worthy of design. To develop these requires strong, determined, caring attention from those who set out to make things that matter; things that can help others become active in creating their own lives within a “blooming of reality”
]]> Donlyn Lyndon http://places.designobserver.com/feature/donald-judd-and-the-blooming-of-reality/26238/#comments 2011-05-09T17:26:13-05:00 Alicia http://places.designobserver.com/feature/donald-judd-and-the-blooming-of-reality/26238/#comments 2011-05-06T08:54:04-05:00