Foodpairing is a site that maps complimentary flavors. Blueberries apparently get along with cinnamon and sage.

This is just a tool to inspire you. You still need as a chef the craftsmanship, the experience,…to translate this inspiration into a good recipe. It is not only mixing two components together. The balance between the two is important.

The point being, all of us have access to the same ingredients. What makes the end product different is the person who puts them together. If time is a luxury, sometimes it works out ok by instinct. If not, the experience of practice can deliver a much more efficient, fitting, and pleasing solution. That’s why designers (a group inclusive of chefs, graphic artists, interior space designers, choreographers, etc) matter.

The tricky part is that the best designers make it look so easy to do. Anyone can go out and get new cabinets and countertops from Home Depot. But if they’re unfamiliar with nuances in style, color, circulation space, or how height changes can feel, it won’t look or be anything like that picture of what they wanted. And chances are it will bug them at some level every time they see it, use it, move through it. Some folks may even start over. Which translates to more time & money & inconvenience.

Designers are hired for that accumulation of experience - because time is valuable, and learning to do it yourself may not even get you where you want to go. Sure, you can get the strawberries and rhubarb, but will it be the same as Ashley Christensen’s dessert specialty? Isn’t the whole point of going to a place like Vin because of Ashley’s creative menu? Isn’t that what makes it worth it?

So if you’d trust a talented chef and spend a special night out at dinner for a couple of hours, doesn’t it make sense to also trust a designer with creating spaces in which you spend much more time?

On my accumulated list of things I really want to do is to curate (is it legal to curate and have a submission in a show simultaneously?!) a show for which the only theme is “Time”.

Weirdly, this showed up in my RSS feed list yesterday. Icastic, a visualization specialty firm, asked people how they visualize time. There are some truly beautiful entries, like the one at left.

It’s also interesting to see the age/gender/profession of some of the entrants. The younger folks have some unexpected angles that I identify with, as well as ones from engineering minded folks. The ones I submitted haven’t shown up yet.

How “Green” is usually defined: Recycling. Cradle-to-cradle. Carbon footprint. Eating locally. Low VOC’s. Biodegradable. Telecommuting. Space. Space?

Yep, space. Not outer space. Living/working/playing space.

We’ve been gluttonous space hogs with home design, especially. We don’t need 2k, 4k or more SF for a livable home. My partner and I are getting ready to downsize from 1500SF to just under 1k. We sold our living room furniture to see if we could do without. Turns out, we never use the living room anyway. That space, along with the wasted circulation space easily added up to 500SF. So we decided to go for it.

In the process, we’re decluttering. All that stuff in the closets? If it’s not sentimental and we don’t use it, out it goes. Bigger homes mean room for more accumulated stuff. More accumulated stuff means more to move next time. Or more to have to find a new place for, be it donation or the landfill. The old 80/20 rule applies to stuff, too: we use 20% of our stuff 80% of the time. Guess what’s in the closets? The other 80% of our stuff.

It’s possible to live in under 300SF for a week or more. That’s the average size for a hotel room. Hotel QT in the heart of NYC does it very well, and with style to boot. It works because it uses space well. There are shelves in high and low places. Anywhere a gap exists is potential for storage or mounting something out of the way. Like flat screen TV’s. Or art.

We don’t live in NYC. There’s plenty of space around here in central NC. So why downsize inside the city limits? Because it’s the green thing to do. It will be cheaper to condition, furnish and clean. It will keep us from collecting crap we don’t need or use. It’s part of a multi-floor building with a small footprint. It’s within walking distance of a grocery, a bus line, a library, and many restaurants. And ironically, it will leave more money in our pockets for when we do venture outside the city.

Stay tuned for Part II: container gardening, and nature within civilization.

The spatial relationship we all have with our home, office, retail store or even the hotel room you’re staying in, has an affect on us. Our moods can be altered by the comfort and peacefulness of the space. The solution is simplicity. The guiding principles of Zen design are centered around this concept and by contemplating the organic nature of our surroundings.

Simply put, the movement back to a “less is more” philosophy is a direct response to our hectic, busy lives. We’re choosing a lifestyle with less complexity and clutter. We want our homes to be a sanctuary from the turbulent world around us. A clean and minimal approach is not a style, but a way of living that integrates the utilitarian nature of classic modern design and the Eastern principles of living close to nature with more awareness of our environ.

Color, texture and light find a prominent role in modern design as compared to the often time fussiness of decoration found in the conventional Georgian and Colonial eras of the past. The concept is to create an environment that is tranquil and harmonious, yet never pretentious or intimidating.

You may say that your “stuff” has sentimental value. We’ll acknowledge that, yet still advocate for the integration of built in storage units with sliding doors or Shoji panels where things can be neatly organized. For display, consider glass shelving with halogen lighting to accentuate your art. The living space is then free flowing and creates an open, airy feeling, providing uninterrupted chi’.

Emptiness leaves room for growth.