True Design on Road Trips
Well summer is over in our neck of the woods, although the heat still lingers. Today, I wanted to take a hot second and reflect on some of my summer design adventures. My husband and I are in this sweet spot with our kids. Their ages are 5 and 7 and still like being around us. We are taking advantage of these few years we have before they are adolescents and decide they would rather be with just about anyone but their parents. Exploring and traveling are a big part of what makes me who I am. Much of my design inspiration comes from my travels. So this past summer, we let my current design jobs dictate the journey. From Dallas to Durham and everything in between, we worked, we saw, we explored. For three and half weeks we were on the road and spent the last five weeks in Colorado Springs, CO.
The journey began with several job site visits in the Dallas area. From there, we went to Bentonville, AR. The primary purpose of this portion of our trip, was for my husband to ride his mountain bike through the hundreds of miles of mountain biking trails throughout the city. I kind of wrote off Bentonville as “husband time,” but was pleasantly surprised to find that much of my inspiration came from this time of our trip, specifically at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art. The art was spectacular but for me, the architecture was the real amazement! If you have not had the pleasure of stepping into one of Moshe Safdie’s architectural wonders, please take the time and do so! The mix of concrete and wood made me weak at the knees.
Concrete and wood, courtesy of Moshe Safdie at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
The grounds of Crystal Bridges are a work of art in themselves, not to mention the actual work of art, “Fly’s Eye Dome,” by Buckminster Fuller. His philosophy is my current inspiration. From Crystal Bridges website, “he popularized the belief that we all must work together and share limited resources in order to survive on earth. With this in mind, he created housing designs that would benefit the greatest number of people while utilizing as few resources as possible.” As a designer, I also appreciated the reminder in Buckminster’s original sketches, that good design does not just happen over night. It is a methodical practice that runs into many failures before reaching success. Read more on Buckminster’s work at crystalbridges.org.
Fly’s Eye Dome, by Buckminster Fuller at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Ruth Asawa, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
I’ll continue to highlight some of my favorite moments on our road trip over the next few months via my social media outlets. Also, stay tuned for project updates on my Dallas and North Carolina designs. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this…
“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.” - Buckminster Fuller
Stay True!
Allyson