Self-sustaining simplicity

I am totally intoxicated by minimalist machines. At first it was motorcycles, preferably old, and now single speed bicycles, preferably fixed gear. Fixed gear meaning there is a single gear-ratio with the pedals directly connected to the rear wheel. No shifting and no coasting. If the bike is moving your feet are moving. In their purest form fixed gear bikes have no brakes, because pedaling in reverse adds resistance and slows the bike. When my fascination with stripped down motorcycles began people could understand it as “a guy thing” or me fulfilling personal version of “everyone needs a hobby.”

But now with fixed-gear bikes, which are arguably more difficult to ride and produce more sweat when traveling from A to B, the typical vehicular model of A to B with ease has been violated. This prompts friends and family to ask with more insistence why I do this. Why would I seek out vehicles lacking features designed for efficiency and even safety.

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It takes the village people…

Teague’s latest team building event helped build a home for a local family. Working with the Seattle habitat for humanity chapter, Teague traded computer mice for hardhats and got to work. Long story short, few teams have issues that 1000 square feet of hardwood flooring won’t fix. With our knees bruised and our Karma healed we headed back to the office.

To do your part visit VolunteerUp.

Micro meets macro…typography and architecture collide

Pritzker prize-winning architect Thom Mayne is one of my design heroes. He and his band of fellow architects and designers at Morphosis are really blurring the boundaries between architecture, art and… typography?

Quite a few years back, I came across a book about Morphosis, the architecture firm he co-founded. In the book were photos of scale models of houses that looked more like some avant garde sculpture you might hang on a wall. It was then that I could really see he was articulating a unique artistic expression within the field of architecture. I followed his career, along with those of some of his contemporaries like Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas and others via the pages of Blueprint and any other architecture mag I could get my hands on. I couldn’t get enough of those bad boys and girls of architecture.

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Without mark

Some time ago I found that I enjoyed my home more when there were fewer printed words visible. A literate adult has no defense against words—we couldn’t help but read it and understand it. So consciously or unconsciously, I put wine bottles and cereal boxes away, covered up “Whirlpool” on the fridge, and stopped buying things that had prominent labels that can not be removed. Ephemeral printed matter like books and magazines are welcome, but not the permanent stuff that is silently read everyday, a dozen times a day. It’s like turning off a radio station that played only static—I liked what came after.

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