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“Thinking about men I admired, it dawned on me that most had a quiet contempt towards any excess of material possessions. Their expertise and confidence were displayed by the fact that they did not require much to live successfully.”

- Go Small Or Go Home: In Praise of Minimalism,The Art of Manliness

Organic forms usually feel human and accessible. How far does design migrate from an original concept to find the form that was intended?

Architect and designer, Vladimir Kagan is one of the most influential modernist designers of the 20th century. He designed the fiberglass chair sketches in 1950 and did not develop them with Ralph Pucci until 2009. The chair was introduced on October 29th at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.

Vladimir is a modernist. He emphasizes the materials and pure geometrical forms influenced by modern and abstract art. His passion for sculpting is evident. I love the chair asymmetry, the finish, the balance, the lack of detailing. It’s totally non-green… shhhh but I don’t think the design would change as a green design.

Ergonomically, sculpturally, materially, and aesthetically exquisite. Simply what minimalist design should be. What’s more sustainable than that?

Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+

And the comments on Presentation Zen

In Sum
What are the common denominators running through the different cultures they studied? If you do not have time to watch the video, I summarized them below in my own words. You can go to the Blue Zones website to get all the details.

Move Naturally
(1) You don’t need a formal, rigorous exercise plan. We’re talking here a change in lifestyle that is fundamentally active. We’re designed to move. We’ve not meant to drive 100 meters in a car to pick up chips at the local store. Walk, do yard work, whatever. Do exercises/activities that you enjoy.

Have Right Outlook
(2) Slow down. When you’re constantly in a hurry and stressed out, this has a negative impact on your health. Limiting negative stress is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself.
(3) Have a clear purpose. The Japanese call it “ikigai” 生き甲斐 (lit: life + value, be worth while). You must have a passion, a calling, a purpose. There’s got to be a reason to get out of bed every day.

Eat Wisely
(4) Drink a little (wine) everyday.
(5) Eat mainly plant-based foods. Small amounts of meat and fish are OK.
(6) Hara Hachi Bu: Eat until 80% full. Do not eat eat until you’re stuffed. (I’ve talked about this many time before in the context of presentation.)

Be Connected with others
(7) Put family, loved ones first.
(8) Belong to a community. Many in his study belonged to faith-based communities.
(9) Belong to the right tribe. That is, hang out with people with healthy habits, physical and emotional ones.

Too Many iPhone Apps? Just Search | Mottr.am:

Fantastic writeup by Jack Mottram on why using the Spotlight-like search features of the iPhone seems like a far better way to launch applications, especially if you have lots of them. Love this line:

Computers are much, much better than people at indexing and retrieving stuff, so let them.

This is in step with much of what I believe and have expressed here in the past. For some reason, my monkey brain did not translate this idea to the iPhone. I plan to change this as part of my “use it or lose it” experiment.

Also, check out his home screen:

BadAss™!

a few days ago I wrote about being more productive in the office. At the end of the post I mentioned that I would do a little experiment: I would grab my laptop for an hour every day and I would sit by myself. No phones, emails, co-workers asking questions or any other distraction. Just me and my laptop… and the code.

The results are quite cool.

The first day was a bit hard not to just log into the wireless network and check emails but with a little effort I overcame this. The rest of the days were easy after that. It was hard to get in the “zone” the first couple of days but then I got used to it and I went straight into the zone as soon as my hour began.

I wrote better code and managed to complete more tasks in that simple one hour than in the rest of the day.

So, what do I know now? Well, let’s see:

• Modern offices are bad for productivity.
• Disconnecting yourself everyday for one or two hours is very VERY good.
• Once you train your mind (you form a habit, as Mr Babauta often refers to it) then it becomes easier and easier to get into that zone and be very productive.

I’m going to continue doing this.

Thoughts?

15 Simplicity/Minimalist Bloggers to Watch in 2010:

(Via Simple Links)

Chiefs Defend Slow Network for the iPhone - New York Times:

He said he thought that the iPhone’s “multitouch” control system, in which the fingers are used to scroll through data or enlarge photos on the screen, was the biggest shift in a computer’s user interface since the Macintosh was introduced.

Further proof to support my theory that there are some things to think about regarding the future of the human to computer interface being changed and defined right before us from the ground up. (via DF)