User:Sj/Log/Attending to the senses

Color, sound, smell, taste, touch - none should be disregarded when aiming to inspire or pass on inspiration. The greatest sight is wasted if the rest are disregarded. For many physical objects, only color and touch are present to be changed. For a house full of pepole, all are at issue. Good architects know this; some go so far as to start with the function of the kitchen, source of smells and tastes, and view the rest of the house including the facade and design details,as secondary.

On a related note, an education-oriented office without books is like a meal with no smell at all. Today I more than doubled the number of books in the new OLPC offices. Brought in : Tufte (Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitive Information, Envisioning Information), The Essential Whole Earth Catalog (1986), an EB Propaedia (the original), The New Comparative World Atlas, Life Turns Man Up And Down (street literature from Nigeria), a 1000-plate Times Atlas (1988), Folk Tales For Children from Vietnam, Swahili Proverbs, DeLaire's Esperanto, Fil D'Ariane..., Dyson's Origins of Life, Ziman on Public Knowledge, The Love Book, An Exceptional view of Life (writing and drawings on life by unusual young children), an Old Farmer's Almanac.

Also : coffee table material, to supplement the WIRED mags : The Material World and Women in the Material World, and The Faces of Man (finally reprinted last year).