Stewart Brand, working in a shipping container, from How Buildings Learn
I knew from editing Whole Earth Catalogs that the most important tool for organizing projects is lots of horizontal space and immediate-to-hand storage. Boat carpenter Peter Bailey built it cheap and sturdy. He told me I would regret using plywood for pinning up photos and other graphics on the walls, and he was right…
People asked, “How can you stand it in there without windows?” All I could say was “A library doesn’t need windows. A library is a window.” In February I was using the flat space to organize Chapter 12 with the 5x8 cards on which all the book’s raw research was taped. By this time I had followed Peter Bailey’s advice to have sheet steel on the walls, and little magnets holding up the photos.
Lots of horizontal space…
This reminds me so much of David Hockney’s work method for Secret Knowledge, how he pinned up the whole history of western painting on his studio wall:
See more: shipping container architecture.
Filed under: lay it all out where you can look at it
