New Maya Lin installation: Land or Liquid?

Maya Lin again exhibits her playfulness with form, this time using the forms of water to create a peaceful landscape. You may like or dislike some of her monument designs, yet they seem to have strong emotional effects on those who experience them. She has a good understanding of the elements as they relate to human emotion, particularly in her use of water. Here, she does not use water directly, except to quote its frozen surfaces in dirt, grass, and gravel. A progression in her line of work, as the waves are progressions across the landscape: worthy of immersion by the viewer, a baptism in the joy of the environment.

Walkable Communities

One reason we don't appreciate the visual arts as society once did is that we don't pause enough to do so. This same speed inhibits our recognition of how community design inhibits knowing our neighbors and enjoying our surroundings. We sometimes don't appreciate our neighbors, either. The nature of our surroundings often makes it more necessary that we enclose ourselves away in the metal body armor, filtered air, and radio sound barriers known as automobiles. Are we urban knights or a besieged petty aristocracy in rolling castles? The return of walking holds promise for a regeneration of engagement of individuals with our communities, a mastery of which we have been unaccustomed for a generation or more. Watch this video from the Congress for the New Urbanism. It offers some intriguing prospects for our pursuit of that form of happiness that consists of interacting with our neighborhood.