THE BOX, THE BOWL, AND WABI-SABI

February 18th, 2010 Posted in Green Building

I have known of the term WABI-SABI for years, going back to my early carpentry days and my initial affection for Japanese woodworking and the art of timber joinery. Like a lot of westerners, I probably misused the phrase if and when I did  use it.  I am reading a great book these days by a man named Leonard Koren called: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers.  Mr. Koren is a trained  architect who has never built anything conventionally recognized, and defines Wabi-Sabi as “a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete….a beauty of things modest, humble and unconventional”.  Within the text he compares Wabi-Sabi and Modernism, both similarities and differences. In common they both eschew any decoration that is not integral to structure. However, modernism is seamless and smooth, whereas Wabi-Sabi is raw and variegated. Modernism uses the box as metaphor and Wabi-Sabi the bowl. I have included two photos that strike me as interesting examples of Wabi-Sabi. One is of a pottery vase our son gave us. The other is of an urban building wall in downtown Seattle where passers-by stick chewing gum. As I study older buildings that I walk through or pass by I like to look for the signs of wear, what has worked and what hasn’t; is the building a closed box or an open bowl?

You would have to be living in a pretty small world right now to not be aware of how hard the construction industry has been hit this past eighteen months or so. We have seen several large and small companies unable to sustain themselves,  fold for a variety of reasons. For me it has meant some difficult partings and some humbling moments as all aspects of the building and real estate realms have tunneled in. And I think we, at MBI, have been lucky. Our current projects include a solar powered equipment barn on a large estate in Sonoma, as well as constructing Lasseter Family Winery in Glen Ellen where we have been in the excavation and foundation phases since last August. Just this past week we began setting the steel frame which provides the main structure. Jessie Whitesides, of A2 Studio, is the architect and Summit Engineering has provided the civil, structural and electrical engineering involved. We are working with some great subcontractors on this project. Contact me for more information if you are interested. We are also working on a massive underground utility project to carry photovoltaic and fiber optic cables. The photo voltaic project is a ground mounted 362 KW system!!  Also, in my last blog I mentioned our cottage project in Glen Ellen. The photos are now on the website so visit the Cottage tab to see it.

 

Carm asleep with her snowman in her mouth

The finished product

OK. Here it is. My mussel stew: Start by buying a mix of fresh mussels from a good seafood department. Try and get a mix of black and green lipp mussels. The combination looks nice and the green lipped ones are little sweeter. I figure twelve to fifteen per person. Get them home and in the fridge quickly and be sure they are uncovered from any plastic bags. Keep them on ice or in ice water until later. You can clean them first or later before cooking, just get their debris and beards out. In a deep heavy pot heat some olive oil and four or five cloves of diced garlic. Before the garlic browns ( if it does it gets chewy and weird) add a large can of diced fire roasted plum tomatoes. Do not use sauce. Add a half bottle of a good quality crisp white wine. Pinot grigio works well. Then add a little coarse sea salt, lots of cracked black pepper, and a small palm full of red chili flakes. Simmer until the alcohol blows off, twenty to thirty minutes. Then add some chopped flat leaf parsley. Lastly add all of the mussels to the pot, stir and cover, checking every few minutes. The mussels should all open in just over five minutes. (toss any that don’t) Give it a big stir and serve in large bowls with a crunchy rustic bread. An alternative is cook a pound of fresh linguine while the stew finishes and add the pasta to the mussels for a excellent wonderful pasta course. Buon apitito!

On Tuesdays Suzi hosts Yoga Night at our office.

Music Suggestion: I’ve been a big fan of Charlotte Gainsbourg for years for probably all the wrong reasons. Her just released second CD is produced by Beck and most of the songs are written by him. There is a mixture of some hard edged French pop sounding songs with even some overtones of her father, French 60s pop icon Serge. There are also several of her wispy poems to music numbers. Not for everyone, but check it out.