interesting suggestion as to one of the possible origins of design as an entity in the fascinating book ‘white’ by japanese designer ‘kenya hara’ (lars müller publishers) which i am currently reading…
…surprisingly few rectangular objects exsist within nature with the exception of some mineral crystals, which are closer to perfect cubes. Modern science is, as we are well aware, built on the order discovered in nature, so it isn’t strange to find the mathematical principle of the square concealed there. Yet squares and rectangles are extremely unstable, which explains why they are so rare. Why then have people come to favor rectangular forms?
One possibility is the fact that if we break a big leafy object into two pieces using our two hands, we get a straight line, while a second break results in a right angle. Another possibility comes from the nature of gravity, which turns a hanging vine or string into a straight vertical line. We could speculate endlessly on such possibilities, but the fact remains that when sheepskins were turned into writing materials they were always cut into rectangles. This process may be understood as one of the origins of design…
