Design Feast Series: Quotes

“I am sitting in a creaky old swivel-type wooden armchair of the sort that used to be found in newspaper offices; it has a battered foam cushion. When I use the telephone, I tilt back and feel like Pat O’Brien in ‘The Front Page’. Since the chair is on casters, I can roll around and reach the books, magazines, papers, pencils, and paperclips that surround me. Everything necessary is close to hand, as in any well-organized workplace, whether it is a writer’s room or the cockpit of a jumbo jet. Of course, the kind of organization required to write a book is not the same as is needed to fly a plane. Although some writers find comfort in a neatly organized desk, my own is covered three-deep with a jumble of a half-opened books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, magazines, sheets of paper, and newspaper clippings. Finding something in this precarious pile is like playing pick-up-sticks. As the work progresses, the pile grows taller and the open space I write shrinks further. Even so, there is comfort in this confusion; only when a chapter is finished, and my desk is once again immaculately empty, do I feel a sense of unease. Like a blank page, a neat desk can intimidate.”

Witold Rybczynski, Architect, Professor, Author