Enough space

                                                                                                                          
I love this design, one of the best homes I've seen. In Finland we tend to live too wide. It's not only wasteful - smaller spaces can feel more comfortable when the scale is right for human beings. Also, life happens outside your room. It's not healthy to be too comfortable in one location. You should have ambition to explore life outside your home as much as possible. If you don't have a reason for it, there is no point in paying for extra cubes of air.

Bedrooms in Japan. This is the difference between the interior design in North EU and Asia. In Japan, they don't waste space. Everything is accurately measured to meet the needs of the user, and nothing else. And it doesen't feel restrictive, just the opposite, it feels comfortable. It feels like when there is enough space for me to move and not excess, it's suprisingly welcoming. When a room has a clear purpose, it gives the person in it a clear purpose. Being a part of the decoration and therefore a part of something that someone thought for you. No tuna cans. 

MD.net clinic in Akasaka by Nendo

I love this psychiatric clinic in Japan.

"Japanese designers Nendo have completed the interior of a mental health clinic in Akasaka, Tokyo, where none of the doors open and patients and staff instead move around the building by opening sections of the walls."

"By providing alternate perspectives for viewing the world, and avoiding being trapped by pre-existing perceptions, the interior allows visitors--and staff members--to experience opening new doors in their hearts, one after the other"
From Dezeen.com, read the original story here.

I admire both the idea and the production of this design. Whenever an interior architect plans a space, he/she's responsible of the people's external as well as internal place in the world. I don't find this fact get's the emphasis it deserves in design posts.

The places we sit, how we sit, the legroom we enjoy, and the view that we might be forced to look at, has a big part on defining our self worth, and the course of our day together with our moods.

Hierarchical thoughts behind design are still old-fashioned. Humans grow, structures don't without action. Every single human being is worth same. Interior design should reflect that. Why wouldn't a patient in a mental hospital deserve the same as outside, "healthy" people? You'd think that especially the more disadvantaged of us would need even more of richness in their lives, that they didn't have before. People in jail for example. Being locked in is bad enough or already for anyone. They don't need more discomfort to get better, but space to think.  

In order to make the necessary change in our thinking, we need to change the way we shape our environments that keep us thinking a certain way. No-one is born equal, but were made equal by empathy. 

Pictures from Dezeen.com
Link to the article