Favourite shape

When I was a kid my favourite shape was a circle. There was a TV show called Play School and during one segment they always started by picking one of three windows. If the circle was not chosen, tears on my behalf would ensue. 

Back working in the CBD and an office this week, it is apparent that the favourite shape of the workplace are the rectangle and square.

Desks, monitors, meeting rooms, offices, partitions, doors, streets, windows, corridors. So may rectangles and squares, everywhere I move and everywhere I look.

I have not done any research about this, but I reckon the shapes we surround ourself with influence the way we interact and out ability to create. Straight lines are easy to build and put together, but I think they limit our ability to think about the connectedness of things, the blurring together of spaces and ideas.

In our natural habitat there is barely a straight line to be seen, let alone a corner. Coast lines, paths winding through forests, tree limbs, even the outline of our own bodies.

I would like to see different shapes brought into the places we move through and pause in. Shapes inspired by the world around us and what is inspiring for us, rather than efficiencies of building and construction.

A simple way to start is to bring the complex and fluid shapes of plants into our indoor environments.

My dealings with a builder

I am in the process of getting a laundry renovated. To be more accurate, my landlord's have talked with their managing agent to source a builder to renovate my laundry.

This started when one of my laundry doors fell off, and I asked to get it fixed. Three months later somehow this has translated to a laundry renovation.

The renovation is now into its fourth week. It has been frustrating. I have not been contacted by the managing agent. The builder keeps saying one thing and doing another. In trying to do some washing I have managed to cause a minor flood. I am frustrated and annoyed, and am starting to wonder about the role I have played in all this.

A couple of things stand out. The first is that I have become too friendly with the builder rather than keeping a professional relationship. The second is that I have not kept him focused on the job at hand, distracting him with requests for other things that need repairing in the apartment. The third is that I have assumed too much responsibility when it was not mine to assume.

Currently I am just hanging for this to be over, but in the mean time I have some learnings in advance for when I come to renovating my own house.