Importance of Elsewhere

Calcutta, India

In Paul Theroux’s new book, The Tao of Travel, he writes,
“As a child, yearning to leave home and go far away, the image in my mind was of flight — my little self hurrying off alone.
I wanted to find a new self in a distant place, and new things to care about.  The importance of elsewhere was something
I took on faith.  Elsewhere was the place I wanted to be.”

Afghanistan

 ”The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human; the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to
change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger,
to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown …”   – Theroux

Brazil

Niger

Mali

Mizoram, India

Shanghai, China

Havana, Cuba

“…The tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a
few weeks or months,the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly,
over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.”
- Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky 

Tibet

Tibet

Thailand

India

 

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust

India

Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

“All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the
midst of terror and wonder. ”
- Pico Iyer, Why We Travel

Varanasi, India

Bangladesh

Bangladesh

 

Sulu Sea, Philippines

“There is a change that takes place in a man or a woman in transit.
You can see this at its most exaggerated on a ship when whole personalities change.”
- John Steinbeck

Burma/Myanmar

 ”Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
- Mark Twain

Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Paul Theroux, Papagayo, Costa Rica

 

“Travel is flight and pursuit in equal parts.”
The Great Railway Bazaar, Theroux

Agra, India

 

The Eye of the Beholder

 

 The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, are two of the world’s most iconic buildings.   They both evoke passionate emotions, even love, despite being  on opposite ends of the historical and architectural spectrum. 

 

 

Taj Mahal, Agra, India
Built with translucent white marble and inlaid with gems from China, Tibet, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and the Arabian peninsula

 

 In both buildings shape, size, scale, proportion, texture, color, and light  work together to spectacular effect, but very simple structures can also be designed to bring aesthetic pleasure.

 

 

Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
Constructed with a steel frame covered with titanium sheathing

 

What makes things pleasing to our eyes, and how can the design of everything from majestic buildings to simple utilitarian structures bring delight?

 

 

Kyoto, Japan

 

For centuries, there has been documented evidence that people have preferences for structures in the built environment and in the natural environment that have certain geometric  proportions known as the golden ratio or golden proportion. 

 

 

Red Fort, New Delhi, India

  

  The ratio of length to width of approximately 1.618  appears not only in art and architecture, but also in natural structures.

 

 

Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

 

 

 

 

Junagarh Fort, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India

 

 

 

Step Well, India

 

 

Kimberly Elam’s book,  Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition, points out that things in nature as different as
the human body, the pine cone, and the trout all share natural proportioning systems that provide the foundation for all art, architecture, and design.

 

 

Summer Palace, Beijing, China

 

 

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is

recognition of the pattern. 
 - Alfred North Whitehead, Mathemetician

 

 

Jodhpur, India

 

  

Gujarat, India

 

 

 Jaipur, India, 2008

 

 

 On photography and geometry:

“For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.” 
- Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

 

“Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors.”  -  Plato