Slivered Abundance

We end the week in the same place we started... Japan, where an indigenous approach to design thrives on less-as-more. And in the case of Lucky Drops (today's featured design), it's smaller in size and short on convention, but expansive, transgressive, and bold in every other way.

Small homes, tiny houses, little dwellings - whatever you call them - are suddenly trendy in the U.S. And while our culture may tout the merits of "conscious design", we're more likely to construct token emblems (petitte abodes, for example) than we are to fundamentally disrupt the status quo. in other words, our principled actions are exceptional to the rule. 

But brilliance-as-the-rule does exist. And excellence need not be stranded amid expanses of mediocrity. Japan (or so it seems to Rural Modern) may be our best model of fearless distinction. Just look at Lucky Drops, the divine dwelling from Yasuhiro Yamashita, and be humbled and inspired by it's tiny greatness. See it's radiance; Appreciate it's glow; And imagine many such structures dotted throughout an entire landscape.

Achieving similar heights of splendor is within our reach... it all begins with the radical act of recognizing splendor when it's in our midst. And Lucky Drops, my friends, is most certainly it.

Thanks to NPR for the inspiration.