Inspiration is Everywhere

Design Tip #2:
Inspiration is Everywhere

You don’t need to travel the world to find design inspiration. You have it nearby — in a flooring pattern at Starbucks, a wallpaper design, in the colors of local stone.

Ancient cultures found practical and decorative uses for stone.

We find a lot of value in traveling to historic places and seeing how previous generations of people built outdoor areas, how they used stone and natural materials, and how they used pattern and decoration. In our previous newsletter, we told how ingenious the Greeks, ancient Turks, and Egyptians were in their use of stone for practical and decorative use. Seeing these things in person gives you the opportunity to understand how and why they did what they did: “Oh, this is how they do that!”

Inspiration is Nearby
But you don’t need to go this far. You can find examples, ideas and inspiration anywhere — examples you can apply directly to patterns in hardscape and use of materials, such as:

• Visit local historical homes and all kinds of museums. You’ll be surprised at the variety of inspirations and patterns you’ll find at museums for pottery, fabrics, architecture, historical living. You can see how patterns progressed over time and what they have in common with modern design. Check out museums or collections of boats, cars, trains, structures and more. Look how patterns are used on rugs, artwork, needlework, paneling, wainscoting, brickwork, woodwork, and wallpaper. Those places might even have unusual patterns of brick in their walkways.

• Jump on the Internet and you become an instant expert in the use of patterns by Renaissance Italians, or Baroque Austrians, or ancient Egyptians.

• Patterns are everywhere, in every culture, from American Indians to tiny Middle Eastern villages. You can find examples of these on the Internet or at your library. You can see how patterns became refined over time and you might be surprised at how sophisticated and beautiful ancient patterns were, considering the crude tools and methods they used then.

• Visit a local flooring shop, tile store, or other decorating shops to see intriguing patterns and uses of color.

Here’s how they used patterns long ago at Sissinghurst in England.

You can use these patterns and you can do it easier and quicker and more inexpensively than you might think. To find out more, read “A New Angle on Pavers,” next.

Use these ideas as inspiration! If the public is going to see us as design professionals, they have to see us innovating in design and construction. Don’t keep making the same projects over and over again. We have new, manufactured stone and products, as well as our local, natural materials and both types offer a huge range of options. Shake up your perceptions and don’t let yourself get stale!

Would you be interested in attending a Kinman Institute class focused exclusively on design and construction ideas, calculations and techniques? If so, please contact us — we are planning our winter schedule now.

For more information about Kinman Institute classes in landscape design and construction, visit www.kinmaninstitute.com, email cynthia@kinmaninstitute.com or call 614-764-8733(TREE).