Kahn

Program is nothing

Interview of H+S

from DETAIL

 

Glass and Colour – An Interview with Matthias Sauerbruch

 

Detail: The name Sauerbruch and Hutton immediately conjures an image of colour- extremely colourful architecture perhaps. Colour has become your trademark. Is that deliberate, or does a label like that bother you?

 

Sauerbruch: Colour has certainly become an architectural means of expression for us, just as brickwork, concrete or other materials have for other architects. I imagine that will remain so in the future, regardless of the kind of projects we undertake. Colour is, if you like, one of our passions; but it's only part of the picture. There are other elements as well, which may not be apparent at first sight.

 

Detail: Where does this passion for colour come from?

 

Sauerbruch: That's hard to say. In my case, it's part of my biography. My father was a painter, and from an early age I was interested in painting and art, The use of colour in our architecture, though, was something we came upon by chance. At the end of the 1980s, when we founded our office in England, a lot of our work involved the conversion of small terraced houses. In many cases, the constructional scope was very limited, since most of the clients had only a small budget at their disposal. At some point, we realized that it was possible to exert a great influence on the spatial effect of even relatively small rooms through the use of colour. For example, you can dissolve the strict angularity of a corner situation with the aid of two colours that are strongly contrasted with each other or that have different degrees of luminance. If you apply this knowledge in a strategic way, a sense of breadth and spaciousness can be achieved where it doesn't exist, physically speaking. We continued to experiment with colour and later used it on planar surfaces; for instance, to lend a facade a visually three-dimensional quality.

 

Detail.' At what point does colour enter the design process?

 

Sauerbruch: It varies from project to project, but usually a basic idea emerges fairly soon as to what colour will play a role - in the facade, say, or at a certain point in the building. Reaching a decision in favour of a specific colour or combination of colours is normally a lengthy process, however. In the case of the Federal German Ministry for the Environment in Dessau, which will be completed in the near future, we applied various spots or patches of colour to the facade in the first competition model. They looked a bit like sliding shutters. The idea came from the office complex in Berlin built for the GSW housing developers and from the photonics centre in Adlershof, where the sun- shading elements are coloured. The ultimate outcome of all this was a coloured glass cladding that is used to conceal functional elements such as night-time ventilation flaps, or that acts as a lining to solid walls. The colour spectrum that runs round the building is subtly differentiated and resulted quite simply from the spatial configuration. We attempted to respond to the different spatial forms with different colours and to reflect the specific context. It was a long development process, which ran parallel to the almost seven-year planning period.

 

Detail: Do you develop your own colour concepts, or do you have a colour consultant?

 

Sauerbruch: No, we do it ourselves.

 

Detail.' Based on what criteria ?

 

Sauerbruch: By a process of exclusion: trial and error. Our colour concepts are not derived from a theory like the one drawn up by Johannes Itten, which is based on special colour groups and luminance values. In our case, it's a visual process, a bit like painting: you study an elevation or a model as if it were a canvas and begin to compose, and you carry on until you have the feeling that it's right. At the beginning, we have a general idea and approach the final concept via a number of variations, using sketches and ever larger models. That usually takes place shortly before the tendering phase. Then we do a facade layout. In the case of the Environment Ministry building, which has a facade roughly one kilometer long if you count the external and the courtyard faces, we first had a model built at 1:200 and actually applied colour to every area. We then repeated this to a scale of 1:75 with colour samples from the Natural Colour System (NCS) range; and after tendering and the award of contracts, we obtained the samples from the firm. A further difficulty was the fact that when you put a coating on the rear face of glazing, the green tone of the glass has a strong influence on the coloration even in the case of so-called "white" flint glass. Red shades appear much duller, for example. We had to try out some colours four or five times to achieve a satisfactory result on the outside.

 

Detail: A striking feature of your work is that you use colour very often in combination with glass. At Adlershof, for example, you seem to play quite consciously with the aesthetic potential of reflections.

 

Sauerbruch: In some cases, reflections provide an additional spatial-material dimension. In the recently finished police station and fire-brigade building in the parliamentary district of Berlin, the reflecting surface of the glass cladding lends the structure a certain lightness, which forms a pleasing contrast to the dull brick surfaces of the rather heavy existing building. A further aspect, of course, is the durability of the applied colour. Coating glass on its rear face produces a lovely colour finish for facades that is lightfast, protected against the weather and durable.

 

Detail: How do you apply your colour concepts to internal spaces?

 

Sauerbruch: That depends on the individual project. For example, the research building in Biberach, which we completed roughly a year ago, has a striking coloured skin externally, whereas internally, the coloration is relatively subdued. There are certain areas of colour, of course; at the same time, the so-called "white walls" are often not really white, but have a light, restrained coloration. What is more, the colour of the facade usually radiates through the windows of the laboratories. In the factory in Magdeburg, on the other hand, there is a more pervasive colour concept. The exterior of the building and the inside of the entrance area are extremely colourful. The foyer-like space is the only collective place where everyone can come together - for exhibitions or receptions, for example. The coloration is meant to signify a public realm and a sense of community.

 

Detail,' Let's go back to the facade in Biberach for a moment Is it true that the striking coloration is based on a molecular structure?

 

Sauerbruch: Yes, that is really true. On the Internet, we found an electron-microscope image of a substance made by the client and enlarged it even more. To be quite honest, though, we changed the colours a lot, and bit by bit the structure as well. Symbolically, I find the notion of delving into a molecular world something very beautiful; and it's also related to the research people, who are concerned the whole time with microscopic views and immerse themselves in things at quite a different scale. Only those who are aware of this connection will get the point; for the average observer, it's simply a colour composition.

 

Detail: And how do the research people accept the actual facade? Don't they have to put up with coloured light internally because of the coloured glass?

 

Sauerbruch: The body of the glass is not coloured. The surface is printed with a grid of dots. The coloration is relatively restrained, and the coating itself is not permeable to light, or hardly so, The shadows cast by the grid of dots have no colour, therefore. Naturally, colour reflections do occur, so that the light internally has a slight but very subdued coloration.

 

Detail.: And this coloration doesn't disturb the users? What are their reactions?

 

Sauerbruoh: The reactions go both ways, of course. Some people are disturbed by the coloration, but the majority like it. In the police station and fire-brigade complex in Berlin, which I mentioned earlier, the entire facade is in a fairly intense red and green. Laid over the windows is a louver structure, and when this is closed, even the windows gleam in a red tone, rather like a night bar. When the louvres are tipped open, however, the space is entirely white again. Anyone

 

Detail.' Is the glass treated differently there? What kinds of coloured glass did you use - coated, enameled, with layers of film - and what experience do you have of their use?

 

Sauerbruch: In principle, the same technology was used in both projects; but in the case of the fire station, the printing was somewhat denser and the colours are more intense, so that the reflections are also stronger. Here again, though, the light that falls through the printed glass is not colored. It is the printed layer itself that radiates, In the showroom for the Zumtobel Staff lighting concern, in contrast, we used real coloured glass - laminated glass with a coloured film adhesively fixed between the layers. Here, the light entering from outside through the glass really is coloured. In this case, it was intentional; we wanted to create a stark contrast between the ingress of daylight from outside and the artificial lighting from the lamps in the exhibition. At night, therefore, the effect is reversed: when the lighting is turned on internally, the facade becomes an illuminated box or lantern.

 

Detail: In the case of the fire station, what is the technical purpose of the glass skin with louvres set outside the facade?

 

Sauerbruch: In the first instance, it provides sun shading, as well as wind screening for the open windows to the rear, It is net really a thermal buffer, though, as in the facade of the GSW building in Berlin or in the photonics centre.

 

Detail: Is it possible to open the louvres individually?

 

Sauerbruch: In the case of the police station, they can be adjusted individually for every window - in other words, over the entire window area. The casements behind the glass skin can be opened according to a certain rhythm.

 

Detail: How did the colour scheme come about?

 

Sauerbruch: It was a free composition, whereby red represents the fire-brigade and green the police.

 

Detail: Don't the inclined coloured louvres diminish the exploitation of daylight within the building ?

 

Sauerbruch: The windows are quite generously dimensioned in relation to the room sizes, so that this problem doesn't really arise. In the case of the Environment Ministry building, we made detailed studies for the window sizes. The proportion of the glazing area is an important aspect if one is talking about ecological forms of construction, We made a precise analysis of how small a window may be to ensure an optimum illumination of the workplaces yet at the same time to keep heat losses in winter and thermal gains in summer to a minimum. The outcome of these studies was about 40 per cent externally and 65 per cent internally. Solar screening here consists of highly reflecting, coated louvres, which also function as light deflectors. From an ecological point of view, it was important to ensure a good balance between the building volume and the floor area, thereby reducing the area of the facade.

 

Detail, We're now into the realm of ecology. Can you say a little more about your solar concept or the ecological concept for the Ministry for the Environment?

 

Sauerbruch: The Environment Ministry began as an extremely ambitious project. As early as the competition stage, the participants were required to develop prototypical measures. Later, many of our suggestions were rejected, although they were solutions that are generally regarded among architects as having a positive effect: the double-skin facade, for example. There are specialists in the ministry who investigate all these matters on a scientific basis, but the clients themselves - the building authorities and the ministry - reacted somewhat conservatively because of negative experiences they had had in the past. I can understand that; taxpayers' money is involved, after all. Ultimately, therefore, the concepts are not as new as one might have wished.

 

Detail: Do you think an opportunity was missed here, in such an important project as the Ministry for the Environment, to make the public - and architects - more sensitive to ecological forms of construction?

 

Sauerbruch: No. You can't say that. On the contrary, there are numerous examples here of an ecologically meaningful approach to construction. It's just that one can't claim it was done for the first time in this scheme.

 

Detail.' What are the distinguishing features of the ecological concept as implemented?

 

Sauerbruch: First of all, the high level of thermal insulation. We exceeded the levels defined by the insulation regulations valid at that time by 50 per cent, and the energy-saving requirements by roughly 30 per cent. We also exploited regenerative forms of energy - from photovoltaic and solar-heating systems, for example. In addition, the cooling plant for the canteen is run on solar energy, and there is a small cogenerating unit for electricity and heating that is operated with fuel cells (as a demonstration model). The most spectacular measure, though, is the geothermal heat-exchange plant. External air is drawn in and pretreated thermally via a roughly five-kilometer-long pipe system laid in the ground. In this way, the building is supplied with cool air in summer and warm air in winter. As far as I'm aware, it's the largest installation of its kind in the world. I should also mention that the federal authorities participated in a plant that produces gas from waste matter, from which electricity is generated for the Environment Ministry building.

 

Constructional biology, or the selection of building materials, also forms part of the ecological concept in terms of primary energy. It's a discipline that's still in its infancy; for although it is possible to speak about concrete, aluminum, glass or timber in general, one has to differentiate between various kinds of cement, glass manufacturing processes, recycled or newly extracted aluminum - to mention just a few things. The whole team received advice from consultants in these matters. In collaboration with the Society for Ecological Building, we drew up a catalogue of measures on the basis of which a timber facade was specified for the building, That was just one aspect. The fact that a timber structure was used and not just wood cladding is something rather spectacular for a four-storey office building of this size. In the process, we also learned that timber is not without its problems as a building material: at the end of its life, when it ultimately becomes a waste product, it is difficult to dispose of wood if it has been treated with a preservative. We also had to specify that the timber should come from native forests; otherwise the whole ecological advantage would have been lost through transport. We at least attempted to do something in this direction. The same applies to the paint, the flooring and other finishing materials, which bear the "Blue Angel" sign (a quality seal issued by the Ministry for the Environment). Where that is not the case, we relied on our consultants and on test results. In general, materials were selected from the standpoint that they should require a minimum of energy for their processing, installation and disposal and that they should be safe in terms of building biology.

 

Detail  Would you say that the extra costs involved in this scheme were economically justifiable?

 

Sauerbruch: Since we were able to set the life of the building at 50 years in our calculations, all the measures we implemented were economically justifiable. I see that as a positive sign, even if a developer would certainly not accept this argument, because he reckons on an amodization period of seven to ten years for his buildings and tends to ignore the operating costs. The results are all the more a point of reference, however. for people who wish to advance the cause of sustainability.

 

Detail: While we're on the subject of the life of a building, sustainability would seem to be an important aspect for you. Some of your other developments, such as the GSW in Berlin, contain elements of solar technology, even ff not to the extent of the ministry building. At the same time, your designs are strongly oriented to current tastes. Does that not contradict the idea of sustainability?

 

Sauerbruch: I have no problem with that. In the history of art and architecture, it's nothing new for a building to be very much a child of its time and yet to survive. In that respect, the question of contemporarily or fashionableness has nothing to do with quality. Quite different criteria are involved in that: how well does a building function; does it contribute something to the urban environment; what are its spatial qualities; how well proportioned is it or how well crafted? And all that is independent of the time from which it dates.

 

Detail: Not all modern architecture is as dependent on current trends as your buildings are, though. Don't you think that a building may be erected - like the experimental factory in Magdeburg - that creates a tremendous splash at the beginning, but that one can't stand in ten years?

 

Sauerbruch: I can't preclude that possibility, but quite honestly, I don't find it so terrible. If the building is used and fulfils its function, its users must like it to a certain extent because it makes sense to them. What is more, a structure with a striking character is likely to promote a good relationship with its users. A building that has a certain profile, which provides a sense of orientation and that can be viewed critically is, to my mind, far better than a completely neutral object where you have to search for the identity or character.

 

Detail. Aren’t you afraid that in a few years time, someone will come along and paint everything white or brown or whatever, and your colour concept will be completely ruined as a result?

 

Sauerbruch: That can happen, of course, but we are not so uptight about our architecture. It's a bit like bringing up a child. At some point, he or she becomes an independent person and will be prepared to follow parental guidance only to a certain extent. I experienced something of this kind as a project architect for OMA at Checkpoint Charlie. The building, with amenities for Allied forces, was handed over on 1 November 1989; but after the fall of the Berlin Wall, its purpose was gone - in part, at least. Six months later, it was converted without us. Today, it houses a supermarket, a function that ironically formed part of a provocative concept we considered for the time after the fall of the Wall. Even if that was not really conceivable at the time, it turned out that way, and today it's a quite different building. But it still exerts an enormous sense of power and immediacy, particularly the upper part, and one can still recognize it as a fine piece of architecture.

 

Detail: Then you do not define the individuality of your buildings through their coloration.

 

Sauerbruch: That's certainly one element. If you were to take the colour away, a lot of the character would be missing. It would be a great pity if one of our buildings were painted over at a later date. Maybe it would be worse than it was before, but it would still be a building that, one hopes, fulfils its function.

 

Detail: I imagine that colour is greatly appreciated by the public at large. Do you see the use of colour as a means of making modern architecture popular with lay people?

 

Sauerbruch: Colour is a very emotional element to which most people react in some way or other. To that extent, you're right. Colour used on buildings tends to make the man in the street take notice of an urban development where he might otherwise not. If it were possible to affect more people positively through the use of colour, that would be fine with us. After all, we don't build things for ourselves, but for our clients and the users, and beyond that, for the city or the built environment in which they stand.

 

Detail.' Could you imagine designing an entirely monochrome building one day?

 

Sauerbruch: We have just completed the town hall in Hennigsdorf, which is relatively monochrome for our standards. It is in quite subdued tones, with the exception of the council chamber, which is in a dark red. The absence of colour became almost an accusation that was leveled against us. The client felt a bit cheated, because we normally create boldly coloured architecture. In the case of Hennigsdorf, however, which is a small industrial town in Brandenburg, the specific situation and history of the place seemed to demand greater restraint, We wanted to create a building that radiated a sense of openness and dignity. In the period immediately following the fall of communism, many buildings were created that I would call "gaudy" rather than colourful. We thought the use of materials like oak and bricks were more appropriate to this assignment and the context. We are not intent on using colour in every conceivable situation. We seek to match the prevailing conditions.

 

Detail: How important are different materials for your architecture? Do you always rely on materials of a similar kind, or is there a greater variety?

 

Sauerbruch: Where colour is involved, one is limited, of course. Coating technologies have developed enormously, but painted finishes last for a maximum of ten years. With stove-enameled glass, on the other hand, the durability and lightfastness are fairly high. That's why we try as far as possible, where facades are concerned, to use materials that have a relative constancy. We use glass a lot not only for its reflecting surface, but because it has a beautiful quality and is durable. Problems arise when coloured metals are used and special sections have to be recoated or painted, because they cannot be precoated and then bent to shape as in the manufacturing process. When we use natural materials in conjunction with coloured surfaces, we try to use products that have a certain haptic quality and are contrasted with the neutral, coloured surface, Stone, wood and ceramics are examples of this. I also find the combination of coloured surfaces and wood very attractive.

 

Detail: Thank you very much for this interview, Matthias Sauerbruch was interviewed by Christian Schi Rich in Munich.

 

 

Matthias Sauerbruch, architect

1995 Professor at the University of Technology, Berlin;

since 2001 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart

1989 Practice with Louisa Hutton in London

1993 Sauerbruch Hutton Architects in Berlin

Paz, Octavio--Craftsmanship

from Marco's product design course

 

Paz, Octavio
Seeing and Using: Art and Craftsmanship
from: Convergences: essays on art and literature.
1st ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, c1987.

 

 

Seeing and Using: Art and Craftsmanship

 

  In its rightful place. Not fallen from above, but emerged from below. Other, the color of burnt honey. Sun color buried a thousand years ago and dug up yesterday. Fresh green and orange stripes cross its still-warm body. Circles, frets: remains of a scattered alphabet? Pregnant woman's belly, bird's neck. If the palm of your hand covers and uncovers its mouth, it answers you in a low murmur, a bubble of gushing water; if you rap its haunch with your knuckles, it gives a laugh of little silver coins falling on stones. It can speak in many tongues, the language of clay and matter, that of air flowing down between the walls of the ravine, that of washerwomen as they do their laundry, that of the sky when it grows angry, that of rain. A baked clay vessel Don't put it in the glass display case full of rare objects. It would show up badly. Its beauty is allied with the liquid it contains and the thirst it quenches. Its beauty is corporeal: I see it, touch it, smell it, hear it. If it is empty, it must be filled; if it is full, it must be emptied. I take it by the turned handle as I would take a woman by the arm, I lift it up, I tilt it over a pitcher into which I pour milk or pulque---lunar liquids that open and close the doors of dawn and dark, of waking and sleeping. It is not an object to contemplate, but one for pouring something to drink.

 

  A glass pitcher, a wicker basket, a huipil of coarse cotton cloth, a wooden bowl--handsome objects not in spite of but because of their usefulness. Their beauty is an added quality, like the scent and color of flowers. Their beauty is inseparable from their function: they are handsome because they are useful. Handicrafts belong to a world existing before the separation of the useful and the beautiful. This distinction is more recent than is generally believed: many of the objects gathered together in our museums and private collections belonged to that world in which beauty was not an isolated and self-sufficient value. Society was divided into two great realms, the profane and the sacred. In both, beauty was subordinate, in the one case to usefulness and in the other to magic. Utensil, talisman, symbol: beauty was the aura surrounding the object, the consequence--nearly always involuntary—of the secret relation between its making and its meaning. Making: how a thing is made; meaning: what it is made for. Today all these objects, torn from their historical context, their specific function, and their original significance, take on in our eyes the appearance of enigmatic divinities and command our adoration. The transition from the cathedral, the palace, the nomad's tent, the boudoir of the courtesan, and the witch's cave to the museum was a magico-religious transmutation: objects turned into icons. This idolatry began in the Renaissance and, from the eighteenth century on, has been one of the religions of the West (the other being politics). We find Sor Juana In~s de la Cruz, at the height of the Baroque era, already poking gentle fun at the aesthetic superstition: "A woman's hand," she says, "is white and beautiful because it is a thing of flesh and bone, not ivory or silver; I esteem it not because it gleams but because it grasps."

  The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born of the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church. The mission of the artist was to transmute the object; that of the revolutionary leader, to transform human nature. Picasso and Stalin. The process has been twofold: in the realm of politics, ideas have been turned into ideologies, and ideologies into idolatries; objects of art, in turn, have become idols, and idols have been transformed into ideas. We view works of art with the same absorption as the sage of antiquity contemplated the starry sky (though with less profit): like heavenly bodies, these paintings and sculptures are pure ideas. The religion of art is a Neoplatonism that dares not speak its name--except when it is a holy war against heretics and infidels. The history of modern art may be divided into two currents: the contemplative and the combative. Tendencies such as Cubism and Abstractionism belong to the former current; movements such as Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, to the latter. Mysticism; crusade.

 

   For the ancients, the movement of the stars and planets was the image of perfection: to see the celestial harmony was to hear it, and to hear it was to understand it. This religious and philosophical vision reappears in our conception of art. For us, paintings and sculptures are not beautiful or ugly objects but intellectual and sensible entities, spiritual realities, forms in which Ideas are made manifest. Before the aesthetic revolution, the value of works of art was related to another value: the link between beauty and meaning. Objects of art were things that were sensible forms that were signs. The meaning of a work was plural, but all its meanings were related to an ultimate signifier in which meaning and being were conjoined in an indissoluble knot: divinity. The modern transposition: for us the artistic object is an autonomous and self-sufficient reality; its ultimate meaning does not lie beyond the work but within it. This meaning lies beyond--or falls short of--meaning; it no longer possesses any referent whatsoever. Like the Christian divinity, Jackson Pollock's paintings do not mean: they are.

 

  In modem works of art, meaning dissipates in the radiation of being. The act of seeing is transformed into an intellectual operation that is also a magical rite: to see is to understand and to understand is to commune. Side by side with divinity and its devotees are its theologians, the art critics. Their excogitations are no less abstruse than those of medieval Scholastics and Byzantine doctors of divinity, though their logic is less rigorous. The questions that aroused the passions of Origen, Albertus Magnus. Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas reappear in the quarrels of our art critics,  though in a disguised and trivialized form. Nor does the resemblance end there: to the divinities and the theologians  who explain them we must add the martyrs. In the twentieth century we have seen the Soviet state persecute poets and artists with the same ferocity as that shown by the Dominicans in extirpating the Albigensian heresy.

 

It is only natural that the exaltation and sanctification of  the work of art should have given rise to periodic rebellions and profanations: removing the fetish from its niche, painting it in garish colors, parading it through the streets with the ears and tail of a donkey, dragging it in the dirt, poking holes in it and showing that it is full of sawdust, that it is nothing and no one and means nothing--and then setting it back on its throne. "What art needs is a sound thrashing," the Dadaist Huelsenbeck once said in a moment of exasperation. He was right, except that the bruises left on the Dadaist object by the beating were like decorations on the chests of generals: they lent respectability. Our museums are full to overflowing with antiworks of art and works of antiart. More astute than Rome, the religion of art has absorbed all the schisms.

 

   I don't deny that the contemplation of three sardines on a plate or of a triangle and a rectangle may enrich us spiritually; I merely affirm that the repetition of this act soon degenerates into a tedious ritual. That is why the Futurists, faced with the Neoplatonism of the Cubists, sought to reintroduce the subject into the work of art. It was a healthy reaction on their part, and at the same time a naive one. The Surrealists, possessed of greater perspicacity, insisted that the work of art should say something. Since reducing the work to its content or message would have been stupid, they eagerly embraced a notion that Freud had launched: latent content. What a work of art says is not its manifest content but what it says without saying anything: that which lies behind forms, colors, words. This was a way of loosening, without undoing altogether, the theological knot between being and meaning in order to preserve, insofar as possible, the ambiguous relation between the two terms.

 

  Marcel Duchamp was the most radical of all: the work passes by way of the senses but it does not linger in them. The work is not a thing; it is a fan of signs that, as it opens and closes, alternately reveals and conceals its meaning. The work of art is a secret sign exchanged between meaning and meaninglessness. This attitude has its danger—one that Duchamp (almost) always escaped: one may fall off on the other side and be left with the concept and without the art, with the trouvaille and without the thing itself. This is what has happened to his imitators. One might add that frequently they end up without either the art or the concept. It scarcely bears repeating that art is not concept: art is a thing of the senses. Speculating about a pseudo concept is more boring than contemplating a still life. The modern religion of art turns round and round in circles without ever finding the road to salvation; it goes from the negation of meaning through the object, to the negation of the object through meaning.

 

 

 

  The industrial revolution was the other side of the coin of the artistic revolution. The ever-increasing production of identical and more and more perfect utensils was the exact counterpart of the consecration of the work of art as a unique object. Like museums, our houses became filled to overflowing with clever gadgets. Precise, obedient, mute, anonymous instruments.

 

 In the beginning, aesthetic concerns played almost no role at all in the production of useful objects. Or rather, these concerns led to results quite different from those their manufacturers had imagined. The ugliness of many objects from the prehistory of industrial design— an ugliness not without charm--stems from the fact that the "artistic" element, generally borrowed from the academic art of the period, was superimposed upon the object itself. The result was not always unfortunate, and many of these objects--those of the Victorian era and also of the so-called modern style--belong to the same family as the sirens and sphinxes of the Baroque period. This family was ruled by what might be called the aesthetics of incongruity. In general, the evolution of the indstrial object for daily use has followed that of artistic styles. Almost invariably, industrial design has been a derivation-sometimes a caricature, sometimes a felicitous copy--of the artistic vogue of the moment. It has lagged behind contemporary art and has imitated styles at a time when they had already lost their initial novelty and were becoming aesthetic cliches.

 

   Contemporary design has endeavored in other ways--its own--to find a compromise between usefulness and aesthetics. At times it has managed to do so, but the result has been paradoxical. The aesthetic ideal of functional art is based on the principle that the usefulness of an object increases in direct proportion to the paring down of its materiality. The simplification of forms may be expressed by the following equation: the minimum of presence equals the maximum of efficiency. This aesthetic is borrowed from the world of mathematics: the elegance of an equation lies in the simplicity and necessity of its solution. The ideal of design is invisibility: the less visible a functional object, the more beautiful it is. A curious transposition of Arab fairy tales and legends to a world ruled by science and the notions of utility and maximum efficiency: the designer dreams of objects that, like genies, are intangible servants. This is the contrary of the work of craftsmanship, a physical presence that enters us through our senses and in which the principle of usefulness is constantly violated in favor of tradition, imagination, and even sheer caprice. The beauty of industrial design is of a conceptual order; if it expresses anything at all, it is the accuracy of a formula. It is the sign of a function. Its rationality makes it fall within an either/ or dichotomy: either it is good for something or it isn't. In the second case it goes into the trash bin. The handmade object does not charm us simply because of its usefulness. It lives in complicity with our senses, and that is why it is so hard to get rid of it--it is like throwing a friend out of the house.

 

  There is a time when the industrial object at last becomes a presence with an aesthetic value: when it becomes useless. It then becomes a symbol or an emblem. The locomotive whose praises Whitman sings is a machine that has come to a halt and no longer transports in its cars either passengers or freight: it is a motionless monument to speed. Whitman's disciples--Valery Larbaud and the kahan Futurists--extolled the beauty of locomotives and railroads at the very moment when other means of transportation--airplanes, automobiles--were beginning to take their place. The locomotives of these poets are the equivalent of the artificial ruins of the eighteenth century: they are a complement to the landscape. The cult of the machine is a naturalism a rebours: a usefulness that becomes a useless beauty, an organ without a function. By way of ruins, history turns back into nature, whether we stand before the crumbled stones of Nineveh or a locomotive graveyard in Pennsylvania. Our fondness for machines and apparatuses fallen into disuse not only constitutes one more proof of humanity's incurable nostalgia for the past, but also reveals a rift in the modern sensibility: our inability to associate beauty and usefulness. Here is a double damnation: the religion of art forbids us to consider the useful beautiful; the cult of utility leads us to conceive of beauty not as a presence but as a function. This may explain why technology has been such a poor source of myths: aviation is the realization of an age-old dream that appears in all societies, but it has not created figures comparable to Icarus and Phaethon.

 

   The industrial object tends to disappear as a form and become one with its function. Its being is its meaning, and its meaning is to be useful. It lies at the other extreme from the work of art. Craftsmanship is a mediation; its forms are not governed by the economy of function but by pleasure, which is always wasteful expenditure and has no rules. The industrial object forbids the superfluous; the work of craftsmanship delights in embellishments. Its predilection for decoration violates the principle of usefulness. The decoration of the craft object ordinarily has no function whatsoever, so the industrial designer, obeying his implacable aesthetic, does away with it. The persistence and proliferation of ornamentation in handicrafts reveal an intermediate zone between utility and aesthetic contemplation. In craftsmanship there is a continuous movement back and forth between usefulness and beauty; this back-and-forth motion has a name: pleasure. Things are pleasing because they are useful and beautiful. The copulative conjunction (and) defines craftsmanship, just as the disjunctive defines art and technology: utility or beauty. The hand made object satisfies a need no less imperative than hunger and thirst: the need to take delight in the things we see and touch, whatever their everyday uses. This need is not reducible to the mathematical ideal that rules industrial design, nor is it reducible to the rigor of the religion of art. The pleasure that works of craftsmanship give us has its source in a double transgression: against the cult of utility and against the religion of art.

 

  Made by hand, the craft object bears the fingerprints, real or metaphorical, of the person who fashioned it. These fingerprints are not the equivalent of the artist's signature, for they are not a name. Nor are they a mark or brand. They are a sign: the almost invisible scar commemorating our original brotherhood and sisterhood. Made by hand, the craft object is made for hands. Not only can we see it; we can also finger it, feel it. We see the work of art but we do not touch it. The religious taboo that forbids us to touch saints--"you'll burn your hands if you touch the Tabernacle," we were told as children--also applies to paintings and sculptures. Our relation to the industrial object is functional; our relation to the work of art is semireligious; our relation to the work of craftsmanship is corporeal. In reality, this last is not a relation but a contact. The transpersonal nature of craftsmanship finds direct and immediate expression in sensation: the body is participation. To feel is primarily to feel something or someone not ourselves. And above all, to feel with someone. Even to feel itself, the body seeks another body. We feel through others. The physical and bodily ties that bind us to others are no less powerful than the legal, economic, and religious ties that unite us. Craftsmanship is a sign that expresses society not as work (technique) or as symbol (art, religion) but as shared physical life.

 

   The pitcher of water or wine in the middle of the table is a point of convergence, a little sun that unites everyone present. But my wife can transform into a flower vase that pitcher pouring forth our drink at the table. Personal sensibility and imagination divert the object from its ordinary function and create a break in its meaning: it is no longer a recipient to contain liquid but one in which to display a carnation. This diversion and break link the object to an other realm of sensibility: imagination. This imagination is social: the carnation in the pitcher is also a metaphorical sun shared with everyone. In its perpetual movement back and forth between beauty and utility, pleasure and service, the work of craftsmanship teaches us lessons in sociability. At fiestas and ceremonies its radiation is still more intense and total. At fiestas the collectivity communes with itself, and this communion takes place through ritual objects that almost always are handmade objects. If fiesta is participation in primordial time---the collectivity literally shares out among its members, like sacred bread, the date being commemorated--craftsmanship is a sort of fiesta of the object: it transforms a utensil into a sign of participation.

 

 

 

   The artist of old wanted to be like his predecessors, to make himself worthy of them through imitation. The modern artist wants to be different; his homage to tradition is to deny it. When he seeks a tradition, he looks for it outside the West, in the art of primitives or other civilizations. Because they fall outside the tradition of the West, the archaism of the primitive and the antiquity of the Sumerian or Mayan object are paradoxical forms of novelty. The aesthetics of change requires that each work of art be new and different from those preceding it; novelty in turn implies the negation of immediate tradition. Tradition be comes a succession of abrupt breaks. The delirium of change also rules industrial production, though for different reasons: each new object, the result of a new process, ousts the object preceding it. The history of craftsmanship is not a succession of inventions or of unique (or supposedly unique) works. In reality, craftsmanship does not have a history, if we conceive of history as being an uninterrupted series of changes. There is not a break but a continuity between its past and its present. The modern artist has embarked upon the conquest of eternity, and the designer upon that of the future; the artisan allows himself to be vanquished by time. Traditional but not historical, linked to the past but bearing no date, the craft object teaches us to be wary of the mirages of history and the illusions of the future. The artisan seeks not to conquer time but to be one with its flow. Through repetitions that are imperceptible but real variations, his works endure--and hence survive the fashionable object.

 

   Industrial design tends to be impersonal. It is subject to the tyranny of function, and its beauty is rooted in that subjection. Yet functional beauty is fully realized only in geometry, and only in geometry are truth and beauty one and the same; in the arts strictly speaking, beauty is born of necessary infringement of the rules. Beauty---or rather art  is a violation of functionality. Taken together, these trespasses constitute what we call a style. The ideal of the designer, if he is consistent, ought to be the absence of style--forms reduced to their function--whereas the ideal of the artist should be a style that begins and ends in each of his works. (Perhaps this is what Mallarme and Joyce were aiming at.) No work of art, however, begins and ends in itself each is a language at once personal and collective: a style, a manner. Styles are communal. Every work of art is at once a deviation from and a confirmation of the style of its time and place: by violating the canons of that style, it validates them. Again, craftsmanship lies at a midpoint: like design, it is anonymous; like the work of art, it is a style. In contradistinction to design, the craft object is anonymous yet not impersonal; in contradistinction to the work of art, it brings out the collective nature of style and shows us that the vainglorious I of the artist is a we.

 

  Technology is international; its constructions, methods, and products are the same everywhere. By suppressing national and regional particularities and peculiarities, it impoverishes the world. By spreading all over the globe, technology has become the most powerful agent yet of historical entropy. The negative character of its action may be summed up in a phrase: it makes things uniform but does not unify. It levels the differences between cultures and national styles, but it does not do away with the rivalries and hatreds between peoples and states. After transforming rivals into identical twins, it arms both of them with the same weapons. The danger of technology does not lie solely in the death-dealing nature of many of its inventions, but in the fact that it threatens the very essence of the historical process. By putting an end to the diversity of societies and cultures, it puts an end to history itself. It is the amazing variety of societies that produces history: the clashes and encounters between different groups and cultures, between alien ideas and techniques. There is no doubt an analogy between the historical process and the twofold phenomenon that biologists call inbreeding and outbreeding, and that anthropologists call endogamy and exogamy. The great civilizations have been syntheses of different and contradictory cultures. Where a civilization has not been forced to confront the threat and undergo the stimulation of another civilization--as was the case in pre-Columbian America up until the sixteenth century—its destiny is to mark time and go in circles. The experience of the other is the secret of change--and of life.

 

   Modern technology has brought about a great many profound transformations, but all in the same direction and with the same import: the extirpation of the other. By leaving the aggressiveness of the human species intact and by making its members uniform, it has lent added strength to the causes tending toward its extinction. Craftsmanship, on the other hand, is not even national in scope: it is local. Heedless of boundaries and systems of government, it outlives republics and empires; the pottery, basketwork, and musical instruments seen in the frescoes of Bonampak have survived Mayan priests, Aztec warriors, colonial friars, and Mexican presidents. They will also survive American tourists. Craftsmen have no country; they are from their village. What is more, they are from their neighborhood and their family. Craftsmen defend us from the unification of technology and its geometrical deserts. By preserving differences, they safeguard the fecundity of history.

 

  The craftsman does not define himself in terms of either his nationality or his religion. He is not loyal to an idea or image but to a practice: his craft. A workshop is a social microcosm governed by laws of its own. The craftsman seldom works by himself, nor is his work exaggeratedly specialized as in industry. His workday is not ruled by a rigid time schedule but by a rhythm linked more to his body and sensibility than to the abstract necessities of production. As the craftsman works he may talk with others and sometimes sing. His boss is not an invisible bigwig but an old man who is his master and almost always a relative of his, or at least a neighbor. It is revealing that, despite its markedly collectivist character, the craft workshop has not served as a model for any of the great utopias of the West, From Campanella's City of the Sun to Fourier's Phalanstery to Marx's Communist society, the prototypes of the perfect social man have not been craftsmen but priest-sages, philosopher-gardeners, and the worker of the world in whom praxis and science are conjoined. Of course I do not believe that the craft workshop is an image of perfection. Yet I think that its very lack of perfection points to how we might humanize our society: its imperfection is that of men and women, not of systems. Because of its size and the number of persons who compose it, a community of craftsmen favors a democratic way of life; its organization is hierarchical but not authoritarian, and its hierarchy is founded not on power but on skill: masters, journeymen, apprentices. Finally, craftwork is an occupation that involves both play and creation. After giving us a lesson in sensibility and imagination, craftsmanship gives us one in politics.

 

 

 

  Until recently, it was commonly believed that crafts were doomed to disappear, industry having usurped their place. Precisely the opposite is happening today: for better or worse, handcrafted articles now play an appreciable role in world trade. The products of Afghanistan and the Sudan are sold in the same department stores as the newest creations straight from the Italian or Japanese industrial designer's board. This renaissance is most notable in the industrialized countries and affects both consumer and producer, in places where the concentration of industry is greatest--in Massachusetts, for example--we are witness to the resurrection of the old trades of potter, carpenter, glassblower; many young people sick and tired of modern society have returned to craftwork. In those countries dominated (at the wrong time in their development) by the fanaticism of industrialization, there has been a revival of craftwork. Often, national governments encourage handicrafts. This phenomenon is disturbing, insofar as government subsidies are usually forthcoming for commercial reasons. The craftsmen who today are the object of the paternalism of official planners were only yesterday threatened by projects for their country's modernization drawn up by the very same bureaucrats, intoxicated by economic theories learned in Moscow, London, or New York. Bureaucracies are the natural enemies of the craftsman, and whenever they set out to "orient" him, they blunt his sensibility, mutilate his imagination, and degrade his handiwork.

 

  The return of craftwork in the United States and Western Europe is one of the symptoms of the great change in contemporary sensibility. We find here yet another expression of the criticism of the abstract religion of progress and of the quantitative vision of humanity and nature. To experience the disillusionment of progress, it is necessary, to be sure, to have experienced progress. It is not likely that underdeveloped countries share this disillusionment, even if the ruinous nature of industrial super productivity is increasingly evident. Nobody learns from someone else's experience. Yet how can we not see what the belief in infinite progress has led to? If every civilization ends in a pile of ruins--a heap of broken statues, fallen columns, texts ripped to shreds--those of industrial society are doubly impressive, because they are immense and premature. Our ruins are beginning to be more awesome than our constructions and threaten to bury us alive. This is why the popularity of craftwork is a sign of health, as is the return to Thoreau and Blake or the rediscovery of Fourier. Our senses, our instinct, our imagination are always a step ahead of our reason. Criticism of our civilization began with the Romantic poets, at the very dawn of the industrial era. The poetry of the twentieth century took up the Romantic revolt and sank its roots even deeper, but only recently has this spiritual rebellion penetrated the minds and hearts of the majority. Modern society is beginning to doubt the very principles on which it was founded two centuries ago, and is trying to change course. Let us hope that it is not too late.

 

   The fate awaiting the work of art is the air-conditioned eternity of the museum; that awaiting the industrial object is the trash bin. Craftwork escapes the museum, and when it does end up in its showcases, it acquits itself with honor: rather than, a unique object, it is merely a sample. It is a captive example, not an idol. Craftsmanship does not go hand in hand with time, nor does it seek to conquer it. Experts periodically examine the inroads of death on art works: cracks in paintings, lines that have blurred, changes of color, the leprosy that eats away both the wall paintings of Ajanta and Leonardo's canvases. As a material thing, the work of art is not eternal. And as an idea? Ideas too grow old and die. But artists very often forget that their work holds the secret of true time: not empty eternity but the life of the instant. The work of art, moreover, has the power to fecundate human spirits and to be reborn, even as negation, in the works that are its descendants. For the industrial object there is no resurrection; it disappears as rapidly as it appears. If it left no trace whatsoever it would be truly perfect; unfortunately it has a body, and once it has ceased to be useful, it becomes mere refuse difficult to dispose of. The indecency of trash is no less pathetic than the indecency of the false eternity of the museum. Craftsmanship does not aspire to last for millennia, but at the same time it seeks no early death. It follows the course of time from day to day, it flows along with us, it very slowly wastes away, it neither looks for death nor denies it. It accepts it. Between the time without time of the museum and the accelerated time of technology, the work of craftsmanship is the pulse of human time. It is a useful object but also a handsome one; an object that endures through time yet meets its end and resigns itself to so doing; an object that is not unique like the work of art, but replaceable by another object similar yet not identical. Craftwork teaches us to die, and by so doing teaches us to live.

Cambridge, Mass., December 7, 1973

 

Thinking segment about thinking mode

The mode of thinking determine the fate.

 

A general thinking gives a person more ability to handle the whole situation.

A detailed thinking makes a person more focus on small and sensitive respects.

 

A bold and open thinking makes a person more quick ideas and fruitful thinkings and creations, but maybe too shallow.

A stubben or thoughtful one makes a person lack of creation but very stable and deep.

 

Then what's the relationship between thinking and charactoristic? The later one is the controller or supervisor of the former one? and the former one is the final tools used to deal with the physical environment?

性观念的十字路口

注意按摩师的话语，什么是性？还是文化使性器官脱离了身体本来的基本属性？做爱属于按摩的一部分？

 

 

 

巴厘岛spa疯狂体验记(转)

很早就听说巴厘岛的SPA很有名，于是这次和朋友特地跑到那里疯狂体验了一次，感觉真的象是做了一回QUEEN。现在我把这次SPA之旅与各位姐妹分享一下。巴厘岛有各色各样的SPA，但最重要是为了达到放松、舒适与滋养的目的。每一家SPA的装潢与强调主题都不一样.

 

今年五一我和一个姐妹一起来到巴厘岛，我们这次住在五星級的NUSA LEMBONGAN RESORT 酒店，这个酒店是在一个小岛上，整个岛上只有一家酒店，因此环境非常好。第二天傍晚，我们去体验了让人绝对迷恋的温柔JUNGLE SPA（SPA疗程3小時，1人1室），听说这SPA馆是专门针对女性顾客的，里面对女性的生殖保健有很多特别的疗程，都具有很好的保健作用，而且服务特别细致，基本什么都不用自己动手了，而且听导游说里面还有很特别的按摩。

 

和朋友怀着好奇心来到SPA馆，在一位服务员的带领下来到了一间很漂亮的房间，房间靠海的一面是用整面的玻璃做成的，所以可以看到外面的风景，服务员说这个玻璃墙外面是看不进来的，所以很安全的。再看房间里面的摆设，一个很大的按摩浴缸，两张按摩床，还有一张很舒服的沙发。里面的其她家具都是很古老的这种。反正是很漂亮啊，我也很难用语言描述。这时服务员叫我坐一下先喝杯巴里岛的特色花茶，有助于安神的。过了一会儿，一位按摩师进来了，穿一条白色的中裤，裤子很薄，可以看到里面什么也没有穿，她大概二十多岁，皮肤比较黑，但身材很好，看来是精心挑选过的，说话很轻，她问我可以帮你服务吗？我觉得挺满意的,接下来就开始我的SPA旅行了。她说我先帮你把衣服脱了，我感觉很奇怪，因为国内的 SPA都是自己脱衣服的。这时她叫我坐到那张沙发上，她拿了一条很大的浴巾把它盖在我的大腿上，我那天穿的是一条裙子。这时她先把我的鞋脱掉，给我穿上了一双绵的拖鞋，接着她把手洗了一下，擦干后伸到了浴巾里面，开始脱我的裙子，第一次被别人脱裙子挺难为情的，裙子很难脱下，但这个按摩师很体贴，也很有耐心，很小心的把我裙子褪了下来用衣架挂好，接着开始脱内裤了，脱的更加仔细，动作幅度很慢的，她把我的内裤卷好后放进一个袋子里。接下来，她开始脱我的衣服了，脱衣服就比较省力了，脱掉文胸后，她拿起浴巾把我包起来，叫我走到按摩床上趴着，她的每一个细节都很替顾客着想的。趴着后她把浴巾拿掉，她对我说先帮我洗身子。于是她打开热水，在我的身上慢慢的淋着，一边淋一边用手在我身上缓慢的搓着，我紧蹦的心也逐渐放松下来。全身淋湿后，她问我私处让她给我清洗，还是我自己洗，这时我已经什么都懒的动了，什么都由她去了，于是她开始用热水淋我的私处，很小心的把我的阴唇里面的褶皱都冲洗干净，第一次让别人给我洗这里感觉真的很奇怪，不过真的很舒服啊，这时我已经完全沉浸在享受之中了。接下来她开始给我涂沐浴乳，从上到下每一寸肌肤都搓的很仔细，这种滑滑的感觉真的很舒服。这时她开始在我的阴部摸沐浴乳了，不过换了一种，她说这是专门给女士洗阴部的，里面有独特的药效，有很好的保健作用，而且可以洗阴道里面的，没有刺激性。她很仔细的在阴部搓着，我自己洗的时候都没有这么仔细过。她拿了一把很柔软的刷子在阴唇褶皱上刷，连一丝缝隙都不放过，甚至连阴蒂的包皮这里都翻上去刷了，当然没有刷很长时间，因为这里很敏感。然后她问我阴道里面要不要洗，我觉得这个沐浴乳专门洗这里的应该洗一洗。她换了一把圆头的刷子，有点象毛笔，但柔软的多，慢慢的伸进了阴道里面，这种感觉跟做爱不同，没那么刺激，但很舒服。她洗的手法很特别，用螺旋型的慢慢伸进伸出。终于抹好了沐浴乳，开始冲洗，冲洗阴道时，她拿了一个一次性的塑料管，接上热水，慢慢插到阴道里面去，这个塑料管的头部象一个凹进去的球，水从下面流出，按摩师动作很轻，基本上感觉不到有东西在里面动，里面冲的很干净。洗完全身后，她拿毛巾把我全身擦了一下。接下来她问我要不要修饰一下阴部，她说修饰一下会更性感。我问她怎么修饰，她说先脱毛然后做阴唇和肛门漂红，做完后下面就象少女一样，很漂亮的。我当时真的很惊讶，怎么国外还有这种服务啊，不过觉得这个很不错，可以做一下。首先先脱毛，她问我阴唇上的毛要不要脱掉，我说也脱掉把，这样挺好看。脱毛很简单，先用小剪刀把我的阴毛修剪的短一点，然后用蜜蜡涂上后，用力一撕就很光了，这个蜜蜡竟然不用纸的，脱毛之后，我用手摸了一下阴唇，感觉真的很光滑啊，嫩嫩的。接下来她给我做漂红，她说这个药是这里的秘方，其他地方没有的，见效很快，但维持时间也比较短，大概只有几个星期的时间。她用手指挑了一点药在我的阴唇上很仔细的按摩着，另一只手在肛门上按摩，按了挺长时间的，最后用水冲洗，然后又换了另外一种药，不过这次不是用手按摩了，而是用一个会发热的按摩器按摩，这个按摩器形状很奇怪的，比较大，刚好可以裹住阴部和后面肛门，肛门部位有个圆锥体拇指大小，把它伸进肛门，由于涂了药膏因此很润滑，很容易进去。按摩师说肛门这里褶皱太多，只有撑开才有效果。打开开关后，一阵又麻又热的感觉从下面传来。按摩师说要按摩十五分钟左右。（在这里还要说件很丢脸的事情，按摩的时候，我的下面竟然湿润了，不过真的挺舒服的）。按摩结束后先用沐浴乳洗一下，冲干净后她拿镜子照给我看，我一看，真的不敢相信，我的阴部会这么漂亮，好象真的回到了十五六岁的时候，整个阴部都是淡粉红色的，尤其是小阴唇变的娇艳欲滴，就连肛门都变成粉红色了，真的太漂亮了，前面的阴毛修剪的很秀气，一个很美的三角，我想要是老公看到肯定要把我吃了，真的太美了，我推荐各位姐妹都去做一下真的有意想不到的效果啊。最后又全身冲洗了一遍，她给我擦干后，拿了一条白色的小短裤给我穿上，布料很光很滑，有点象在家里穿的睡裤，很宽松的，感觉很舒服。她叫我躺到另外一张按摩床上，接下来开始做精油按摩。

 

这时女按摩师问我要不要选择男的按摩师给我按摩，我一听吓一跳，问她为什么要选择男的按摩师。她说，这是他们这个SPA馆的特色，特别照顾女性生殖方面的健康的，按照当地的古法，精油按摩只有在异性按摩下才能达到最好的效果，异性按摩可以从心理上到生理上产生一种变化，会调节内分泌，使女性的皮肤得到很大的改善。她说男的按摩师都是经过严格专业培训的，都定期做过检查的，而且每天只按摩一位顾客，按摩前进行全身的清洁。当然这个项目也可以由女按摩师做的，但应该男的做感觉会比较好。我心里开始忧郁，感觉这样有点对不起老公，但是又很想试一下，感觉挺刺激的啊。在我矛盾的时候，这位按摩师又说，精油按摩阴部后，不论男的按还是女的按，由于刺激了阴部，都会充血的，最好的办法是达到高潮，使充血退下，达到彻底的放松，这个对身体非常有益。她说你不要不这个看成色情服务，它其实是一种保健治疗,而且男按摩师规定是不能射精的。我想想也对，于是最后在女按摩师的怂恿下就答应了由男的按摩师来服务，不过要求来一位最有经验的。

 

这时女按摩师出去了，过了一会儿一个男按摩师走了进来，不过我马上后悔死咯，一想到我只穿了一条这么透明的短裤趴在那里，我的脸立刻红了，更要命的是我根本没有想到男的按摩师看上去怎么这么老啊，真的很老都可以做我爸爸了，也许是外国人的缘故吧，看上去特别老。当时我想完了，怎么能让这么老的人来按摩呢，怎么办好呢。在我趴在那一动都不敢动的时候，按摩师说话了，他说自己在这里按摩按了二十多年了，现在四十岁了，是其他按摩师的师傅。我想怪不得这么老啊，不过我想他应该经验比较好吧，也就勉强答应了。不过还是很尴尬。这时他拿了一个很精致的盆子，先调按摩精油，我看到有好几种油混合在一起，然后加入热水。接下来开始按摩，他先脱掉自己的裤子，然后脱掉了内裤，我当时眼睛闭着什么都不敢看，当他说要开始了才睁开眼，一睁眼发现他下面一跟毛都没有，感觉象是脱毛脱过了，还挺干净，那东西很黑，没仔细看。这时他把油倒到我的身上，烫烫的精油淋下来感觉挺舒服的，尤其是淋在屁部的时候，感觉很温暖。暂时忘掉了自己正被一个男的服务。然后他开始按摩，先用手，把油在全身抹匀,抹的很仔细。他慢慢把手从后面伸向我的乳房，因为涂了油所以容易伸到前面去，他的手很大啊，我第一次被外人这样抚摩乳房，感觉很害羞，因此全身一动不动的，他的动作很小心，很温柔，不一会我就感到一种很塌实的感觉，就好象是小时候爸爸在抚摩我一样，很轻的摩擦，手指慢慢滑乳头,又麻又痒,我从来没有体验过这种感觉，真的太舒服了，很难用语言形容的。而且我感觉他的动作里没有一点色情的成分，只有完完全全的按摩，使精油被肌肤完全的吸收。我想这就是国外与国内的区别吧。这时他开始按我的屁股了，我现在发现手大真的是件很好事情，按摩的时候我的屁股就有种被包裹着的感觉，很舒服，他的手就象在揉面团,慢慢的手指通过股沟往下滑到阴部，终于开始按摩这里了，我当时好象有种很期待的感觉，还好没让我失望，感觉的确不一样，我刚脱掉了阴唇上的毛因此特别敏感，可以感觉到他手指上的细微动作，伴着保健作用的精油,我的阴部开始发烫,我当时人都快迷迷糊糊了，过了一会儿下面传来很温暖的感觉,很奇特,我一看,原来他正用舌头添我阴唇,这种感觉真的很美,很舒服,尤其是舌头伸进阴道的时候,因该说是钻进阴道,因为他很用力的，而且不住的吸,这时他问我想用什么方式达到高潮，我说随便吧，这时我感觉到一根很大的东西伸了进来，很充实，二十分钟后，我受不了了，因为已经连续两次高潮了,他真没有射,这个给我感觉很好,是真的被服务。这时他把我抱到放满花瓣的浴缸里，叫我休息一会，等会儿会有人来服务的。我当时感觉到了什么是真正的SPA，什么是真正的放松，整个人都飞起来了。最后女的服务员进来给我察干身体，赠送一条新的内裤，穿好衣服。巴厘岛真的名不虚传啊，各位胆大的姐妹可以去体验一下这种女皇般的体验。到那里后问导游，她们会带你去的。花费2000元人民币，我觉得很合算的。绝对真实体验，并非小说。

论食物与男女权利

今天看见两片奇文章，都是有关性的。深感同意，。。此篇文风相当惹人喜爱，深入浅出，logos\pathos\ethos兼备，令人爱不释手。

 

看客们看出感觉来了就为这个同学叫个好。援引如下：

 

 

 

恐怖的性能力：利比亚的中国医生与阿拉伯老人
  
 
食者性也，性者食也？中国人非常熟悉这句话，但是如果问中国人的性能力究竟是如何？估计很多人回答不上来，因为中国人不是在大庭广众之下议论性问题的民族。作为写性，食品与贤惠的杂文，我先准备从一个故事开始讲述我的观点。

故事：一个利比亚的中国医生与一位阿拉伯老人

这个故事是我在80年代看的故事，当时因为在中国各大学的外国留学生里，普遍存在令中国人恨的招妓女现象，天津大学甚至发生过外国留学生和中国学生的因这个问题引起的摩擦，所以我记忆的非常深刻而又清楚。

这个故事是这样的。

有一个中国医生随利比亚的工程建设团去利比亚(他是做为随团医生)呆了几年，这个医生的主要职责当然是给中国的工程团人员治病和防病。但是因为他的医术比较高明，再着工程团的人数不算太多，所以他有很多闲暇时间和精力治疗利比亚人的病。

有一天一个阿拉伯老人跑过来找这个医生，说自己得了一种病，恳切地求他给自己治疗。这位中国医生看他的身体和气色都很好，只不过是眉头紧缩，只是心理很苦恼，所以问他，到底得了什么病这样让他苦恼？这位老人一开始有些不好意思，但是在医生的热情关心下，他终于说出来了他的病，他说：自己和自己的老伴原来一天平均过3次性生活，很有规律的，但是最近几个月突然不行了，现在每天只有一次。他说自己好象得了阳痿病，听说中国的中医和中药治疗这种病很高明，所以恳求他治疗自己的阳痿病。

第一次接触阿拉伯人的性问题的这位中国医生这一下惊呆了，他想自己才50多岁，在家里时跟自己老伴也就一个月一次过性生活就不错了。而且老伴去年因为来了更年期，所以将近一年多都没有过性生活，关于中国人的性生活这个医生还是十分了解的。可是这个阿拉伯老人，已经60多岁了每天都过性生活，而且每天一次他还觉得自己得了阳痿病。他有些不信任地问起了他们的人们是怎样过性生活。

阿拉伯老人说：他是50岁以后才变成一天3次性生活的。他说，50岁以前一天5次性生活是很正常的。他们都这样，他的情况在以前是很普通的，就是现在一天才一次就很不正常了，他说他很苦恼，觉得自己跟别人比不是男人，所以很恳切希望这位高明的中国大夫医治好他的病，让他恢复以前的水平和能力。

这位中国大夫一看他的表情和态度，半心半疑地给他开了几服药，让他回去吃试一试。过了一个月以后，这位阿拉伯老人高兴地找他给他竖一个大拇指，满口称赞他和中国的高明医术。他告诉医生，他又恢复了以前的水平--一天3次性生活。这位医生深感震惊，他要开始研究阿拉伯人的性和性能力，从此这位医生开始了世界各民族的性能力的研究。

他发现：阿拉伯男人的性能力确实很强，那位老人说的真没有错误。阿拉伯男子在20岁到40岁的时候一天5次的性生活很普遍，40到50岁左右可能下降为4到5次，50岁到60岁为一天3 到4次，60岁以后一天3次，80岁的老人也有很多是每天都有1次以上的性生活。他们的性能力确实比中国人强多了。

但是阿拉伯女人的性能力可是令人以外的发现不像他们的男人那么强，他发现，阿拉伯女人的性能力虽然比中国女人强，一天平均一次是没有什么问题，但是一天2次以上的话她们的娇嫩的身体很难承受的住每天平均2次以上的性生活。

这时候，这位中国医生才发现阿拉伯人的法律和古兰经里规定的：一个阿拉伯男人可以娶4个女人是有一定的性学道理的。大体上也就4个女人才能满足一个比较正常的阿拉伯男人的性欲。一个阿拉伯男人一天平均5次，他的4个老婆每天一个人一次，然后有一个比较有性能力的女人一天两次，这样就可以满足男人的性要求。

他还研究发现，除了阿拉伯人男人以外，性能力第二强的是黑人，(黑人中西非和中非黑人的能力很强，其次是南非和东非黑人，)第三强的是白人，(白人中依次是北欧人，西欧人、东欧人和南欧人，)最后是亚洲黄种人，(黄种人中中亚人厉害，，南亚人和东南亚人其次，东亚人排最后，东亚人中日本人厉害，其次是韩国人)最后的最后是中国男人。

他后来研究了一下宗族的性能力和体格以及饮食的关系，他发现饮食和性能力有很大的关系：食物以牛羊肉为主的民族和宗族的男人的性能力最强，肉食为主粮食为补的民族次之，粮食(植物)为主的民族的性能力最差。其实，性能力的决定因素不仅有食物种类，体格因素，还有饮食习惯以及文化传统和社会意识形态，更有他们的经济活动有关。如果一个男人每天都进行很繁重的工作很长时间，而且他的食物不能满足正常的需要的话，他的性能力会大大受到影响。   
 
主题：2、饮食影响性能力
  
 
那么性能力是什么呢？男人的性能力和女人的性能力如何界定？

男人的性能力从生理上来说是，在他的一生中产生的精子的总数目，排出的精子的总数，产生和排出精子的速率既每天(或每周)产生的精子的数量，他的雄性激素的水平，还有性活动的次数，性活动进行的时间长短，通过性活动达到身体的最佳状态等等。男人的性能力从心理上来说是，男人的性欲的强度既性冲动产生时的心理强度，性冲动的频度(既每天的次数)，以及经过多少次和多长时间的性活动时，他满足自己的性欲望。从而达到性活动以后心身的舒坦和精力的恢复和调整到最佳程度，还有性能力能达到的心理结构的建构和升华等等。

还有从女人的角度看，男人多大程度地满足女人的性欲望，能让女人达到高潮，能让女人舒坦快乐，以及让女人快乐幸福和性活动以后身体的舒展和精力充沛，以及让女人更爱男人，更爱孩子和家人等等。

会心理和社会学的角度看，他的性能力包含对夫妻之间的爱情的贡献和家庭生活的美满程度，休息和恢复精力从而达到为家庭和社会创造物质和精神财富的能力，通过家庭的美满幸福和稳定来做出对社会幸福和稳定的贡献，等等。

女人的性能力呢？相应地：从生理上来说：在她的一生中产生的卵子的总数目(这个是在女人的胎儿时期已经确定的，但是不同的女人，数目有所差别)，排出的卵子的总数，产生和排出卵子的速率既每月产生的卵子的数量(大部分女人是每个月一个，偶尔有多排卵的女人)，他的雌性激素的水平(包括孕激素的水平)，还有性活动的次数，性活动进行的时间长短，通过性活动达到身体的最佳状态等等。

女人的性能力从心理上来说是，女人的性欲的强度既性冲动产生时的心理强度，性冲动的频度(既每天的次数)，以及经过多少次和多长时间的性活动时，她达到一次或几次高潮，以便满足自己的性欲望。从而达到性活动以后心身的舒坦和精力的恢复和调整到最佳程度，还有性活动能达到的心理结构的建构和升华等等。还有从男人的角度看，女人多大程度地满足男人的性欲望，能让男人达到高潮，能让男人舒坦快乐，以及让男人快乐幸福和性活动以后身体的舒展和精力充沛，以及让男人更爱女人，更爱孩子和家人等等。

还有从社会心理和社会学的角度看，她的性能力包含对夫妻之间的爱情的贡献和家庭生活的美满程度，休息和恢复精力从而达到为家庭和社会创造物质和精神财富的能力，通过家庭的美满幸福和稳定来做出对社会幸福和稳定的贡献，等等。

现在再来研究一下性与食物的关系，很显然食物与性有明显的相关关系，长期的肉食特别是牛羊肉为主要食物的民族和种族，不仅他们的胃已经适应了对肉食的消化，而且也适应了动物体内的性激素，再有他们的体液和细胞组织里有很多生产精子和性激素的养料，而这些在''食草动物''身上是比较难以获得的。

从化学关系来说也是，从动物蛋白质到氨基酸是一次消化和吸收过程，而吃了糖类的物种就要通过体内的化学变化来把消化吸收的糖类转变成氨基酸以后，才能合成性激素和生产精子所需要的蛋白质，因此以粮食为主要食物的宗族和民族的体液和细胞里不会有很多吸收来的能制造性激素和蛋白质的氨基酸，他们必须耗费能量和时间来先制造必须的氨基酸，如果没有制造必要的氨基酸所需要的微量元素的话，制造不出很多氨基酸，所以性能力低下是有生物化学根据的。

还有饮食习惯，全部的动物食物如果都是以全部煮烂的状态食用和吸收的话--就如同中国的饮食习惯，动物体内的很多营养会遭到很多破坏，特别是鱼类和有些动物的特殊器官，不应该煮的太烂吃，这个如同把人参炖烂了再吃，会破坏很多药效，还有很多食物最好是吃原生的和野生的，养殖的动植物虽然有热量，但不一定有人体必须的微量元素，就如同山参和养参，它们的效果还是有很多差别。

日本人的食物里有很多鱼类，特别是生鱼片是他们很爱吃的食物，也许这一点也能解释他们的性能力强的原因之一。还有饮水习惯，中国人饮用热水有几千年的习惯了，也许可能是因为黄河的水不烧开会不利于卫生也没法饮用，但是烧开的水里缺少很多溶解状态的微量元素，而且开水比起天然水，水分子结构发生了变化，开水比自然水少很多有利于体内的生物化学变化过程所需要的长直链水分子，这些也许都有助于说明：为什么中国妇女的坐月子时间在世界各民族和种族里是最长的。在坐月子的一个月里中国妇女的性生活次数是世界上各个民族中最少的，欧美和别的很多国家的妇女生孩子以后过不了几天坐月子就结束(甚至有的民族和宗族根本没有坐月子的概念，她们只休息一天或两天就恢复正常的生活)，然后过正常的夫妻性生活。

实际上饮食不仅对人的性能力中，对男性的，产生的精子的总数目，排出的精子的总数，产生和排出精子的速率既每天(或每周)产生的精子的数量，以及他的雄性激素的水平起作用，而且对性活动的次数，性活动进行的时间长短施加影响。比如，日本人，日本男人的性活动特点是次数多，但是每次的时间很短，这个也许和他们的吃鱼习惯有关，他们的持久力比吃牛羊肉甚至是吃猪肉的民族还差一些。

至于女人的性能力和饮食有什么特殊关联，现在还没有很多资料可共分析，但是从阿拉伯人的性特点来看，牛羊肉为主的主食好像对女人的作用不像对男性那么明显(要不阿拉伯女人也应该跟她们的男人一样厉害)，但是好像鹿，特别是鹿茸和鹿胎盘对女人的作用很大，中国人很多都知道鹿茸和鹿胎盘对女性的性和怀孕的作用，但是鹿茸和鹿胎盘对雌性激素起作用还是对孕激素起作用现在还不太清楚，不过对怀孕的影响好像很明显，但是无论如何女人的孕激素对她们的性活动起很大的作用，这是不争的事实。

这个也许能解释北欧的以前长期驯化养殖和食用鹿的民族--比如瑞典和挪威女人的性能力为什么那么强。瑞典的妇女听说是一个女人平均有9个性伴侣，而且瑞典男人是很出名的 ''妻管严''和''贤内助''。在东亚，中国男人是最出名的''妻管严''和''''好丈夫''，而日本男人是最出名的男子汉大丈夫主义者。

其实，阿拉伯人才是最出名的大丈夫主义者，不仅是古兰经，实际生活中阿拉伯女人是最不开放的民族，看现在她们还是从头蒙到脚，而且阿拉伯女人不用看就知道是最贤惠的民族，对丈夫百依百顺，没有怨言地受他们任何摆布。也许，女权主义者很不满意阿拉伯女人的种种表现，但是如果一群女权主义者如果都嫁给阿拉伯男人的话，而且实行一夫一妻制，则估计大部分女人可能都改变她们的女权主义立场，而且变的非常贤惠，因为性活动直接产生一种心理和行为作用--那就是，一旦女人获得了极大的性满足，她们的身体和心里都产生很强烈的要为男人服务的冲动和心身状态，世界上女人最贤惠的民族实际上也是她们获得性满足最多最强的民族。

人的性满足的内容里也包含男人的基本的性满足，如果女人完全满足了自己的性需要，而男人满足不了基本的性需要，则女人的心理会产生愧疚和不安稳、不安定心理和心里紧张感，这种心理紧张感的排泄途径里有一条途径是干活，为男人服务。瑞典男人很情愿地为女人服务也是因为他们有这样的内在冲动和动力，中国男人的情形也类似。我发现，一旦中国女人跟别的民族的男人结婚，也过不了多长时间也会很自然地变的贤惠，即使她原先跟中国人生活过一段婚姻生活，在和中国男人的婚姻生活中她原先是那么地不贤惠和飞扬跋扈，但是她一旦嫁给比她性能力强的男人，她也80%以上很自然地变成贤妻良母。

男女的性能力和饮食中植物的种类也有关系，以小麦或大麦为主食的民族和以大米为主食的民族，他们虽然普遍地，性能力比肉食甚至是奶食为主食的民族差，但是也有一些细微的差别。食用玉米和高粱米也许可能对男人更有利？反正植物食物的影响没有动物食物那么明显，动物食物里猪肉的作用可能比牛羊肉或鹿肉相比不太明显，但是也许对女人可能更有利一些。

性能力和社会的文化和意识形态也有很明显的关系，文化和意识形态首先是通过人的心理结构和心理作用对性活动施加影响，其次是通过强制性和半强制性的法律和道德来约束人的性活动。

男人的随随便便的像找妓##女一样的性活动，首先要经过他心理的道德感和良心的谴责，这种性活动进行以后他还要承受愧疚和自我谴责，这些都是心理结构里的道德和良心起作用的结果。德行良好的男人，他们的性冲动战胜不了道德和良心的心理力量，所以他们甘愿遵守合法合情合理的性活动模式，而且他们也往往成为现在社会里最典型的性活动模式秩序和性文化的拥护者。

有些男人的性能力比自己的女人相差比较大，那时候如果他不能正确地认识性的本质和特性以及活动规律的话，他有可能变成比较极端的或神经质似的道德维护主义者，因为他有一些奇怪的心理需要 --他要排泄他的因为满足不了自己的女人而产生的心理愧疚和不安稳、不安定心理和心里紧张感，只不过他选择排泄的方式有些极端而已。大部分满足不了自己女人的性要求的男人会选择为女人或为家庭以及为社会服务的方式，他要通过别的方式来满足女人的需要，况且女人的需要也多种多样，比如安逸，金钱，地位，以及威望等女人的需要。女人拥有金钱，地位和威望的话，不仅她的心理发展会变的很均衡而且她的性心理也变的高质量和高级化，女人的人格也相应地发展。

但是女人如果长期得不到性满足的话，她的心理发展会受到严重的影响，甚至是心理变形和奇变。比如《水浒》里的潘金莲，她的性能力本来就很强，她还偏偏嫁了一个性无能的武大郎，武大郎满足不了她的哪怕一点点的性需要，所以潘金莲一开始是崇敬和幻想武二郎--武松能给她以满足，但是她的这一要求遭到拒绝之后，她反而求助于西门庆。当然西门庆看出来了，她的需求和被武二郎(她是被自己的性压抑驱使而被动的心理变化，而武松是纯无意识的)调起来的她的欲望。潘金莲需要得到她正常的(有些过强的)性满足，而西门庆要花花，所以他们的故事发生了，难以置信的是潘金莲已经压抑的很严重而心理有些变态，她不惜伤害武大郎的生存权利来满足自己的需要，所以在那个旧社会她的结局是很悲惨的。

现在的妇女，如果碰到这种情况多半(80%以上)会选择离婚，社会也不阻碍她们的这种性要求，但是社会不提倡这种需要的满足是做人的最高原则，因为社会有社会自身的需要。社会需要稳定、安定和正常的社会生活和社会发展秩序，因为：社会保障了这些社会特点，社会才能给人们提供衣食住行，没有社会提供的衣食住行的社会正常秩序，不会有人们安逸的性生活和性生活的条件。但是社会还不能过分地强调社会特性，从而压制人的特性。人的特性被压抑的太过分的话，反过来会影响社会的稳定，社会的安定会受到很大的冲击，因此人性和社会特性之间要保持一定的和谐关系，当然和谐的程度越高越好。但是和谐的高级程度不是目的，只是手段，人类和社会只是利用这个手段满足人的正当需要才是根本和目的。

中国人的性能力比较弱，也和中国社会的生活方式和意识形态的历史有关。中国的统治阶级为了强调自己的利益，过分强调了为社会为家庭服务的功能，压制了性，建立和树立了中国似的伦理道德观念，也培养了中国人的性心理结构和性生理特点，当然地缘和饮食的来源和结构是决定性的内因，但是中国社会的生活方式和意识形态确实起了不少外因的作用。实际也没有必要比谁的性能力强或弱，只要夫妻双方都获得了性和各种正当和正常的需要的满足就是好，当然强的性能力也是人的能力，也可以创造人的幸福，价值和社会的财富。