Wabi-Sabi

Dom came over for the weekend, and brought me a present - a lovely book called Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. From the back cover:

Wabi-sabi is the quintessentail Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional…

Interestingly, I first came across the term in the source code of some wiki software (explaining that wikis are very wabi-sabi), and it is by no means a stretch of the imagination to apply the ideas to software, agile development and adaptive design.

I’ve been getting into the ideas behind Japanese architecture a bit recently too, so it should be a treat - looking forward to the read ahead. Thanks Dom!

— 31 Oct 2005