Medieval Barns

Well after discovering the wonder that is 4oD in a world where I only have five channels on my TV - which mainly have nothing on worth watching so rarely bother even turning the TV on - I decided to start watching Grand Designs from episode 1. As an interior design graduate I did undergo a great shiricking (no I don't know how to spell that) from the rest of my class for not watching Grand Designs. It's ironic that whilst I was actually studying design I didn't have the time to watch programs about design. Anyway, in ep1 Kevin McLeod said this phrase "medieval english barn" which I thought sounded amazing at the time, so I found some amazing pictures:

Isn't it nice that these constructions are so beautiful as what they are not concealing their make-up? These days we often don't get to see things in such a straightforward way. We are so guarded from reality that it took an embarrassing amount of explanation to reveal the construction of a door frame to me. Why is so much concealed now? There is so much that we don't have to do for ourselves anymore - like build homes or make furniture or find a way to illuminate a room.

"They had learned to speak and had so won their first victory...Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed onto the next, so that each age could benefit from those who had gone before" 2001: a space odyssey, p39

But has the power of word-of-mouth not become a hindrance too? So those who ask or are perceived as needing the knowledge will be enlightened but for those who don't even perceive that they are missing something will never appreciate the miracle of what humanity is really capable of. Ok, so maybe these folk could be tarred as simply uninquisitive folk or unobservant but my main point here is that as the medieval barns highlight, the complexity of what we are capable of can be unembellished and still be beautiful.

I don't know if that made an awful lot of sense but once I again I embarked upon something that I started on a different day from which I finished it so it may be a lot of exhausted gobbledegook. And I have just discovered that gobbledegook is actually a word with a correct way to spell it.

Pictures from google images and McCurdy&Co. who constructed The Globe Theatre