Couch of Ages: Marvelous Modernism

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Back to Basics

Modernism was a wide-ranging philosophical movement that gained steam amidst the collective state of shock and horror of the post-WWI landscape. Adherents believed that the works (and institutions) of old had grown too big and bloated for their britches. For the art and design world, those elaborate pre-war designs had to go.

Out were the fancy angel carvings and gilded frames. Simplicity and symmetry were in. Pieces that went out of their way to scream “Look at me! I’m art!” were replaced by works that focused on stark realism or sought to deconstruct or defy the very idea of art.

Naturally, this movement changed the way people designed and thought about couches. Instead of forcing beauty through carvings and paintings, the modernist couch let the individual elements speak for themselves. That meant monochromatic colors and simple shapes.

Visual appeal was revered as just another part of the whole. The invention of newer and better materials like laminated plywood, plastics, and fiberglass encouraged this mindset, allowing modernist designers to make their ideas a reality. People came to realize that a couch didn’t have to look like the Sistine Chapel ceiling to be a crowd pleaser. Form and function alone were enough.

A plain couch was just fine if it was comfortable to sit on and complimented the rest of the room. The Davenport, sectional couch, and the divan all came from this philosophy. So, when you see a comfy couch that looks great without begging to be noticed, thank the modernists. And take a load off.

 

Sometimes you’ve just got to relax and have a bit of fun. Stay tuned for more from the Couch of Ages blog series and please, feel free to email us if there’s something you’d like to see covered in this space. Have a great day and try to find a bit of time to relax.  

For more about CouchDB visit couchdb.org or follow us on Twitter at @couchdb. 

Image credit: eBay.co.uk

CouchDB as a Database Solution – Part 2

The CouchDB Developer interviews have been a great opportunity to get an inside track on CouchDB. One of our primary interview questions pertained to the top benefits of using CouchDB as a database solution.
After compiling our survey results to date, the number one slot went easily to sync, with replication coming in a quick second. Tailing these were CouchDB’s built-in web interface and its versatile secondary indexing capabilities.

In our interview with Nick Vatamaniuc, he shared the value of being able to open Fauxton and inspect, query and modify data, stating it is a powerful and useful feature.  He went on to explain that he can speed up product development, for example by letting a front end developer populate the database by hand; with some “mock” data and a few mouse clicks they can refine their design. He stated that it can also help in production when something isn’t working quite right and there is a need to see the state in the database, noting that for newcomers this makes it easy to learn and experiment.

Joan Touzet was one of the developers who felt that CouchDB’s powerful and versatile secondary indexing capabilities was worth a mention. “Yeah, it’s a mouthful, but you can do all sorts of interesting things.” She went on to state that for simple indexing, CouchDB has the Mango library in 2.0 and if you want to get more complex, you can write a JavaScript Map/Reduce function. In addition, there are open source add-ons for full-text search and robust geo indexing, too. Joan wrapped it up by stating that she’s yet to find a kind of indexing that she’s been unable to do when having such tools at her disposal.

Stay tuned to learn more developer details on the benefits of using CouchDB as a database solution.

 

We look forward to overviewing some additional benefits to those mentioned here. If you’d like to add a benefit to our list or there’s something particular you’d like to see covered on the CouchDB blog, we would love to accommodate. Email us!

For more about CouchDB visit couchdb.apache.org or follow us on Twitter at @couchdb.