A wealth of information, ideas and links from a somewhat dark interpretation of our energy future. Dystopia or realism?
http://observersroom.designobserver.com/johnthackara/post/design-in-the-light-of-dark-energy/32668/
How LA and Phoenix get their water, and at what cost.
http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the-very-hungry-city/32058/#.Tygk8z
"Trees have roots; I have legs. And believe me, that is a huge advantage."
George Steiner
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/1320071-george-steiner-certain-idea-knowledge
German style masonry heater and its creators, Mario and Jessica, installed at the Fischer Cottage. This is true artistry, and perfectly contextual - a stove that burns scrap wood in the middle of a cottonwood grove!
Mark Twain on the Kachelofen: http://www.kachelofen-usa.com/twain.htm
Jessica's web site: http://www.stonehousepottery.com/kachelofen.html
;)
Architecture is....
"...the action of form in landscape upon the precision of experience"
You can read the essay, one in an excellent series of three by David Heymann, here:http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-mound-in-the-wood-on-sculpture-and-architecture/31248/
As architects, we operate by engaging with the precision of experience (if we operate at all). The lobby at the Thornburg Campus illustrates the possibilities, with its many forms and surfaces controlled to the highest degree. An interesting note on this building is that Legorreta insisted there be no potted plants allowed inside the building (cut flowers are ok), so as not to blur the boundary. Landscape and natural light are everywhere, captured by the building's form, modulated by the very specific locations and shapes of windows, but they are never allowed to muddy the precision of the interior.
;)
Mud plaster going on over the strawbales at the Fischer Cottage. The mud will allow the bales to breath to the outside, while cement plaster is used around the base to shed any water that splashes from the ground. The richly colored earth, excavated nearby, is a Northern New Mexico bonus!
One other feature is visible in this photo: the sloped eave and front gable of the roof. It gives an informal, expressive quality to the roof, in keeping with the scale and setting. But once the gutters are on, it also gets the water moving quickly to the back and away from of the house, where it will be collected in rain barrels for irrigating.
A spot on article on the central issue of the architecture profession: how do we practice?
http://archinect.com/features/article/14049321/a-spoonful-of-sugar-helps-the-medicine-go-down
This carport was designed as the simplest of additions. First, a cantilevered steel and wood structure was used; it did not use the existing house for support, but allowed the joint between the wall and new roof to be closed in. The barkboard fence provides enclosure and wind protection at the ground, without paying for walls or foundations. The roof is designed to fit under the existing windows and eaves, but also to meet the 2 in 12 minimum pitch for the roof system. Simple, economical, discrete.
Shown here under construction is the Fischer Cottage, a tiny 2 story house in a cottonwood grove along the Chama River. How small is it? It really depends how you measure. The exterior footprint is about 800 sf, but because it has strawbale walls 22" thick, the usable interior space (if you don't count window seats and built in bookshelves and other uses of the thick wall) is closer to 600 sf. But then there's the upstairs: over 400 sf of additional space with decent headroom. A galley kitchen, combined living and sleeping space and storage under eaves, stairs, and in the thick walls themselves make this a pretty luxurious little cottage. The owners assessment as it is going up? "It's huge!".
Some wisdom about development in our current situation, from an interview with landscape architect Chris Reed:
In fact, I think the current strain on resources actually spurs innovation. Public agencies can no longer afford projects that respond to only a discrete set of goals. Projects must now do multiple things; they've got to meet many goals simultaneously. In this sense it's actually easier for us to hybridize agendas — to mix infrastructure, landscape, urbanism, ecology — because in this way we can create efficiencies and cost savings in both the short and long term. Landscapes that perform utilitarian or ecological functions — that process stormwater, produce energy, grow food, and so on — and that also create new types of civic space and generate revenues, or at least set up robust frameworks for economic development, are likely to gain both popular and political support.
I am convinced that Landscape Urbanism is the antidote for that sinking, theme park cum ghost town feeling you get when you visit a New Urbanist development. Read the complete interview here:
http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-optimism-chris-reed-on-landscape-urbanism/29558/
A fantastic tone poem on a key question of sustainability: where should I live?
http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the-road-to-exurbia/29478/#.TmeNFJ_uLnQ.mailto
Places Journal has, in my opinion, the best thinking on urbanism on the web.
It was not my idea. But when I left my job to start my own practice, there it was; the Lucy booth redefined. John Morefield had built a practice in the ruins of the recession with it, and he was making his idea available to others. Perfect.
I built a booth and set it up at my local market, and I am now in my second season. It has become a tool for building community. The booth is a curiosity and the people who stop by are often just killing time. But as a means to talk about architecture, local development, and the future of our community, it is very prolific. One part talk, two parts listen, and we all love to vent. Now I volunteer more, and I go to a lot more planning meetings locally. I often use the booth to distribute information regarding initiatives in our area so people don't feel caught out, i.e. powerless. Then I buy locally grown food with the nickles. Perfect.
Here is John's story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/garden/21architects.htmlSo
;)
This is a house in Santa Fe that I have been involved with for many years. There is evidence that the older adobe structure was created in several stages, but when I arrived on the scene it consisted of a single story volume with small adobe rooms on two levels, and a shed addition on the back containing a bathroom and an additional bedroom. Since then, we have opened up the interior walls to maximize the interior space, added a second story with a deck, punched several new windows into the shed at the back, and now, finally, we are doing the sun room which is shown here under construction. A final color coat of stucco will unify all the parts, and we will probably extend the deck around the back over the old shed eventually (there are great views). But this house has the kind of integrity that gradual, well thought out construction based on need produces. This look of accretion is often sought after in residential design, but here is the real deal in perhaps 7 or 8 phases. Tough to imitate, and why would you want to? Just start small and build as needed.
The preferred site, in the historical flood plane of the Chama River, required a special floating foundation held together with post tensioned steel rods. This in essence allows the earth to move and flow around the building without endangering its stability. We are thinking in geological time once again.
Founding a building is always a major event. It is an attempt to fix something in a location on the changeable earths crust for a long, long time. To do this we create a series of rifts in the earth, then fill them with our best approximation of bedrock, i.e., reinforced concrete. The final ingredient is a dash of genuine hope. You get one shot; there aren't second chances with this part of the process. Major.
Community First Bank, before and after, with Dekker Perich SabatiniBringing a building back to its former glory is a unique pleasure, especially when the building can be adapted to a modern use that ensures its future. This was the case with the Community First Bank shown here, adapted from the former Murphy's Drugstore Building in Las Vegas, NM, it is a focal point once again.
What do we do with historic properties that need restoration? The answer I favor is usually "restore in kind", which I first heard from my Uncle Jim, an architect with the City of New York. This approach means rotted wood is replaced with re-milled moldings to match existing; steel storefront is adapted for double glazed windows; repainting matches the period as best we can; the brick gets repointed and rebuilt as required. History is held dear where it can be, and new components are never acceptable where they are a downgrade.
Restore in kind makes most decisions pretty easy, but the gray areas are still there. How old before a building becomes historic? What if we can make it better? What if we cannot afford real tin moldings? How do we deal with a change in use? Fortunately most of these questions are answered here:
http://www.nps.gov/hps/tps/standguide/
I favor this approach for all existing building really, not just for historic properties. Or at least it's a good place to start. We shouldn't build new what we can adapt; our history is too dear.
;)
The Thornburg Campus, with Ricardo Legorreta and D/P/SWho designed that?
Design is an iterative process; it happens through time, in layers of decision and reflection. If a building can be said to have an author (and not all buildings can), it is the one who narrates the building's story. While others may spend more hours, the author inscribes the project with an identity by describing it in words and images to others, who than carry out that vision and, hopefully, enhance it. The success of the project is often dependant on how persistently that initial vision is described by its author and his successors.
Working with Ricardo Legorreta and his team, there was an unimpeachable will to clarify the vision, and there was always room for improvement. This is how a project succeeds, and how you get a great architectural moment with real authority, like the one shown here.
Brett Frauenglass
An interesting discussion on Authority:
http://places.designobserver.com/feature/on-architecture-and-authorship/30118/
"....I think one has to understand that the question of architectural authorship is related to questions of authority and value. Since the rise of connoisseurship in the 19th century, authentication, or the establishment of the author, has been the primary mode of assigning economic value to works of art. Realtors can price buildings by the square foot and by location, but the qualities that make a building architecture are very difficult to price." Jorge Otero-Pailos
Layers of meaning; layers of space.
Shown here 
Entry to the Smith Houseis the entry to the Smith House, completed in 2009. The other Smith House, designed by Richard Meier in 1965, was a 2 story homage to mankind's "shifting outlook". That house explored spatial layering as an abstract response to its site overlooking the endless horizon of Long Island Sound.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Smith_House.html
This Smith House applies strategies from its namesake in a different context, surfing the crest of an alluvial fan as it pours down from the Rockies to fill the basin below (think geological time here). Spatial layering resists this percieved movement, and also separates the public spaces from private ones. Delayed discovery, be it of an ocean or a monumental basin and range landscape, offers a moment of the sublime in each context.
Rear portal of the Smith HouseThe built and the not yet.
As I was contemplating my future life as an architect while traveling in the Sahara desert, I looked at a huge sand dune on the edge of a small village and commented to my companions that it would be an amazing setting for Architecture (note the capital A). One of them, a woman from Sweden, turned to me and said "Just like a man! You see a beautiful fluid landscape and think, 'how can I make it square?'". I have since reviewed that impulse countless times and now look at the not-built as of equal importance to the built.