Topic

architecture

A collection of 157 issues

Thursday, March 27th. The shoes I wore to meet the architect....

The wind of the Olympic Mountains has no power over it; the heavy and rigid trunks of this tree defy the power of the storm. It is always silent, no matter if the wind roars in canons and uproots pines and firs; or if the day is calm and full

On starchitects, domestic violence, and the Stockholm Syndrome.

Le Corbusier. Frank Lloyd Wright. Louis Kahn. Great architects. Lauded visionaries. Master womanizers and manipulators. The film “My Architect”, a documentary about the life of Louis Kahn, provides a disheartening case-in-point. The film summarizes Kahn’s life: immigrating to the US from Estonia as a five-year old, he grew up

Architecture and writing rooms.

The table is dark wood with a walnut swirl, 5-6 feet in diameter. It’s nestled in the southeast corner near the window facing Galer Street, holding court with seven wooden chairs on a matching wooden floor. There are always at least two people there when I arrive. The regulars.

On architecture, skeuomorphism, and "peopled" spaces.

Architect William J. Hirsch Jr, in his book Designing Your Perfect House, expounds on the necessity of the artisanal and the handmade in “peopling” spaces: …the inclusion of materials that indicate a human hand contributed to [peopled spaces]. Hardwood floors, tiles, carved wooden details, hammered metal door handles, and fieldstone

Worthy architecture.

originally uploaded by Neylano. "A development which spoils ten square miles of countryside will be the work of a few people neither particularly sinful nor malevolent. They may be called Derek or Malcolm, Hubert or Shigeru, they may love golf and animals, and yet, in a few weeks, they

Wednesday, June 3. The shoes I wore to meet the architect.

My house is not a piece of software. It is not a computer or an application program. But it is a legacy system. An architectural program designed for an outdated lifestyle. It is a machine designed for a life I do not live. “In computing, a legacy system is an

Tuesday, September 16th. The shoes I wore to meet the architect....

Everything I ever needed to know about love and yearning I learned from loving books. Meeting for the first time at Elliott Bay over coffee. The book’s beautiful cover: type and image seducing me. Its pages like hands of a new lover to touch and caress slowly, each turn

A Line in the Sand.

From a recent article in the New York Times, summarizing architecture’s role in creating the wall serving to cordon off the West Bank: In certain respects, the proposed 450-mile barrier is a model of planning reduced to its most primitive – the desire to divide black from white, us from

Wednesday, April 13. The shoes I wore to meet the architect.

Living in a trailer isn’t so bad. That’s what I like to tell myself, anyway. I moved into my first one in 1975, a year after my mother died and my brother saved me from foster care. A step up from the low-income apartments we lived in (all

Cities and the quiet interface.

She walked by just as I was taking the shot. This little old lady next to the tall, glass, modern building in SOHO, filled with architects sitting down for a presentation, those builders and definers of the urban space. While in New York last week, my senses were heightened of