Mid-year Accomplishments for 2011

It's good to stop what you're doing periodically and review the positive accomplishments in your life.

A couple of months ago I posted on how I was finally feeling back to my old self after a period of months of unforeseen setbacks and troubles.  Well, as it turns out, it wasn't as easy as just 'snapping out of it' and going back to my previously robust self.  There have continued to be good days and bad days.  But, overall, I've managed to gain and/or keep the upper hand for the most part, and the stock chart of my life has, in fact, continued in a generally bullish trend.

Now that the year is slightly over half over, and lest anyone (I'm mainly talking about myself here) think the first 6 months of 2011 were a wash, I want to stop, take a timeout, and acknowledge some of my actual positive accomplishments from the first half of the year.

(This is the part where I get all fidgety in my seat and want to go to the kitchen for a snack or bottle of water or something.  Maybe I should go let the dogs out to run around in the front yard.  In fact, maybe the plants on the front porch need watering while I'm out there.  And while I'm at it, the tomato plants on along the driveway need some attention too.  See?  I could just go on all day like this.)

Where was I?  Oh, that's right.  My actual positive accomplishments from the first half of the year.

Let's see.

Happy Birthday Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was born today in 1867.

Wright's design philosophy was heavily influenced by his association with Louis Sullivan, as well as the writings of the French architect Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.  These two originated the idea that architecture must be grounded in, and exemplary of, the highest and best aspects of the technology and culture out of which it arises.  

Viollet-le-Duc came first; Sullivan further developed his ideas, originating the well-known formulation, "Form Follows Function".  Without their fundamental guiding principles, Wright might have been a talented designer, but would not likely have reached the heights he did in his career.  I describe the philosophical link shared by these three giants in the talk I gave recently at ATLOSCON, and which I will give again at the Chicago Objectivist Society's conference this coming Labor Day weekend.

As a celebration of his fabulous contribution to my very Top Value, I offer a few snaps of my visit to one of his greatest achievements, Fallingwater.  The house was completed in the late 1930s, while Wright was in his late 60s.  When most people would be at retirement age, Wright was in his prime.

Amusing UK Signage Graphics Part III: Danger!

Today we close our series of Amusing UK Signage Graphics with Part III: Danger!  All of these were taken by me during my trip to the UK in the Fall of 2009.

There's something oddly specific to me about this. 

This reminds me a bit of the ones we have on jetways

that warn you of the tripping hazard.

The image of the guy tripping and flying through the air

always makes me chuckle.  Of course,

I probably won't be laughing when it's me

that falls on his ass, but still.

(Actually I might laugh at myself in such a circumstance.)

Danger of Death! 

Enter these premises and God himself may very well strike you down!

Consider yourself warned. 

This one was my favorite. :)

The Pantheon, Rome

Another great building that I could write a whole extensive field trip post about, and may yet do someday, is The Pantheon in Rome.  It has such a rich history, and is one of my favorite buildings.

For today, I'm just posting a single, composite picture of the interior of the Pantheon.  I took this on my last trip to Italy, in 2004.

Click to embiggen, and enjoy!

Amusing UK Signage Graphics Part II: Fashions

Today I present Part II of my series of Amusing UK Signage Graphics, from my trip to the UK in late 2009. Our topic for today is Fashion. Sort of.

Part II has fewer pictures but I'm fond of them nonetheless.

Bowler Hats Required Here!

Don't forget your fashionable footwear.

OK, so it's really a safety helmet. 

But what a smart looking helmet it is!

That's it for today's installment.  Part III is a little longer, and includes my favorite one out of the whole series.  

Look for it on Friday!

Amusing UK Signage Graphics Part I: Moving About

A couple of years ago, whilst in the UK, I encountered a number of don't-go-here, stop-or-you'll-get-hurt, type of signs that I found particularly charming.  The style of these graphics is amusing to me simply because they just somehow seem so, well, polite compared to their US counterparts.  In other cases, they seem to just have a sense of style that indicates someone, somewhere, put that little extra effort into making them look just so.

I just now realized I have too many of them to blow on one blog post, so this will be the first of 3 in a series.  Here we go!

I love how she holds his hand. 

You may encounter flamboyant personages

as they sashay about the vicinity.

Take your flamboyant personage elsewhere

if you intend to sashay about.

(Notice how the pose of the figure is

identical, save for the arm.)

Noooooooo!!!!!

One could almost read this as "No Stopping!"

Do you notice this sort of thing when you travel, or is it just me?

A Sullivan Detail for Today

I took this picture last December at the Art Institute while I was in Chicago visiting my sister and her family.  Somehow, I didn't write down exactly what it was (or photograph the description tag, which is usually what I do in such a situation).

It's definitely Sullivan, and I'm pretty sure it's part of the elevator grillwork from the Chicago Stock Exchange.  Although, now that I'm thinking about it and writing this up, I think it could also be an air grille from that or another building.

It's fun to bring images like this into CAD or some vector-based drawing program and analyze them in terms of their fundamental geometry of lines, circles, and arcs.  Hey, that gives me an idea for another whole post!

But now I have to go teach, so that's for another day.  Cheers!

Home Sweet Home

Today was another long day, and I'm beat, and this is going to be a relatively short post.  Sorry, but we'll have to save the major introspective recap for later.

Things started off relatively flat.

At one point I was going about 80 when this guy passed me at a good clip.  That was super sweet.

Later in the day, I passed this power plant, which I had seen on my way East.  Turns out, it is the Escalante Station, a power plant that provides electricity to 250,000 people.

When I got to Gallup, I got off the highway and drove through town.  I stayed at the Road Runner once. That was probably about 15 years ago.

 As I was driving through town, a freight train went roaring past, bound for points west.

Earl's Family Restaurant was welcoming the stuffed bell pepper.  How 1950's of them.

 Next door to Earl's was another groovy restaurant, and I had to get a pic.

Later on, I passed the Cholla Power Plant that I had also passed on Day 2, shortly after leaving Winslow, AZ.

Eventually, we made it to California.  When we got to Barstow, I found a Starbuck's that had free WiFi and wrote this post, on my upcoming lecture in Denver.  Then we made our way to the nearest In n Out Burger, and then on home.

When we pulled into the driveway, Todd howled.  They seemed really glad to be home.  I am glad to be home.  It feels a little weird.  The road trip has come to an end, yet the house isn't finished.  The next time I see it, it will be done.

I'm embarking on a new big adventure, with my lecture in Denver coming up, and all the ideas that has brought to the fore.  I feel like I'm finally ready to seriously take up the problem of architectural theory.  Where will all this lead me?  Impossible to say, at this point.

It feels like I'm at the beginning of a new adventure.

The Role of Ideas in Architecture

I am thrilled to announce that I will be speaking in Denver, at FROST, on Saturday, November 6th.  What's FROST?  It stands for Front Range Objectivism Supper Talks.  You can read the official announcement on their website, here.

This subject is one that I have been wrestling with for over 20 years, going all the way back to when I was in architecture school at Washington University in St. Louis.  Very little of what I was told to read, under the heading of 'architectural theory', ever made any sense to me.  It was the same in graduate school, when I was at SCI-Arc in the mid/late '90s.  The history more or less made sense, because it was along the lines of 'so and so built this building here on this date' and it was relatively well rooted in reality.  Plus, the history classes at SCI-Arc at that time were taught by Margaret Crawford, and she was not only a superb instructor with a passion for history, but she made it fun.

The theory, however, rarely seemed to bear any relationship to reality.  Occasionally there would be good articles or essays, or a chapter of something that was mildly interesting or inspiring, but they were the exception.

I got out of school and started working, and could pretty much forget about the (theoretical) academic side of the profession for a while (although I remained a fan of architectural history, and still am.)  Over the years, I accepted the occasional teaching gig, mainly teaching drawing, photography, and the like.

Then a couple of things happened almost simultaneously, that, broadly speaking, altered my relationship to theory (or philosophy) as such.  I started taking piano lessons, and I started reading Ayn Rand.

The piano studies fascinated me because, the deeper I delved into them, the more I could see that the music theory bore an absolutely direct relationship to the notes on the paper and the playing of the instrument.  It was as though the theory was actually the element that bridged the gap, if you will, between the notes on paper and the playing.  It was the complete opposite of any architectural theory I had ever read.

This was around the same time that I was reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time.  I had read The Fountainhead years before, but had never explored Ayn Rand's works further, and was completely unaware of any of her non-fiction.  After Atlas, when I read some of her non-fiction, like Philosophy, Who Needs It and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, I became convinced that, here, like with music theory, was a series of ideas based on the strict observation of reality.

Why couldn't this exist for architecture?  This has been my frustration all these years.  It pretty much seems like Louis Sullivan pronounced 'form follows function' and that was the end, and no one else really took it anywhere from there.  Then all the architects forgot all about Sullivan anyway, and he just became that guy who designed those flowery buildings in Chicago.  'Form follows function' became a kind of quaint, old-fashioned notion at best.  I've even heard it mis-attributed to Mies van der Rhoe.

And so, I give up.  I have finally decided to quit resisting and take it on.  It's time for all this stuff to get dusted off and re-evaluated.

In this presentation, I will take a step back from Sullivan, and start with Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, the French architect and theorist, whose Lectures on Architecture from the mid-1800s were a big influence on Sullivan and the Chicago School.

Sullivan's greatest pupil was, of course, Frank Lloyd Wright, who unquestionably left a great legacy behind, although I'm not at all convinced he was the theoretician Sullivan was.

These three men will be the subject matter that we will address on the 6th.  In due course, I intend to examine more fully the larger picture of the development of modern architecture through the 20th century, and its demise.  I suspect there were some good principles at work that were lost, likely due to poor philosophical underpinning.

I am particularly appreciative of FRO, Kelly Valenzuela, and Diana Hsieh for their encouragement and support.  See y'all on the 6th!

800 Miles in 14 Hours

That pretty much sums up today.

We left Russellville, Arkansas at about 8 this morning, and pulled into Albuquerque at a little past 9.

I think I'm just really ready to be home at this point, and was pretty motivated once I realized that I could get close enough tonight to make it the rest of the way with one long day tomorrow.  The dogs were doing really well too, sleeping for the most part, so I just kept going.

There wasn't a ton of picture taking today, but there were a few interesting things that we saw.

Just after we pulled out of Russellville, we passed a cooling tower, so I'm guessing there is a nuclear plant there.

Once we hit Oklahoma (don't you just want to break out singing?!) the landscape really flattened out.

Day 10: In the Kitchen

One of the big tasks this week is to finalize the kitchen design.  We have been making progress and things are going relatively smoothly.

Ms. Client has decided to go with KitchenAid appliances, in stainless steel.  I think that's a great choice.  This is a kitchen that wants to be nice and well appointed, without needing to be The. Most. Expensive. Thing. Evar.

Mr. Client has decided that whatever Ms. Client wants to do with the kitchen is fine with him.  Thus far, this arrangement is working out well.

The floor will be the same wood that is throughout the rest of the main level, which is yet to be determined, but will be a medium-dark color.  The spaces themselves will be rather lofty and bright, for the most part, and will be able to handle a dark-ish wood floor really well.  The cabinets will be a lighter colored wood, perhaps maple, to give some contrast to the floor.  This kitchen has hardly any upper cabinets, because it's all windows to the view of the Smoky Mountains.  There is, however, one wall with the range and stainless steel hood on it, that has a few upper cabinets as well.

At present, the Clients are living in this little house down the hill from the house now under construction:

That was taken last February when I was here for a preliminary site visit.  You can barely see the house behind those giant pine trees.

That thing is 3 bedrooms, kitchen, living room, laundry/utility, and bathroom and its 1,000 square feet.  Cramped is an understatement, but they're managing.  I'm staying in a few rooms of the existing garage building, onto which we are attaching with the new house:

The doorway between my area and the kitchen has been walled off temporarily, and the hallway, laundry room (which is just an empty room at this stage - the laundry part will be added after I leave) and little bathroom are my monastic cell.  Paul and Todd sleep in there with me, and I have my computers set up in there also.  The dogs spend their days outside, either penned or on long leads over by the barn.  They get to watch the donkeys most of the time, and bark at the subcontractors as they come and go throughout the day.

Ms. Client has been making the most of her little kitchen in the house down the hill, and her project for the past few days has been roasting her homegrown roma tomatoes.

Before:

After (after most of them were already packaged for the freezer):

Photos and words can't begin to convey their amazing flavor.

BeBop the little injured puppy is also hanging out in the kitchen.  What is she up to?  Doesn't she look timid and subdued?  Poor thing :(

But, don't be fooled.  She is still a puppy after all.

And, I've been grilling.  I love to cook and I love to grill out.  Lately it's been kabobs and kabobs and kabobs.  Shrimp, chicken, veggies, turkey meatballs, NY steaks (not as kabobs) and lots of mushrooms.  Mushrooms on those bamboo skewers, reduced to 2/3 their original size, with olive oil and some salt, are absolutely heavenly.

This was my first time putting shrimp on the grill, and I have to say, they were amazing.  The flavor of the shrimp was really accentuated and concentrated.  I think it was similar in principle to cooking the water out of the mushrooms, which concentrates their flavor.

It's fun cooking for and with the Clients, especially knowing they will enjoy their new kitchen so much, and get so much out of it.  Any time there is a particular interest of one of my clients, about which they are especially passionate, I am all the more inspired to make it the best it can be.

Days 6 & 7: Digitally Frustrated and Trying Not to Get Behind

Ok, it happened.

I knew when I threw down the gauntlet to myself at the end of Day 3, that sooner or later, I'd miss a day in my daily blogging challenge.

Turns out, that day come sooner rather than later.  Sorry about that!

At the moment, my new Mac somehow seems to feel the need to download billions of gigabytes of stuff just to allow me to get the photos off my iPhone.

On top of that, my only good internet source is this Verizon USB modem that works pretty well with the new MacBook Pro (which is a really slick machine, I have to say, in spite of the current hiccoughs in my learning curve with it) but doesn't work for shit (sorry) with my Windows XP desktop tower that I dragged here across 7 states from L.A., which has my entire life in it, but remains without internet.  Even after I downloaded what I thought was the driver, using the Mac, and installed via thumb drive.  The lovely Mac didn't even need to have a driver for the USB modem, it just ran with it.  Otherwise I wouldn't even have been able to blog for the last couple of days at all.

I'm in total digital frustration.

Yet, there have been some interesting things going on here, and today I even scoped out some really good sources of steel supply up in Knoxville.  With pictures!  For the Blog!

Hopefully tomorrow I will get this all sorted out and be back to my old blogging self.

Please stand by.

Sorry for the rant, but I can't go 2 days without blogging something, and that's all I can seem to manage at this point.

Day 5: Further Adventures in Atlanta

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning (I was going to say the butt-crack of dawn, but decided against it in the interest of taste) since contractors are notorious for starting their day super early.  Architects, not so much.  But on this construction site, things get rolling at 7 a.m.  When my alarm went off at 6, it was still dark out.  That was a little unsettling, since I'm not ready for summer to be over and waking up in the dark.  I guess it is late August after all.  *sigh*

By the time I pulled it together, fed P+T, coffeed myself up and got going, our contractor, Bob, was instructing the roofing crew.

Bob, aka Bob the Builder, is doing a very good job with the project. He's probably in his late 50s or early 60s, very friendly, and always has a great attitude.  He is clearly very proud of his work and wants the house to be a success.  His voice is rather similar to Mr. Haney from the old TV show Green Acres, not only in the way he enunciates, but also in the way his voice slightly warbles and cracks every now and then.

This morning, we were in the basement working on how to best distribute the heating/air ducts around the space and feed the rooms above, with the minimum amount of disruption to the basement ceiling.  One area in particular was difficult to get a supply duct to, and we decided to each ponder it further and reconvene on that issue later in the week.  "We'll figure it out betwixt us," he said, confidently.

We walked through the project and I told him some changes I wanted to make with the electrical rough-in, which was in progress.  That's where they run the wiring and set the boxes in the rough framing, where the outlets, light fixtures and switches will be installed later, after the drywall goes on the walls.  My comments were mainly things like, "Move these outlets to line up with those over there, so they look more uniform."  At one point, I remarked offhand that I was sorry for having him redo all this work that had already been done.*

He stopped.  "Don't say that.  We want it to be right."

That's when you know you have the right guy running your project.

Then it started raining, which put a bit of a damper on things.  So, there wasn't a lot of sexy photography to do, and there wasn't much going on that made anything look much different from the day before.

The other thing that happened was that there was a crew spraying greenish-colored expanding foam insulation into the roofs from below.  (I almost just wrote 'rooves' like the plural of hoof.  I think I've been playing way too much Cow Clicker on facebook.  But I can't help it.  I'm addicted.)

And, in the end, it was as good a day as any for a rainy short day on the site, because I had to leave early to drive down to Atlanta, to hang out with the Atlanta Objectivist Society, for their monthly social.  Shout out to the AOS!

Next month, I'm presenting a special event in conjunction with this group: a Thursday evening lecture on my design process for this house, followed by a Saturday tour for them of the site (for the first 30 of them to RSVP, that is).  I'm extremely excited about the event, and looking very eagerly forward to it.

And speaking of the AOS and their social tonight, I think it's time I wrapped up this post, which I've been typing from the patio of the Gordon Biersch in Buckhead, and go inside and get a beer with my people!

Hopefully it will be a nice day tomorrow, and I'll have more pictures from the site.  Until then, Cheers from Atlanta!

-->CLINK<--



*Please take note that I would never make such a statement to a general contractor on a large commercial project.  Those relationships are very "by the book" and the chain of command is strictly observed.  On a small project like this, it is in my interest to have a good relationship and a very team-oriented approach with the contractor, and certain key subcontractors (like the framer and cabinet maker in particular, on this job.)  We are definitely allies on this project, and such a remark is, I think, appropriate.

Day 4: It's Nice to Get Where You're Going

Today we arrived.

All in all, it was a pretty good day.  We started out from Middle-of-Nowhere-but-West-of-Nashville, and drove straight to the Parthenon.  That's right, the Parthenon!

The Spokesdogs really know how to show a building, don't they?

In 1897, this replica of the real Parthenon in Athens was built for an exhibition in Nashville, in the newly created Centennial Park.  That they chose this particular monument, from among all the available ancient buildings (or anything else that they could have done, for that matter), is a wonderful testament to the 19th Century reverence for the Aristotelian ideals that allowed both the Ancient Greek and Early American cultures to flourish.

Observe how the fluting (the grooves) in the columns create shadows that reveal the column's round shape.  If the column were purely round, rather than fluted, it would appear much more flat, with just a single shadow line.

The only thing I think is a little weird about the Nashville Parthenon is the color and texture of the stone. The real Parthenon is white marble.  This one is some kind of composite stone, with exposed aggregate.  The color is a tan/buff color.  I can't quite wrap my head around this obviously non-historically-accurate choice, for a project of this historical magnitude.  They clearly went to great lengths to copy the building accurately in so many of its details.  But the color and texture?  Strange.

All in all, I think its wonderfully great that they made this (relatively) faithful copy of the Parthenon for a public park.  I think every city should have a Parthenon.  Why not?

But to copy it as a bank, or a city hall -  or a picnic pavilion - not so much.

Then we were on the road again and heading for our final destination: the construction site!

With Paul Baby acting as copilot, we motored on down the highway.

We passed a nifty old dump truck:

and a barn on wheels:

and we crossed the Cumberland Plateau:

Then I got tired of fighting with the big rigs and other impatient drivers, and turned off the main road early.  We drove the rest of the way on back roads.  This was a good move, and brought on a huge sigh of relief.  For the rest of the drive, it was like this:

and this:

and this:

and then the road got even narrower, and the striping went away, and we were there!

After a beer or two and not too much relaxing (yet) Mr. and Ms. Client and I walked over to the site and walked through it.  We looked at things that were exciting, and talked about things that needed adjustment (which is perfectly normal for any construction project, so no worries.)

 It was terribly exciting!

And Paul and Todd got to see what all this excitement has been about, and why we drove all this way.

I think they were excited, too.