Variation on a theme…poolside pavilion. ink and watercolor on tracing paper.
Visualization...
…in advance of a client meeting tomorrow. Just a quick watercolor rendering on tracing paper to help communicate proposed improvements to a home in Danville: outdoor kitchen, pool, Accessory Dwelling Unit, landscape, and patio areas.
Site sketch: November 27, 2020
Light cove section detail drawn on site (literally, on the header immediately adjacent to the condition under discussion).
Recent project makes a cameo appearance on NBC's Today Show
So this happened this morning. I received a text message that clients were featured on a Today Show segment on virtual family gatherings this Thanksgiving, hosting their end of a virtual feast from their recently-completed home in Santa Rosa.
Due to COVID-19 precautions, I haven’t seen the clients or their new home in almost a year. In fact, this is the first I’m seeing of the completed home. I’m thankful that they’re all looking well.
Hat tip to Artisan Home Builders. The casework looks great.
Ten Years
It doesn’t seem right to let October pass without commemorating this modest practice’s tenth year.
And acknowledging my deepest gratitude to the clients, consultants, contractors, and municipal staff who have been my partners over this past decade. Somehow, amid recessions, pandemics, natural disasters, we’ve managed to complete some projects.
Bridgework Bolivia: The Motion Picture
A short video documenting a recently-completed 2017 Rotary International humanitarian project in South America. The food, the architecture, and the people were unforgettable, but it was the hypoxia at extreme altitude made the trip truly memorable. Adventure might hurt, but monotony will kill you.
Thoughts on materials and materiality
I came across this passage and was struck with its concise assessment of the experience of architecture in spacetime:
“The flatness of today’s standard construction is strengthened by a weakened sense of materiality. Natural materials — stone, brick and wood — allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter. Natural materials express their age and history, as well as the story of their origins and their history of human use. All matter exists in the continuum of time; the patina of wear adds the enriching experience of time to the materials of construction. But the machine-made materials of today — scaleless sheets of glass, enamelled metals and synthetic plastics — tend to present their unyielding surfaces to the eye without conveying their material essence or age. Buildings of this technological age usually deliberately aim at ageless perfection, and they do not incorporate the dimension of time, or the unavoidable and mentally significant processes of aging. This fear of the traces of wear and age is related to our fear of death.”
Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
Throwback Thursday: "House that inspired Rush Creek Village selling for first time," Columbus Dispatch, January 19, 2014
Last week, while researching a current project, I stumbled across this old 2014 article on the Wakefield House at Rush Creek Village, with one of my many interviews with Columbus Dispatch reporter Jim Weiker over the years. I called the house “an important building for Central Ohio” and “a landmark.” I still stand by those statements.
The Wakefield House, Rush Creek Village, Worthington, Ohio
New owners purchased the house 6 years ago; I’m sure they’ve modernized the building. Hopefully, their work has been sympathetic to Theodore van Fossen’s original design of Martha’s idea as constructed by Richard Wakefield. If I’m ever back that way, perhaps I’ll drop in.
Detail, Entrance
Is “Throwback Thursday” still even a thing?
A Thought on Ecophychology
“Ecopsychology is a relatively new field that studies our dysfunctional relationship with the environment and explores ways of deepening our connection to the land. Carl Sagan believed that, unless we can re-establish a sense of the sacred about the environment, our species would destroy it. Carl Jung, the prototypical ecopsychologist, maintained the spiritual dimension of the human psyche was its most important aspect and believed that a person who did not know the ways of nature was neurotic. Jung’s archetypal and symbolic perspective offers a holistic framework for examining and understanding our relationship to landscapes and the seasons. This framework can be used to help psychotherapy patients and non-patients connect to nature and learn to appreciate the human artifacts left on the land. The process is facilitated by use of the Native American medicine wheel and the I Ching. Dreams, sacred sites and most American holidays and popularly recognized special days can be related to in a manner that connects us to the land and seasons and establishes a sense of place. A developed understanding and appreciation of ancient sacred sites helps us realise the depth of the sacred connection that indigenous peoples have felt with the earth and the heavens. Orientation with respect to the earth and sky also displays significant elements of dynamic systems theory and situated robotics that illuminate our understanding of many natural and psychological phenomena.”
— D. L. Merritt, abstract to “Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Seasons: A Jungian Ecopsychological Perspective,” The Archaeology of Semiotics and the Social Order of Things, eds. George Nash and George Children (Archaeopress, 2008)
Throwback Thursday: Quarantine Edition
A slowdown provides the opportunity to look back at a recently-completed residential project in Santa Rosa.
Progress
Work continues on a fire rebuild in Santa Rosa, as we approach the second anniversary of the devastating Tubbs Fire.
The approach
From the hillside below
Rendering
A fast watercolor visualization this morning for a Santa Rosa project: a firepit seating area under the watchful eye of a patio reflecting pool.
