Addendum

The seat- a take home project for the evening. McMaster stickybacked foam. The catalogue said gray, I wish it was lighter...

new kayak photos

L

Looking more greenlandish than ever. Minus the seal leather.

Blurry detail of cockpit front. This is why we must solicit professional photographers- because it's really a nice detail.

This is new to this prototype- an adjustable footrest. Pretty much all kayaks have them- they make it more comfortable to sit (it keeps your knees bent so they don't cramp up) and, along with the currently nonexistent thigh braces, let you wedge yourself into the boat and control its stability with your legs and hips. Rigid kayaks have notched tracks bolted onto both sides; this uses adjustable straps tied back to the central rib. A bungee cord to the bow keeps the straps in tension when your feet aren't on the rest. Commercial folders seem to have similar systems.

The bow has a fairing made of pvc pipe to streamline the front where it's folded inward, and protect against impact and abrasion. The pvc proved impossible to weld or glue, its held together by slightly janky rivets and metal braces on the back side. The final fairing would be thermoformed from one piece of plastic. The fairing is attached by cinching the cord that goes back inside the kayak. Its held taught by a little carabiner thingy- this will also let you attach ropes to the front of the boat really easily for towing or mooring.

Saturday + Sunday

Two days, same view from the sofa:
Saturday the sun was shining over the rooftops across the street, and inspired me to go for a long run. Turns out London is a great place for running—lots of people out and about doing the same, the river is gorgeous and active, and plenty of sights and sounds to keep a run interesting. I ran by the Design Museum (stopping for David Chipperfield and Dieter Rams shows), Borough Market (stopping for a warm bowl of green Thai chili, much gastronomic browsing, and gingerbread man cookie) and the Tate Modern (stopping for the Turbine Room).
Sunday—it poured all day, reminding me that one of the most exciting things about skylights has to do with sound rather than light. Yes, they bring us blue skies on sunny days, and the stars and moon at nighttime, but they also bring close the sound and rhythm of rain on days like this!

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Is it time to go see The Fantastic Mister Fox?

Shoreditch

Hilarious that the building number (123) is written on the building in the reverse order of the names of the floors (1st, 2nd, 3rd)...and on the same building's Ground level—nice use of Dixie cups as signage! Redchurch Street.

Loungelovers, a bar I haven't been to, but I like their street signage.

This [bar?] made me think of burrowing owls at the Berkeley Marina—out and about in daylight!

From the bandstand in the middle of Arnold Circus, a very beautiful roundabout with striped brick buildings encircling it: the glowy ground floor are the lights of Leila's Shop, a small cafe where it looks like you're part of the kitchen when you eat there—I want to go!

Little Slice

I think architecture training is the best single ingredient for enjoying walking around cities...everything is interesting, everything tells a story. I'm biased, of course, but similarly, botany is an enviable education for hikes...

In Shoreditch new bits are interspersed along old streets. This little slice of a house was notable for the datum lines it picked up from its neighbors. And for having a very low roof deck in London—possibly more like an outdoor room judging by the high glass walls. Starkly modern buildings make a vastly better story in old neighborhoods than postmodern buildings like the one in the background that probably thought it was 'fitting in' and getting 'contextual' with its brickwork, but looks awful now.

BARN

Aerials

Even though its the massive, figural earth-moving in the Indian Ocean that gets all the press (The Palm, The World, the second Palm), I actually find looking at the copy-rotate-paste buildings and developments, and the extremely rational roads (so rational they're often called names like 27A and 36G) from the air the most fascinating. Top—the tiny bit of The World that I caught from the plane. The bottom photos are better when you click to enlarge them...

Old Dubai

A bit less glitz than new Dubai. There are many more signs of life around Deira (old Dubai) if you ask me—it's cacophonous, yes, trafficky, yes, but less sealed-off and air-conditioned, generally. Though, looking over these photos, they seem to have that strange, silent quality that architectural photography always has.

I went to an office today whose address was specified on paper as: "Range Rover Building, Deira."

tsk tsk

A little architectural cost-cutting here in Dubai (mon dieu!)...traditional shape decorative soffit over a very normal rectangular window...I've now seen this about four times!

KAYAK!

FRONT

BACK

COCKPIT- lawn chair-based pseudo-rib clips into cockpit rim

COCKPT W/ SEAT- polycarbonate seat back has "tenons" that fit into slots cut in floorboards- no extra fasteners. cockpit rim pieces slide onto channels in the coroplast, like the "zippers". the plastic pipe elbow at the bottom locks everything in place.

Travels from the Seat of a Plane

I am thankful that despite their best efforts, the vastness of the landscape outside Dubai dwarfs the ridiculous, glittering skyscrapers. The quiet, matte desert stretches out and then wrinkles up into mountains. A few skewed roads run through valleys between. Light and shadow create the only changes in tone—the unvegetated sand is a consistent non-color. Then, from time to time, without explanation, a valley holds dusty greens in agricultural squares.

A few hours and a few thousand miles later, the earth is a watery, snowy swirl. The air is clear, the shapes below are sharp. Vastness here, is cold and deep, blues and whites marbled together. There are no signs of people, of paths, or even of life. The world below is elemental and inchoate.

After this, the temperate Pacific Coast is generous and nurturing. Breaking white waves stitch the ocean to the cliffs in Mendocino. Small-scale towns blend in and out of hills and forest. I search for landmarks—Sea Ranch, Jenner. The geography of weekend hikes is suddenly clear as Point Reyes, Tomales Bay, Muir Beach, and Mount Tamalpais form a map below. Colors vivid with life—dark green oaks on grassy yellow hills, that big red bridge, pastel houses that chase up San Francisco streets—welcome me home.

The physical bravura of a sixteen-hour flight in a huge jet only heightens the resonance of the view below. These views that feels so precious and privileged are part of a twice-daily journey for one of many airlines on this route.

The scale and the glory of our earth and the silence of landscape, both precise and abstract, overwhelms.

ps I'm sad to say I didn't take these photos myself, and they're not exactly what I saw out the plane. I wish I'd taken photos, but it was pretty nice just looking out the window too.

Jellyfish on the beach are disgusting puddles of slime. In the water, they're some of the most sublimely graceful and elegant forms I can think of. It's all about the medium: in water, there's no gravity, no need for rigidity; life is all about flexibility, transparency, ethereality.

I read a book about oak recently. Oak has been the favored wood for the European shipbuilding tradition. The author argues that the classic sailing ships developed out of how Europeans constructed wooden buildings: they're based on a solid, rigid frame of ribs, covered with a non-structural plank skin, much as one would build a timber-framed house to resist the force of gravity.

Certain other types of boats, however, are more analagous to the jellyfish. Viking longboats were a monocoque of planks riveted edge to edge, with no internal frame. This allowed them to twist and flex with the motions of water, giving them a remarkable combination of speed, agility and durability.

The inuit kayak is another example of boatbuilding in a fluid medium. The flexible skin and lashed skeleton create a dynamic, moving form. This is "boat" stripped down to its essence.

With the Oru, I'm interested in ways of making boats more like jellyfish- if not functionally, then trying to capture that sense of thinness, transparency, fluidity and luminosity- the things that intuitively draw us to water.

Saturday afternoon

After Dubai, its a relief to be in a place with layers. In London you see liveliness in every inch of its urban form, not to mention in all the people bustling around. Eccentric lanes, new additions added crookedly upon old, lines of desire through city squares.

Top to bottom: I never tire of these urban additions, wherever I find the little space invaders; Oxford Circus sparkles; diagonal tiles make it all better; almost a real-life Rachel Whiteread; I love depth in cities.

London calling

The brief walk to work!

Ski Dubai

The closest place to walk from our hotel is the Mall of the Emirates, which contains the famous Dubai ski slope, a blue-lit recreation of an Alpine environment, complete with lonely penguins and chalets serving hot chocolate.