A Table

Half-bench, half-table...a little bit Japanese, a little bit Prouvé. It is just lovely. Civil Twilight- (Anton) designed and crafted, from beautiful salvage douglas fir.

soon...

Hoping to head up here soon!

Accessible Architecture

I liked this article from the NYT last week about architects doing their own thing in the recession (after losing their jobs, that is)--whether staring an ice cream truck (CoolHaus, and I have to add that we submitted what seemed like thousands of brilliant ideas into their flavor-naming contest last year, from Herzog and de Melon to Berry Gehry).

This past weekend, I bumped into an event at the London Building Centre, called 'Don't Move, Improve' to encourage Londoners to think about renovating their houses and meeting with architects. The event was packed; homeowners had booked time slots online to chat with architects (who had won renovation design prizes). It was great--people brought photos of their houses and images or sketches of what they were thinking about, and architects were talking about ideas and possibilities. Seemed like a vibrant, lively forum for design to be unintimidating and accessible to regular people.

Reminded me of the guy in the NYT story who got a booth at a farmers market offering ideas for architectural questions ('no house too small for big ideas') ...

Need more of this!

Seamless

Beautifully integrated trash-can-bench at the Saatchi. One has to wonder if its all that functional to stoop down and dispose of your trash, but I love how seamlessly its built-in.

What does the brick want to be?

Louis Kahn famously asked this question of all the bricks he met. There is a lot of brick in London. This building has a gorgeous curved facade, not so curved that its made of curved bricks as in the top photo, but a lovely example of a concave facade. Very welcoming and graceful.

Broadway Market

Broadway Market: a mix of fresh, artisanal food, arty/vintage clothes/crafts, and hipsters walking up and down a few blocks between Regents Canal and London Fields. The street is lined with vintagey furniture and art bookstores mixed in with cozy pubs and coffeeshops, so its an altogether lovely atmosphere for a browse and a snack.
Favorites:
-A mushroom stand with mushroom sandwiches (!!) as well as mushroom risotto simmering away
-Howard's Oysters, with, seemingly, Richard Howard himself holding down the fort. Reminded me of restaurant menus in the Bay Area that credit the farmers who raised and picked one's baby greens by first, middle, and last name.
-Bright pink rhubarb, which I've found is in generally much wider use in the UK than in the US.
-Good art book store, with windows organized by color (one step better than the way-overexposed bookshelves organized by color)
-Possibly the first sign that anything in London can be bought for 5 pounds or less
-Salted caramel has made it across the pond! Reminded me of said craze at home (the cupcakes had pink salt of some esoteric extraction on top, even)...delicious gingerbread here too.

ready, go!

The once-a-year Vitra sale was Saturday. All of London's furniture-conscious designers marked their calendars, and sharpened their elbows (with some camping out since Wednesday).
This is what victory looked like: skinny-jean, black-clad designers with wildly-attention-getting fluorescent sneakers hovering over the Eames chairs they'd just bagged.

Models!

Did a bit of roaming around London on Saturday--from the AA to the Building Centre to the V&A, and spotted these nice models.

Forgive the not so great photos, from top:
-sketch by Richard Rodgers and Norman Foster for a tiny room for Rodgers' wife's parents, in the woods, by the sea. The section is perhaps more lovely at explaining it than the model (following pic)
-little Toyo Ito building(s)
-can't remember about the bridge!
-Peter Eisenman. Of course made of white acrylic.
-models justifying and explaining how to build the Sydney Opera House arcs (Jorn Utzon). Gorgeous, simple and complex at the same time, and cleverly, beautifully presented
-tensegrity model (Bucky Fuller, I think)
-Corbusier, can't remember the name of the building, but reminded me of the Mill Workers House
-Alvaro Siza, this model is gorgeous, and make me desperately want to visit the building--a set of pools and poolside facilities on the coast of Portugal. The model was nearly all sea (or steel standing in for sea) and really showed how the concrete retaining walls and structures became part of the land/sea line.
-the display that the Siza was part of at the AA

Most of these are models of architects first projects, shown at the AA. A few are at the V&A (Corbusier, Utzon, tensegrity),

Snow on Diablo

Main building, front- RCA communications, Inc (what Marconi wireless became after WWI)

Gallery space- very echo-y. You can see the cable insulator bubbles above the left window (details of same below).

Antenna field. Tall wood poles with guy wires.

Radio equipment room. It has a really big clerestory vent which isn't visible here, presumably for cooling all the electrical equipment.

Radio equipment.

Glass bubbles again.

The "chapel" from the outside.

The abandoned warehouse...maybe we can go in next time.

Holidazzle

Pieces of beautiful holiday decorations: our gorgeous, fat tree at the KCAT flat where we spent Christmas with Patrick, Gladys, Ruth, Colum, Valti, Fionn, and others. The photo is lackluster, but it was a most beautiful, tree! Decorated with red apples, Steiner ornaments, crepe paper flowers, and incredibly, REAL candles that we lit every night. The candles gripped the branches with beautiful counterweighted brass holders. Simple decorations are the best, aren't they? Paper snowflakes one one tree, and straw ones on another. Merci in Paris had a Mini (and a courtyard) full of just-cut trees. Loved the trees just above storefront level all over Ireland (here, at Callan's pharmacy). And red berry branches bought on a Clerkenwell lane.