Michael from FabPreFab.com has posted images of the finished Glidehouse that was on show at the Sunset Celebration this past weekend in Menlo Park.Also check out the discussions on the show and the Glidehouse at Livemodern.com.
Via: Dwell
Link: Fabprefab.com
Link: Glidehouse Forum (Livemodern.com)
Previously: The Fab New World of Prefab Houses
"Packed with full-color photos, easy-to-read charts and information, this reference and how-to book is for anyone interested in dry-climate plants from California to Texas.
Plants for Dry Climates offers complete descriptions of more than 300 species, including a variety of low-maintenance and drought-resistant plants. Over 430 color photographs and useful plant charts help you choose your annuals, perennial color, ground cover and trees."Link: Amazon
Walker, the Las Vegas landscaper, said he has obtained a contractor's license in California in case he is forced to relocate. "The only way we're going to solve this problem is water conservation," he said.Hate to tell you, buddy, but water is a precious resource in California too... you should try that conservation thing.
Continuing our theme of regional newspaper magazines, the Seattle Times Magazine, Pacific Northwest, has a write up on the city's stunning new library.
"This is a building designed to be understood inside out. It is expected to upend your assumptions about structure: In the words of key designer and former Seattleite Joshua Ramus, "A truly rational building will not look rational." In The World According To Koolhaas, a building will not necessarily be a box, with function forced to fit the space, but rather space expanded here and contracting there to fit function. It is like a house with the naturalness of add-ons, built over generations, but these add-ons are integrated from the beginning.
Article: Pacific Northwest
Link: Seattle Times
Firm: OMA
Photographs: Benjamin Benschneider
And on the left coast, the weekend's edition of The Los Angeles Times Magazine is dedicated to the swimming pools. (No photos in the online version... get with it, LA Times.) Among the articles are:Fly over L.A., and you see them—mile after liquid mile of dots and squares pressed like jewels into the landscape. By the latest count from the American Water Works Assn., between half a million and 700,000 pools adjoin single-family homes in Southern California. And yet as suited as they are to our hot, dry climate, they weren't always so common here.
Link: LA Times
This weekend's edition of the The New York Times Magazine is dedicated to Landscape architecture. Among the articles are:"It is probably safe to say that for most people, landscape architecture -- specifically, the design of large private gardens -- is the province of the wealthy, or at least the well-off. Even for the most avid amateur gardener, the idea of bringing in big machines to alter the contours of the earth, planting avenues of trees or trimming boxwoods into topiary conjures a world in which sweat equity is small change."
"The [Washington Post] magazine's Spring Home and Design issue explores the theme of less is more: An avid collector learns to let go of years of treasures, an Annapolis couple downsizes from a 6,000-square-foot house to a boat and a renovation of a school into a residence shows the success of a clear, strict vision."
Link: Washington Post Magazine
Photograph: Timothy Bell
One of the themes I've noticed while lurking on the forums over at Dwell is the number of times people ask where they can get DWR styling at IKEA prices. A valid request as I'm sure the majority of the population still wonders who exactly the WR in DWR is meant for.I live near an IKEA. I'm not too far from a couple DWR showrooms as well. I spend hours and hours paging through the DWR catalog when it comes in the mail. Considering my "knowledge" of both, the one thing about IKEA is it's so easy to spot their furniture, especially when you walk into someone's house/apartment and it looks like a page out of their catalog or like one of their showrooms.
Link: Design Within Reach
Link: IKEA
"Charles Eames (1907-78) and Ray Eames (1912-88) gave shape to America's twentieth century. Their lives and work represented the nation's defining social movements: the West Coast's coming-of-age, the economy's shift from making goods to the producing information, and the global expansion of American culture. The Eameses embraced the era's visionary concept of modern design as an agent of social change, elevating it to a national agenda. Their evolution from furniture designers to cultural ambassadors demonstrated their boundless talents and the overlap of their interests with those of their country. In a rare era of shared objectives, the Eameses partnered with the federal government and the country's top businesses to lead the charge to modernize postwar America."
"The ReUse People of California reduces the solid waste stream and changes the way the built environment is renewed by salvaging building materials and distributing them for reuse."
As one of the last surviving architects of the Case Study House program, Killingsworth, 86, is a quiet hero in the architectural community. His whole career he has consistently been stable, modest, thorough and relatively unknown in comparison to his Southern California contemporaries. Along with well-known figures such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Craig Ellwood and Raphael Soriano, he was one of a handful of optimistic, social-minded architects who tested unconventional concepts of plan, form and structure in residential architecture. Conceived by John Entenza, the editor of Arts and Architecture magazine, the Case Study Houses provided affordable yet progressive prototypes for living.
"Greenwood Gardens is a new nonprofit, public garden located in Short Hills, New Jersey, approximately twenty miles west of New York City. Since the early twentieth century, the twenty-two acre Greenwood Gardens has been a private retreat of formal Italianate gardens graced with colorful Arts and Crafts tiles, mossy pebbled walks and vistas stretching into the lush surroundings of South Mountain Reservation."
"BARNSLEY, England (Reuters) -- A British man has covered up his lewd garden gnomes with painted-on swimwear after police warned him he faced arrest for causing public offense.""While most garden gnomes fish or enact scenes of bucolic tranquility, ex-army Sgt. Tony Watson's models in the northern English town of Barnsley bared their breasts and buttocks, prompting complaints from the public."
Obviously, the little fella featured here is not behaving like his fellow brethren in the UK.
Link: CNN
"Sure, it seems crazy dropping cash to spruce up a place you rent, especially when you plan to move, well, one of these years, after you've saved enough dough for a down payment. But where is it written that just because you live lease to lease, you have to put up with peeling paint, closet doors that don't close, refrigerators that reek -- or even a dusty, desolate, debris-strewn excuse for a yard?"
Via: Budget Living
Designer: Russ Cletta - Estate Gardens
All Photos © Deborah Jaffe
Updated 03/28/07
The prefabricated Glidehouse by architect Michelle Kaufmann is being featured at the Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend. Several Glidehouses have already been sold and will be heading for sites across the west.
"All KEIM Liquid Mineral Coatings are harmless to the environment. They are not a health hazard and contain no organic solvents or toxic substances."
"A wriggly earth bank set around three sinuous ponds, which transformed a flat patch of scrubby grass in front of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, last night won the £100,000 Gulbenkian museums prize, the richest single prize in the arts."
Via: The Guardian
Link: Gulbenkian Prize
Link: Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
A level is one of those items that's always a part of our weekend projects. I don't think I'd want to make it part of my formal evening projects, but if I did, I think these cufflinks are just the way I'd do it.
"Real working level cufflinks in a rhodium plated silver setting. Available with green or blue liquid. Great for anyone in construction or engineering."Link: Cufflinks.com
"In 1953 he began building one of his most significant designs, the Rose residence in Ridgewood, New Jersey (which is now open to the public, see link below). The design clearly expresses Rose's idea of fusion between indoor and outdoor space as well as his notion that modern environmental design must be flexible to allow for changes in the environment, as well as in the lives of its users."
"Created in the 1960s, this often overlooked urban gem is still a work of artistry and breathtaking vistas."
"Taking an outdoor shower can be so refreshing––and with this shower, it’s so easy! Just attach a garden hose to enjoy open-air bathing. Perfect for spa lovers or for cleaning up the kids after playing outdoors, the shower is made of striking yet sturdy nyatoh wood, a fine-textured Indonesian redwood. Its sleek, simple design features a large wood base, handy soap tray, easy-to-turn knob, adjustable pole and showerhead in brushed chrome finish."
Link: Target.com
Via: Dwell Magazine (print edition)
Reference: Outdoor Shower, Part II
"Guided by this principle, McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new. They can be conceived as "biological nutrients" that will easily reenter the water or soil without depositing synthetic materials and toxins. Or they can be "technical nutrients" that will continually circulate as pure and valuable materials within closed-loop industrial cycles, rather than being "recycled" -- really, downcycled -- into low-grade materials and uses. Drawing on their experience in (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco-effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved with making anything can begin to do so as well."
Authors: William McDonough, Michael Braungart Link: Amazon
"At a ceremony May 6 in Boston, Metropolis named Single Speed Design as the winner of the magazine's first Next Generation Design Prize. In front of their peers and colleagues, the members of the architecture firm—John Hong, Erik Carlson, and Jinhee Park, along with their collaborator, developer Paul Pedini—were honored for their proposal to transform remnants from the Big Dig, Boston’s $15 billion public works project, into beautiful, sustainable housing."
Link: Metropolis
Firm: Single Speed Design, LLP
"Green. It conjures images of a meadow in spring for some, and the color of money for others. What does "green" have to do with our homes? In essence, green building-or sustainable building-means being smart about how we use energy, water, and building materials so that we can live well without needlessly damaging the environment. Creating a good green home isn't just about conservation, about using less or saving more-although that's certainly part of it. It's about creating better homes that are easier on the environment, less expensive over the long term, and more delightful to come home to. That's the message Jennifer Roberts wants to share in Good Green Homes, the ultimate guide for people who want to live in comfortable, healthy, environmentally conscious homes."Link: Barnes & Noble
German based Dedon offers several collections of contemporary hand woven wickerwork furniture covered with Hularo® fiber. Hularo is a "synthetic fibre, comining the best characteristics of natural materials with the advantages of innovative technology."
"Lotusland is a unique 37-acre estate and botanic garden situated in the foothills of Montecito to the east of the city of Santa Barbara. The gardens now covering the estate were created by Madame Ganna Walska, who owned the property from 1941 until her death in 1984. Before her death, Madame Walska established the nonprofit Ganna Walska Lotusland Foundation, which now preserves this unrivaled botanical treasure."
Link: Lotusland
A small design/build landscape firm in the Los Angeles area that does some interesting work. And check this out... sounds like it could have been written by Land+Living:
"Taking a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway in California presents magnificent views of the coastline as you weave back and forth amongst the hills. One can expect rolling hills, breaking waves, and steep, rocky cliffs but, perhaps less expectedly, one can also stumble upon man-made parts of the landscape that seem to harmonize naturally. One such example is the Glass Residence in Big Sur. Daniel Piechota of Sagan Piechota Architects explains that this residence which is 90 percent glass impedes as little as possible with its surroundings and is a house 'one experiences from the inside out.'"
Link: Architectural Record
Firm: Sagan/Piechota
Photographs: Alan Weintraub
"A product line with uncomplicated shapes and sophisticated use of materials redefines the countertop island with simple, yet innovative solutions. The traditional wall kitchen is interpreted with contemporary taste by using highly functional modular components and today's latest appearance solutions."
Link: Dada