Common Boston

Come let us watch the sun go down / and walk in twilight through the orchard's green... / wandering under these harvest-laden trees... / seeking new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys...

We spent our weekend laboring for the good of a nearby neighborhood — participating in the annual design/build for Common Boston. Our team of 7 conceived of and executed a fence, bench and canopy which defined an unused clearing in the "urban wilds" of Mission Hill as a quiet space for reflection and appreciation of the surrounding views. Excerpts from the poem "The Apple Orchard" were painted across the individual boards, drawing the viewer into the captivating outdoor space.

My Husband, The Architect

The worlds of graphic design and architecture have so many delightful tangents that make my relationship with *boy's career — and his with mine — infinitely interesting. We speak the same language but work on completely different scales and schedules, allowing each of us a unique perspective on the other's work. Usually this dialogue consists of process issues as we each navigate the waters of making design manifest. However, this past week has been full of completions.

My projects begin, live, and end in the span of half a breath compared to *boy's work. As I assembled my portfolio last week and surveyed my completed projects from the last 2 years — over a dozen — the one project *boy has been working on since before we even met was finally drawing close to the finish line. In a way I feel like I've been on this years-long journey with him, remembering looking over his shoulder at a sketch-up model, a design in the making...

The first completed photos from the Hershey Cancer Center at Penn State:

Extreme Home Makeover

We began on Friday night and finished Tuesday evening. All in all we put in an extra workweek of time on our kitchen over the weekend. We think it looks amazing compared to what it was. The black is chalkboard paint which was a last minute idea, saving the room from fading completely into a powder blue haze. It's been about 95 degrees everyday since the weekend and everything still feels a little tacky so we're afraid to close the doors just yet. Hopefully it will be completely cured in a few more days. Now on to bringing warmth back to the space by replacing the floors...

Balance & Order

Just over a year apart these photos show the transformation of the Bear Hill house. Work happens in short stints of a few weeks at a time but it seems like they can finish a tremendous amount of work in not a lot of time. We have stuck to the original plan and over the last few weeks work on the more public face of the house began. The bedroom dormers are done, the roof is finished and they are quickly putting up the bump out.

4 days into the orginal demo

A year later and all new windows

The windows are more about what they do to the interior

Almost unrecognizable from the original photographs, the house now has a strong presence and feels grounded and balanced. exaggerating the trim on the eaves of the roof of a small house helps give it a weightier feel and can look almost cartoonish in drawings but the effect is hard not to notice. What was a house with no character now asserts itself, not to mention all the windows opening up to a nice bucolic view. It is just a shell now but the interior should slowly take shape as funding permits. *girl and I will check out kitchens this weekend while we are IKEA getting little things for our apartment.

Failings of Modernism

And to think, the Modernist movement was touted and intended to raise the standard of living for everyone - albeit through the virtues of industry. In my education there was a certain nostalgia and notion that the general public just didn’t get Modernism because of its abstract qualities and essential forms. Though a little radical this begins to make a lot of sense as you walk through desolate Boston City Hall Plaza.

“The messes we’ve made of places where we live and work is not solely the result of bad buildings, though there are plenty of them. But that hardly lets architects off the hook. Rather, with the hubris of religious zealots, they set out on a great purifying mission that damaged the whole physical setting for civilization of our time. The dogmas that guided them went by the name of modernism. Heretics and skeptics were anathematized as systematically as the opponents of the fifteenth–century Vatican.
Modernism did its immense damage in these ways: by divorcing the practice of building from the history and traditional meaning of building; by promoting a species of urbanism that destroyed age-old social arrangements and, with them, urban life as a general proposition; and by creating a physical setting for man that failed to respect the limits of scale, growth, and the consumption of natural resources, or to respect the lives of other things. The result of Modernism, especially in America, is a crisis of the human habitat: cities ruined by corporate gigantism and abstract renewal schemes, public buildings and public spaces unworthy of human affection, vast sprawling suburbs that lack any sense of community, housing that the un-rich cannot afford to live in, a slavish obeisance to the needs of automobiles and their dependent industries at the expense of human needs, and a gathering ecological calamity that we have only begun to measure.”

The Geography of Nowhere
James Howard Kunstler

Christmas in Pixels

Living in a small apartment and traveling during the holidays leaves little opportunity for a real Christmas tree - especially when your tastes are more modern. So instead, *boy had the wonderful idea of creating an economical, low-maintenence likeness of a tree over our "hearth" (a.k.a. the huge silver radiator). We think it turned out quite nicely.

Its a post-it note pixel tree.



And beneath the tree - Chinese newspaper packages, tied up with string.



Of course *boy had it all planned out for us...



And then we both had the idea for the perfect tree topper. It just needed a little support...



Its a modern angel with wings.

Restoring Balance and Order

About a year ago my parents purchased their neighbors house when they relocated. The original 1860's house was hidden behind tacked on additions and poor maintenance. My parents having purchased their own house about 25 years prior went through a similar exercise of slowly restoring and renovating the house to its current state. While a difficult task, it is something they are familiar with and they see it as a project. The short term goal is to make it an animation studio that will get my dad's work out of their house while the longer term goal is to make a guest house where my brothers (the typographer and the artist) and I (the architect) can come visit without taking over their house. This is where I come in- this is a way for my parents to get some value out of paying for 5 years of architecture school and a chance for me to get experience and built work outside the office. I would say I'm a "contemporary" designer but I believe in being appropriate. That said, the master plan for the house is as follows:

1. Demolition- Tear off poorly build addition and glass sunroom and general demolition to achieve step 2.



2. Generally restore the original structure as much as possible while visually balancing and adding dormers to make the upstairs more functional. this includes straightening the foundation and providing new structure for the second floor, 2 new chimney's, a new roof, replacing most of the windows, new siding, and a screen porch



3. Renovate the interior to update the bathrooms, kitchen, heating, and all the interior finishes.



4. Restore the existing barn



5. Add a new addition in place of the old structure. Note: This is where I am planning my larger design moves including a green roof and a lot of glazing.

Currently the house is in the midst of step 2 with the major structural work done, chimneys built, and now the exterior aesthetic getting a much needed face lift. Originally planned as a much more modest endeavor, the scope and schedule keep accelerating. Here is a before and after of the first real exterior work.

Existing house after first demolition stages

View down from hill at new windows and dormers

Hillside front door with new dormers

Hillside from the road, slightly more finished

Not Such an Accident

*girl may have thought running into New Museum was an accident but I have to admit, I was looking at the museum's website a week before going to NYC. I did not, however, know the exact location so it was a surprise when we ran directly into it. The lecture given by Ryue Nishizawa, on the other hand, was a delightful coincidence. I attempted to see his partner, Kazuyo Sejima, twice last winter at the GSD only to have the lecture postponed and then canceled due to weather.

I first became acquainted with the work of Sejima three and a half years ago while working on my thesis project at Syracuse University. Between the works of Sejima and Herzog & DeMeuron, my fundamental ideas of what architecture is and how it functions changed significantly. The key word that ties all of this work together is atmosphere. When *girl wrote about the work she used the terms ephemeral, light, air and beauty. This all speaks to things that many imagine are outside the realm of architecture - until your fundamental idea of how architecture operates is changed.

When thinking of architecture as the creation of atmosphere, your focus shifts from the manipulation of walls and large architectural objects to the very nature of how you perceive those walls. You realize that you must choreograph these elements, make them perform, to manipulate the experience of the space. Then architecture is no longer about defining rooms but about designing spatial atmospheres that can transcend the built environment. "Atmosphere" is an all-encompassing vision of spatial experience, beyond spatial ideas and formal manipulations of space that preoccupied many traditionally modern architects. It is no wonder that the work of SANAA, Sejima and Nishizawa often have the most beautiful, simple and functional plans and forms - all because their time is spent realizing the intangible qualities of the world around us, harnessing them to create beautiful experiences and atmospheres which happen to be called architecture.

When I presented my thesis project, it was clear on which side of the line people stood when it came to asking the question "What is architecture?" I heard, "I don't get it, it's just a big open space with a bunch of columns, how is this architecture?" but I also had the leading theory professor whispering in my ear, "Your project is the only project worth looking at," meaning that at the very least I was challenging the concepts of what architecture could be.

I still can see it both ways. Maybe I would be more eloquent describing my project while trying to speak Japanese.

A few images of my humble thesis project:

Goodbye Old Friend

What better way to say goodbye than a 45-mile ride through the countryside.

For the past year and a half, I have relied on my creaky old Peugeot bicycle to get me to and from work, traversing the perilous Boston traffic in both 0º winter mornings and 95º summer afternoons, alike. I resurrected the bike from a neglected life in a garage, stripped it to the frame and rebuilt it as a retro-inspired, fixed gear bike. "Fixed Gear" means that only one gear ratio is tied directly between the rear wheel and the crank. In short: if the wheel is turning, you are pedaling. It took about three months to devise a plan and locate the parts to convert this early 70’s French bicycle into a modern, urban commuter with all the bells and whistles.

It is no surprise, then, that I felt a bit of remorse this weekend as I stripped off the wheels, pedals and seat - leaving it helpless on the floor of my apartment - and took the bus to re-fit those parts onto a shiny new, custom-built track frame (more to come later). After serving me so well, I couldn't let it remain an amputee and have decided to replace the missing parts so that Peugeot can retire to a life of leisurely rides through the New Hampshire countryside. The new, nameless bicycle is now faced with the challenge of serving me as well as my old friend has for the last 18 months.

Interested in builing your own fixed gear? My only advice is to start here.

His

What does this drawing say about me? It might say I live in a 450SF apartment with a bay window and a galley kitchen on the second floor of a larger apartment building; it might also say I am a slightly compulsive architect who measured his new apartment - including the slight angle in the far closet wall - prior to moving in. After that, I drew all my existing furniture and some planned purchases in order to design my new home. I guess it is a little of both.

*girl happens to live one slippery stair and a fire door away in a slightly different 1 bedroom apartment on the opposite side of the building. She gets morning light on her plants outside the kitchen and I get afternoon light cutting across the bay windows. Between the two of us, there have and will be many home projects and countless hours scouring the Internet for home hbrdshry. I'm currently working on my man room and *girl and I are preparing to redo her bedroom (for the second time) for very good reasons. This is just the first of many home-related posts to come. Stay tuned for the very exciting post from *girl: "Oops, I went to Ikea with *boy to help pick chocolate-colored curtains and bought a yellow four-poster bed."