I rode my bicycle from Pittsburg to Washington DC recently. Why? Obsession.
The 324 mile trip is almost entirely on car free bike trails. The first half is on a beautiful Rails to Trails crushed limestone path. It’s a gradual climb from near Pittsburgh to the 3,300 foot long Big Savage Tunnel at the crest of the [...]
I discovered this article in the NY times recently about research that shows a link between obesity and the age (and walkability) of various neighborhoods in Salt Lake City.
The real challenge will be figuring out how to make the car-centered cities of the last 50 years more dense without tearing everything down and starting over. [...]
DATELINE LAS VEGAS: I’m attending the award gala here in Sin City (the National Home Builder Convention is being held here concurrently) as an honoree of the 2009 Hearthstone BUILDER Humanitarian Award program. Celebrating their 30th year in existence, they’ve named the 30 people they consider the most innovative in the housing world over the [...]
I’m serving on the Seattle AIA Honor Awards jury this weekend with two architects whose work I admire: Patricia Patkau from Vancouver and Nadir Tehrani, Office dA, from Boston. Here they examine a critical downspout detail at local building entered in the competition. Actual site visits of potential honorees are a part of this ambitious [...]
I had the opportunity to sit on two design studio reviews this past week.
The first was a sophomore studio in USF’s relatively new architecture school—I think they graduated their first class last spring. Instructors Mike Larkin, Fernando Marti, and Mason Kirby had the students attempt to design a small live/work project in the Dogpatch neighborhood… [...]
Sara Mae Martens and I spent part of the day yesterday moving hardwood flooring from our Tassafaronga job site to a storage unit in San Francisco. One of the green strategies involved in renovating the disused pasta factory on that site was to reuse old building materials that are being removed. We wanted to get [...]
Inhabitat.com is a fabulous weblog I ran across while looking at a post about David Baker’s house.
Their mission is:
GOOD DESIGN IS GREEN DESIGN
GREEN DESIGN IS GOOD DESIGN
Check out this recent post:
They also have a weblog devoted to sustainable design for the next generation called Inhabitots –a cute name with an even cuter logo.
Perhaps you have watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC? It’s a reality show where a family wins a contest to have their home “made over”, and it usually features a struggling family with a special-needs child living in a less-than-ideal home.
While I certainly don’t have a problem with helping out families facing tough times, [...]
Armstrong Place, our affordable family townhouse community currently going up along Third Street in San Francisco, is now taking housing applications. If you’d like to find out about purchasing a unit, you can attend an informational workshop at the Bayview Library (5075 3rd Street, San Francisco) this Saturday, October 25, at 11am. You can also download an application here. You can [...]
That was a saying I first heard from my professor Susan Ubbelhode during graduate school at UC Berkeley. It is very true that many architects have held prejudices against “green” architecture for years, fearing that people would associate them with houses built out of used tires and structures that look like failed science fair entries. [...]
