Stacks And Stacks

Like many other cities around the world, San Francisco’s port area is undergoing radical change, in both zoning and new construction. I have yet to see any reference to plans of how to use these large silos, but there is a precedent for radical and interesting interventions for end-of-life use of industrial architecture. San Francisco ...

Make Hay

I’m a firm advocate of the notion that Architecture lives beyond the boundaries of what is its traditional definition – as being the art and science of designing and erecting buildings. I posit instead that Architecture encompasses all manufactured volume that defines or alters space, even if only by proxy. The hay bales, so common ...

Summer Time, Somewhere

Shot in Carmel, California over the Christmas break – here’s to summer, when it eventually arrives. I suppose one of the reasons Clint Eastwood calls Carmel home is because of the “winter” here. .

Blu Dot Red Bed

I came across this bed frame while wandering around the desert town of Twentynine Palms over the Christmas break. Finding this simple red bed unceremoniously dumped onto a red sidewalk reminded me of a recent endeavor by New York based Blu Dot Design. The essence of Blu Dot’s experiment was to randomly locate some chairs ...

Weaned Off

Despite the US being far, far away from being weaned off fossil fuels, it was very encouraging to see the extensive wind turbine park near Palm Springs, the solar park in the Mojave Desert and the geothermal plants near Salton Sea. It has become increasingly clearer that the correct approach to moving beyond the pending ...

Mental Physics, Redux

Another wall, same building. .

Walk, Don’t Run

Hell Yes

Akin to “Yes We Can”, but with more New York attitude. Designed by Japanese minimal masters SANAA, the New Museum strikes the pose of the dame in the midst of the rough and tumble boogie-woogie cityscape that is the Bowery. Fine Art and used furniture stores – go see it because it won’t be that ...

1.5 Million Deceased

“More dead residents than live residents” is a refrain that is often used to describe the City of Colma, located just south of San Francisco. The general lack of cemeteries in San Francisco proper is explained by the existence, a mere 5 miles away, of an expanse of carefully cultivated landscapes, mausoleums and tree-lined roads ...

Americana

Road trip + motel + faux animal print bed sheets + remote control + US flag = 100% Americana. . .

At 2000 Feet

The City of San Francisco enjoys a much deserved reputation as being a city on the cutting edge. The Gay Pride movement achieved important milestones in the city’s history, there is a strong emphasis on the Arts, which is avidly supported by a large and well-educated population, and the renowned high quality of the cuisine ...

Oil

Serra

Few sculptors overlap so obviously into the field of architecture with their work as does Richard Serra. I’ve had the good fortune of seeing dozens of his works in a variety of locales around the world, and despite the seemingly endless repetition of a variation of a singular idea (manipulated large scale sheet metal) I ...

Jet

I need to visit Eero Saarinen’s majestic TWA Terminal in JKF someday. Until then I will always have the Mojave.

Sandbag Construction

A few weeks ago on a recent road trip I came across a fascinating residential construction, made almost entirely out of sandbags and plaster. After pulling over and driving a little closer to get a better look I approached two people who were working on the site. Unlike most experiences involving me satisfying my curiosity ...

2030, A Prediction

In the not too distant future your standard grade run-of-the mill highway will no longer be necessary, when the speculative “affordable mass teleportation system” is finally conceived, and renders the Trekkie vision as fact instead of fantasy. Think about it: what a wonderful playground cities (and designers) will have to explore – mile upon mile ...

Light Is King

A series of benign and mundane concrete columns illuminated by an exciting palette of vertical color planes.

Mexico City Bellas Artes

The dome of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, located in Mexico City, is as expansive as the city in which it is located. I haven’t seen too many dome-on-dome type of constructions at this scale before, except in the Hagia Sofia or Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The experience in the space does not disappoint, and ...

The Fuel Economy

Few things allude more to the fuel economy than the motel (or motor hotel). Quintessentially American, the lowly motel typology has long been celebrated as a symbol of the wide open expanses of this vast country. Ed Ruscha’s fantastic depictions of gas stations is one of the best examples of the elevation of the theme ...

Fog

Vintage San Francisco fog is pretty hard to beat for moody and mysterious photos. The massive Embarcadero Center complex (left image), located right against the bay in downtown San Francisco, is always even more of a presence on foggy nights.

De Young Museum

The De Young Museum, a wonderful example of contemporary modern architecture, located in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Lello Bookstore

Lello Bookstore, located near downtown Porto, features a fantastic staircase as an architectural centerpiece.

Double Take

The view of San Francisco downtown as seen from my neighborhood, Potrero Hill (sans double exposure, naturally), is one of the most pleasant things about living where I do. I see this view every time I go to my favorite coffee shop around the block, Farley’s, and count myself extremely lucky to live in such ...

Disney Concert Hall

One of the aspects of architecture that was pounded into me year after year during my formative years was the perpetually misunderstood notion of scale. Scale has many aspects to it, one of the most important being the relationship and proportion of adjacent volumes to each other. Over the years my sense of scale and ...

California Oil Rig

Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading an excellent tome chock full or wonderful article-sized meanderings into topics that intersect architecture, photography, urban exploration and some pretty innovative thinking into the design of the urban environment. The book is fruit of the work of Geoff Manaugh, who has been exploring these fascinating topics at ...

Frei Otto’s Olympic Stadium

Sometime last decade I went to Munich to visit the Olympic Stadium, design by Frei Otto. The magnificence of the roof structure is complemented by a sea of chairs, in which the shade of green is varied ever so slightly from one to the other. The effect is both mesmerizing and soothing, and must have ...

Powerful

Geothermal power near the Salton Sea in Southern California.

Stunning CGI Video

I came across this stunning computer generated video with a strong architectural and photography bend to it. Seen at PetaPixel.

Gare de Oriente

Photographs of a Santiago Calatrava designed train station in Lisbon, Portugal.

Mental Physics

A night at the Harmony Motel in Joshua Tree, made famous by Irish rock band U2, which stayed here during the production of the Joshua Tree album, coupled with a visit to the Mentalphysics Institute, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, made for an interesting day.