That's one big f'en house
The AP had a story on a home that you may be interested in…
The 90,000-square-foot home for sale outside Orlando has 23 bathrooms, 13 bedrooms, 10 kitchens and three pools. All that and more for $75 million “as is.” The catch? It’s not finished.
Pop Up Architecture
Sometimes, architecture isn’t built – it’s cut out in little folding pieces of paper. Next time you send me a greeting card, make it one of these! Check these out and more here and the artist’s other creations here!
Your Brain on Gehry
After reading a previous post, a friend of mine suggested I pass along this blog post she found.
Here is a building by Frank Gehry being blogged about bother here and here. While fun to look at, I wonder if the outward expression of the building is overshadowing the interior space. I haven’t been here, so I can’t personally comment on that, but if form follows function – what the hell is happening inside this building?
If you look through the comments on the other blogs, you’ll see some great comments. My favorite so far:
Gehry makes interesting architectural sculpture — unbelievably dreadful buildings, mind you, but fascinating works of sculpture.
Enjoy your weekend everyone!
Exit from 95 to Street Road
Anyone who lives in or around Philly/Trenton knows Street Road. Yes, Street Road. Clearly someone named this street before GPS was around. If you try to enter Street into your GPS, it will return about 10,000 results. But that’s not the only poorly chosen street name. In fact, urban planners often draw up large scale site plans with new roads and use placeholders that no one ever changes. In almost every metropolitan area there is a “New Street” – usually because no one cared to name it and it was on someone’s plan as a new street, so that’s what the sign says.
So here are some other street signs that may get you and your Garmin in trouble while traveling:
Grand Central Terminal's Main Windows
Long before I became an architect I was fascinated with the hidden spaces of buildings: the service stairs, attics, crawl spaces – the guts. Maybe it influenced be to become an architect, who knows? In college, I took a trip to NYC’s Grand Central Station (see photo). Those three large windows are actually six windows – outside windows and inside windows, with about 4′ of space between them and catwalks at each floor. Well, curiosity got the best of my friends and me and after finding out how to get into those walkways, we were “escorted” out of them (pre-9/11 security mind you).
I’ve gotten a lot of flack for living in Trenton, and to be fair, I gave a lot to my wife (who was raised here) before we moved here in 2006, but since coming here, I’ve realized there really are a lot of great things going on in Trenton. We have more than our share of problems for a city of our size, but it’s amazing the things you can find when you look past the grimy outer appearance of the Capital City…
Recently I stumbled upon a website that showcases just a few of the great things in Trenton. Hidden Trenton gives reviews on some local businesses and helps advertise upcoming local events. Many of the items I already knew about, but some I didn’t – so for all you Trentonites (I hate the Trentonian newspaper so much, I’m trying to get a new term put out there), and everyone within driving distance of the city, take a few minutes and see what you’ve been overlooking!
I would so put this in my house for the attic if I had a closet to use
I’ve always like alternating tread stairs, but the way this bookshelf is integrated into the stairs is awesome. I can definitely imagine this as stairs to an attic, behind a hallway door. It would look like a closet full of books to most people, but still provide access when you need it. If I had a closet that I could give up to do this, I would start building it today.
For those of you who think stairs are nothing but a means of ascension, I have a site for you…
Was that slope supposed to go the other way?
To amuse myself on this, the thirty third anniversary of my arrival on this planet, I have brought together a collection of things that got past not only an architect, but got past the building review, the contractor’s site super, and ended up actually constructed somewhere! I always wonder why everyone involved lets the work get to this point without raising a red flag and saying “WTF?”
(more…)
There are 6 hospitals within a six mile radius of downtown Trenton – four “regular” hospitals, a children’s hospital, a prison hospital and a psych hospital. If you expand that radius just a little, you can pick up two university hospitals and another children’s hospital also. So either the people of this area are really sick or are paying too much for health care that they can support this many hospitals. So there are also two hospitals under construction and one more being talked about. These will replace existing hospitals and not add to the count, but in this economy, that’s a lot of dollars going to construction!!!
Now before I take this post into a rant about health care and insurance, let’s steer it back to architecture – both ongoing and potential.
Do you feel a little cramped in your small apartment or house? Do you feel you need more space? Maybe you just need some of these cool ideas to get your space to work for you
In case you haven’t seen this… here’s a guy who really knows how to use a small space:
So you’re not ready for that – I mean who wants to move the TV wall each time they want a cold drink from the kitchen that’s behind it? And who wants to sleep on top of the bathtub when they visit you? However, this reminded me of a studio course I took at RPI on mobile housing which explored a lot of these types of techniques. Most of the concepts are modifications on luxury RV’s or private yachts which have fold-outs, flip downs, and the like throughout them. So I started back down the path of looking at cool uses for small spaces and seeing what I could find. Here are a few…
