Sometimes good design isn’t architectural. Here are some examples of typical items that have been improved upon:
sleek design for those who rely on the smoke detector to know when the bacon is done
I need this yesterday
If you don't want your buddy's dirty hands on your slice as he tears them apart...
This looks good, but it would be so much better with Chocolate Chip cookies!
As an architect, I have been to many job sites, some of which have the “lunch-truck” from some local catering place that drives from job site to job site, offering a wide variety of hot and cold foods for working folk. I will admit that I have never eaten from one of the lunch trucks, but I have been tempted. Not any more. I decided to eat out the other day and went to Taco Bell (don’t ask why, self torture maybe?) and this is what I saw:
A lunch truck whose driver would rather pay to eat crap from the drive through than to eat for free from their own offerings....
Note to self – NEVER, EVER eat from this lunch truck!
Hopefully, you’ve read Part 1 already… here is
Weekend Warrior – Part 2
When we bought our house, we took the ugly green/gray room directly across from the master bedroom and made a gender neutral nursery (we had not yet found out it would be a boy). Now that our second child is on the way, and it’s a girl, I thought we would just leave the room the same – boy was I wrong! Between the wife’s nesting feelings and the extended family’s excitement over a little girl, the room was going to be redone. Luckily, the gender-neutral decor would only have to be partially redone.
 Ugly green/gray room when we bought in 2007 |
 as we started the gender-neutral paint job |
 the nursery in yellow and green for our first child |
 now fully girl-ready |
What a long hard weekend it’s been. So much so, that I plan to make the weekend projects the topic of several of my posts this week…
Weekend Warrior – Part 1
I bought a house in 2007 that was nice, but needed a lot of cosmetic changes, starting with paint, windows, lighting, etc etc etc… At the time, we were expecting our first child and with three bedrooms, we had space for a dedicated guest room. Now that we are expecting a daughter, we decided to lose the guest room and make it into a toddler room.
 When we bought the house... |
 Right after moving in |
 After a long weekend |
Sometimes the best design is redesign. Taking an everyday item and transforming it in a way that makes you think “why the hell wasn’t it always like this?” Here is one of those ideas:
This is unrelated to architecture, but you should go get this book….
32 Candles Book Signing in Trenton (Facebook Event)
It’s written by my very dear friend, Ernessa T. Carter, who when she gets super rich from selling lots of copies of her amazing book, will hire me to design a new house in Hawaii for her! So you see, maybe it is architecturally related after all! So buy it in person, order it from an online retailer, get it on your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, or Nook – and get it this week to help get her on the NYTimes Bestsellers List!
I bought a nice big printer when I started my firm. It was probably a little too much printer for what I needed, but none-the-less, I got it. Laser, color, duplexing – I even added an extra paper drawer to it. So after 4 years of working great, I had a huge print job I had to run – 300 pages, full color, front and back, on card stock – and I noticed how SLOW it was running. The job emptied my toner, so while ordering replacements, I would add some RAM and upgrade the firmware. Bad idea…. the firmware update killed the printer! Fried the control board from what I can tell. A combination of poor engineering and poor customer service let me to look at options other than through the manufacturer (who will remain nameless, but rhymes with “bell”). (more…)
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!
So I’m working on a little something new. A small addition that will probably cost more money than any other project I have on the books at the moment and will require a lot more work than most too.
Budget: unknown, but well into the six figures
Schedule: substantial completion by mid-October 2010, on going work for years to come
Location: Trenton NJ (more…)
If you’ve read this far… go read a great blog written by a friend of mine (and contributed to by my wife): fierce and nerdy
then go order this awesome book written by that same friend of mine: 32 Candles
