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cyclorama (cyc)
Curator Nader Vossoughian talks about the exhibition (filmmaker/interviewer: Henk Augustijn).via reference library
Watch this movie on YouTube.
Next chapter in the ‘After Neurath' project. around the Austrian philosopher, sociologist and economist Otto Neurath (1882-1945), who lived in The Hague from 1934 until 1940. The exhibition focuses on Otto Neurath's relationship with architecture and his influence on urban development. Especially his ideas about the democratization of public space and how to reconcile the intimacy and tangibility of the ancient polis with the anonymity and diversity of the global metropolis have been very influential to protagonists like Paul Otlet, Cornelis van Eesteren, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky andLe Corbusier and resound in mainstream architectural and urban thinking of today.
The exhibition ‘The Global Polis' shows the innovative ideas about the modern metropolis of Neurath -and his famous protagonists- based on the social-democratic ideals of the interbellum. Neurath was especially eager to promote participatory forms of democratic exchange (a 'global polis'), and this exhibition shows his attempts in disciplines as varied as architecture, urbanism, graphic design and planning.
The exhibition is structured in three 'acts'.
The first act, 'The Communal City,' examines Neurath's role in Vienna's extraordinary 'self-help' cooperative settlement movement, which inspired tremendous optimism in architects and planners.
The second act, 'The World City', examines Neurath's efforts to internationalize mass education and social enlightenment through collaborations with Paul Otlet, Le Corbusier and others.
The third act, 'The Functional City', looks at his work with the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and the planner and architect Cornelis van Eesteren specifically. This section explores Neurath's struggles with the mass media and modernist architecture on the eve of the rise of fascism in Europe. It also raises deeper questions about the links between culture and politics today.
glashaus
the glass house the movie
Historic Green: New Orleans: March 8-23...students and young professionals will...help the people of the Lower 9 revitalize their community...an unprecedented opportunity to integrate sustainable practices with preservation of a place.- Historic Green
Government reports confirm that half of the working poor, elderly and disabled who lived in New Orleans before Katrina have not returned. Because of critical shortages in low cost housing, few now expect tens of thousands of poor and working people to ever be able to return home.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) reports Medicaid, medical assistance for aged, blind, disabled and low-wage working families, is down 46% from pre-Katrina levels. DHH reports before Katrina there were 134,249 people in New Orleans on Medicaid. February 2008 reports show participation down to 72,211 (a loss of 62,038 since Katrina). Medicaid is down dramatically in every category: by 50% for the aged, 53% for blind, 48% for the disabled and 52% for children.
Doug Tallamy and his wife, Cindy, built their house seven years ago in the middle of 10 acres of former hayfields.
But they don’t sit inside much. Most of their spare time is spent cutting Oriental bittersweet and Japanese honeysuckle out of cherry and oak trees. They saw down thickets of autumn olive and multiflora rose and paint the cut stems with an herbicide that goes down into the roots and kills them.
The land was so thick with multiflora rose that they couldn’t walk, so Mr. Tallamy cut paths with hand loppers. They work with handsaws, not a chain saw. And they paint on the herbicide, rather than spraying it, because they don’t want to damage the treasures below: under those thorny rose bushes might be seedlings of black oak, Florida dogwood, black gum or arrowwood viburnum, which, if protected from deer, could flourish in the cleared space.
A meadow cleared of autumn olive can resprout with goldenrod, joe-pye weed, milkweed, black-eyed Susans and many other natives crucial to wildlife.
It’s hard work, but the Tallamys love being outside. And they share a vision, an imperative, really, that Mr. Tallamy lays out in a book, “Bringing Nature Home” (Timber Press, $27.95), published in November.
lt. amber glass
shelter institute / timber framing classes and custom timber frames
mullet architecture
via zoller
10 chic therapeutic spaces from home rejuvenation
via zoller
Pipe leaks in New Orleans are so bad that the city is losing millions [50+] of gallons of fresh water a day. The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board is struggling to rebuild a system that was a mess even before Hurricane Katrina. John Burnett reports.npr news
putnam rolling ladder co
things magazine
adam kalkin must have been watching too much monster garage judging from his silly illy push button house
gridbeamers
hat tip justin
sans trucks
via zoller
rip buddy miles
the schnab
Of course, Schnabel’s West Village building is an entirely different kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork, but it is born from the same fervent attitude that makes Giotto’s blue-backed frescoes so unforgettable. It also owes a huge debt, which Schnabel freely acknowledges, to two American architects: Addison Mizner and Stanford White. Schnabel’s experience with both architects’ work is personal and direct. He has rented a Mizner house in Florida in the past, and owns an 1880s fishing “cottage” by White in Montauk, on Long Island, where Schnabel spends lots of time painting and surfing. The West 11th Street building abounds in nods to both architects, all of them put through the Schnabel strainer. He’ll take a Mizner fireplace, for instance, and create a pumped-up version by, in his words, “putting some balls on it.” Likewise, the kitchens in each of the Chupi residences—with their board-and-batten wooden ceilings, emerald-green terra-cotta tiles, and cast-concrete countertops dyed chromium-oxide green—are straight out of Schnabel’s Montauk house, though re-tuned. None of this is simple mimicry. What’s interesting is how Schnabel mixes references to White and Mizner into a global iconography, including Moorish, Turkish, and Venetian touches, motifs the architects were attracted to themselves.
black barn thread:
The 8bit, lo-fi artist Tom Moody says he likes “tunes built around a single sound.” His song “Nice Nemesis,” a post about which on Moody’s blog included that clause, is certainly simple enough to meet those standards (MP3). The question, though, is which single sound is the center of this poppy little merrygoround.
Is it the occasional burst of a human “huh”? The sonar ping that marks the passing of every few bars? The Casio dub that suggests a video-game simulacrum of a nightclub? The crackling percussive foundation? The appearance of a little watery melodic sequence that serves as a kind of bridge? Somehow all those elements, and more, are sequenced into just over two minutes, and yet the overall effect is, indeed, bright and easy. More details at tommoody.us.
a commenter from this post
Ma'am,
I do believe Don did not deserve that reply for only trying to help. He has helped me several times and I have found his advice to be good.
As for your barn, I believe he is spot on with his advice to you. In my younger days, I used to help my father build pole barns and occasionally we worked on a much older barn. I loved that kind of work but it was usually done for the love because the owners wanted the dear old barn saved but didn't want to spend money on them. Once you put a nice roof on, and redo the foundation, and put some paint on it, they will last a long time just like when they were first built.
While a roof is no place for a novice, a foundation is very doable with a few tools, a plan, and perhaps a guiding hand. The first step is to evaluate what you have. Is any of the foundation salvagable? If no, you'll need to gather enough cribbing to support the whole barn. Railroad ties work well, or locally we have available used square guard rail posts and blocks which work well and you dont have to deal with the nasty black creosote. You can get by with just one jack but it will take a long time to get it jacked up plumb and square where you can start tearing out the old foundation and start the new. You can't take a barn with a 18" sag in the center and just start jacking that up to where it is straight. You have to work it a couple inches at a time to get it straight otherwise the barn will likely shift somewhere(a bad thing). Make sure your blocking and cribbing is secure. I prefer enough jacks you don't have to reset a hundred times but if you have time you can do it with one, jack up, put more blocks under, and let it back down and continue to go around until your even.
Once it is jacked up, plumb, level, and properly supported, you can start tearing the old foundation out. You say it is stone. Is it laid up with no cement of any kind? Is it just shifting and that is why it needs work or are the stones breaking? If the stones aren't breaking you can take them all out, pour a footer and reset them(I would lay them up with cement but that is your choice). If they are breaking then you need to decide if you want to spend the money to buy new stones, to pour cement, lay up block, etc. All of these options are perfectly doable for the average homeowner but you will know you put in an honest days work. It is nice if you can find someone who knows what they are doing to help you along. sometimes it is easier to do one section at a time. The best part about that is once the barn is supported so it won't fall down, you can work on the foundation one section at a time as the finances allow it. Periodically review your blocking/cribbing to make sure it isn't shifting or about to fall apart, though.
Once you get it all repaired, slowly let it down the way you jacked it up, a little at a time. If the roof is swaybacked, you can run a cable from eave to eave and put a come-along on it to bring it in a little at a time until the roofline is straight. With a little paint it will look as good as new and last a LONG time. The best part of it is being able to say I took this crappy looking barn that was about to fall down and I repaired it and made it better. Look at it now!
The only word of warning I have is if it is a bank barn instead of a yankee barn where the wall has soil on one side I would reinforce it/build it in a way that the frost doesn't push the wall in. Keeping moisture away from the wall helps a lot.
Good luck, and my advice is worth exactly what you paid for it!
B and B sheet metal