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Until now, it looked like the Arizona desert would swallow a mid-century modern house designed by Phoenix architect Alfred Beadle.
Last month, Lynda Maze, owner of the 1958 White Gates House, convinced a Phoenix court to give her time to renovate her blighted property, which she had considered razing two years ago. The city retracted two blight citations that neighbors had filed against the house.
"I didn't realize it would take possession of my body," Maze says of the White Gates House. "I'm not a historian, but I just got the house, spent some time up there and decided, 'I've got to do something.'"
yesterday i noticed the first blossoms on our forsythia popping on a low lying branch. not much change today with the rain and all. last year i posted this on march 31st.
HVAC links thread
biketree
via zoller
Leonard A. Lauder, the cosmetics executive and chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art, said on Tuesday that his art foundation would give the museum $131 million, the biggest donation in the Whitney’s 77-year history.
The bulk of the money — $125 million — will go toward the Whitney’s endowment, boosting it to $195 million from $70 million, Mr. Lauder said in a telephone interview.
The Whitney called the gift one of the largest donations ever to a New York museum’s endowment. Mr. Lauder said that the money required the museum not to sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue at 75th Street for an extended period, although he declined to specify how long.
louis kahn esherick house for sale
Basic Photography for Architects
urban archeology made bathroom sink counters tops from 30" x 58" carra marble slabs salvaged from the abbey aldrich rockefeller sculpture garden renovation at moma. from todays nyt design magazine. sounds like a few loose slabs got sold off as is for gardens, etc. (those i covet)
odd take on a murphy bed
entire apartments furniture in a box
via zoller
A mountainside house being auctioned in Tennessee is perfect for anyone tolerant of gawkers and fascinated with outer space: It's built like a flying saucer.SOLD $135K
The home "landed" on a twisting road leading to Chattanooga's Signal Mountain in 1970 -- just after television executives grounded the run of the original "Star Trek" series. It will be sold to the highest bidder Saturday.
The circular house -- ultramodern when it was built -- is ringed with small square windows and directional lights and perched on six "landing gear" legs. It has multiple levels, three bedrooms, two baths and an entrance staircase that retracts with the push of a button.
Terry Posey, an agent with Crye-Leike Auctions of Cleveland, Tennessee, said the current owner has had the property only four months and didn't want to comment. Posey posted an e-Bay ad and said he already has a $100,000 bid.
via vz
american experience: the carter family will the circle be unbroken
poor valley clinch mountain
ovation tv's harry smith page
old weird america
poop-freeze
via vz
Paul Overy's excellent new book examines the roots of the movement and comes to some interesting conclusions as to why Modernism remains so very sure of itself. It is often taken as axiomatic, for instance, that somehow the brutal shock of the Great War with its industrial-scale killing capability stimulated the rise of what was still a fledgling movement in Europe. This is true to the extent that wars always accelerate the advance of technology - particularly the planes and ships beloved of such architects as Le Corbusier. It is also true that the example of new factory buildings, with their need for large, uninterrupted spaces, had much to do with influencing change in architecture. But Overy suggests that it has as much to do with late 19th century notions of healthcare. In particular, he believes, the cult of the sanatorium led directly to the new architecture.
In a Europe ravaged by industrial pollution and tuberculosis, with antibiotics yet to be discovered, the Victorian obsession with fresh air was taken to new heights. Sanatoria with large windows and open balconies were built in mountain resorts and forest retreats. Old ways of building did not lend themselves to this kind of healthcare. Doctors insisted on light and air, the dissolving of the barrier between indoor and outdoor. These new super-clinics could not be allowed to harbour germs and dust: they had to be efficient wipe-clean places. As early as 1907, the astonishingly modern-looking Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, contained all the key ingredients: flat roofed, big-windowed, concrete-framed, balconied, white-painted, minimalist. Architects were Otto Pfleghard and Max Haefeli. Structural engineer was Robert Maillart, deploying the Hennebique reinforced-concrete system. Nor was this the first of its kind - a prototype, also in Davos, had existed as early as 1902, developed by Dr. Karl Turban and architect Jacques Gros. The key was the openable all-glass, south-facing wall. It quickly became apparent that conventional bricklayers and carpenters could not produce such a building. New techniques were duly borrowed from industrial and transport buildings.
rt 66 revisited
endangered motels
From the Redwoods to the beaches, parts of California soon may be inaccessible to visitors.
Under the cloud of the Golden State's current fiscal crisis, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently asked each department and agency in the state to reduce its budget by up to 10 percent. The Department of Parks and Recreation came up with a proposal that sent a shock wave through the state: Close 48 state parks and reduce lifeguards at some beaches to cut $8.8 million from the 2008-2009 state budget.
checkpoint charlie at terminal 5
There will never be another surfer like Miki "Da Cat" Dora.via vz
All for a Few Perfect Waves is the story of Miki "Da Cat" Dora, the dashing and enigmatic rebel who, for twenty years, was the king of Malibu surfers. He dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and—to this day—inspires the fantasies of decades of Dora wannabes who began to swarm his pristine paradise after the movie Gidget helped surfing explode into the mainstream and changed it forever—many say for the worse.
Disenchanted, Dora railed against the ruination; angry that the waves were no longer his own, he fought back—or found better things to do. Dora was also an avid sportsman, raconteur, philosopher, traveler—and scam artist of wide repute. When, in 1973, he finally ran afoul of the law, he soon abandoned America and led the FBI and Interpol on a seven-year chase around the globe. At the same time, he never gave up searching for (and occasionally finding) the empty waves and spirit of the Malibu he'd lost. From homes in New Zealand to South Africa to France, he continued to personify the rebel heart of surfing and has been widely acknowledged as "the most relentlessly committed surfer of all time."
The New York Times named him "the most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce." Vanity Fair called him "a dark prince of the beach." The Times (London) wrote, "A hero to a generation of beach bums. He was tanned . . . good-looking . . . trouble."
On par with auteurs like Walt Disney, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Art Spiegelman, Ralph Bakshi redefined animation and became a hero to countless generations of fans and filmmakers. If Disney’s life and work evoke images of chaste princesses in gleaming castles, Bakshi’s is a lady of ill repute camped out in a dim back alley. His name is synonymous with the great tradition of American cartooning. Bakshi is responsible for such memorable films and television shows such as: Fritz the Cat, the first x-rated animated feature film, The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, Spider-man, Heavy Traffic, Cool World, and The Lord of the Rings, which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2008.This is the only book chronicling the career of one of the pioneers of animation. Unfiltered highlights Bakshi’s early years, as well as each of his groundbreaking films, TV shows, and other projects. Unfiltered contains hundreds of pieces of pre-production art, animation cells, and never-before-seen rough sketches, line drawings, and doodles, all culled from Bakshi’s personal archives containing more than thirty years of his life’s work.With contributions from animators, producers, and directors who have been influenced by his work, this is a book like no other, about a man like no other.via vz