A design that teaches others

A design that shares itself

A design that inspires all

The new Redding School of the Arts will not just be the home of teachers helping to prepare students for the future.  The school itself – with its cutting-edge design – will be a teacher.  Students in the K-8 charter school, as well as their parents, community members and the country, courtesy of the Internet, will learn how a building can help both the environment and the learning process. -Enjoy

Photos ©2006 Steve Whittaker/www.whittpho.com

Photos ©2006 Steve Whittaker/www.whittpho.com

Our project received the 2002 Honor Award from the Central Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  Following are the juror comments:

“Very fine work; a mundane commission that became an excuse for making a memorable place.  In the hands of lesser architects this would have become the kind of building that we drive by without seeing.  The closer I looked, the more I admired this project for its intelligence, inventiveness, and beauty.  The playful and intelligent mastery of the various building components elevate the mundane functions of the facility to a higher level.  A worthy accomplishment.”

Stephan Castellanos, FAIA
James Robbins, AIA
Stan Field, RIBA

Ned Eichler, who would join his father’s business a few years later, recalled a conversation between Anshen and his father in which the architect criticized Joe’s developments.  “How can you build this crap?” Ned recalled Anshen asking bluntly.  When Anshen then proposed that Eichler hire him to design his next subdivision, Eichler at first dismissed the idea with a scowl, claiming Anshen lacked the discipline to design within his strict merchant building budgets.  Eventually, it was agreed that Anshen would develop a prototypical design for 51 units in the second phase of Eichler’s Sunnyvale Manor subdivision.  That group of homes sold out in only two weeks, and the national press soon hailed their success.

For a virtual tour of an Eichler home, circa 2008, Enter  the World of Eichler Design

We like to think in this case it’s because we are “generalist” architects who are viewed more as problem-solvers than specialists in any one type of design.  Our task with this project was to help with the realization of the long time dream of a dedicated group of  local garden enthusiasts.  The concept for the gardens evolved through many, many discussions, not all of which ended up in agreement.  Yet, the final result features an inspired landscape design by Mark Holland of  Holland Garden Design,  wrapping around environmental art pieces such as “The Sounds of Water” by Betsy Damon and the “Mosaic Oasis Fountain” by Colleen Barry.  The  buildings were consciously designed as  a background to the landscape.  As architects, we can only wish that our buildings could grow as beautiful with time as we have observed with this landscape since it first opened in 2005.

Visit the Turtle Bay Exploration Park  for more information.

• Can affordable housing be energy efficient?
• Where do affordability and sustainability meet?
• Can an attractive home be built that solves the need for
  working-class entry level families and actually benefits
  the surrounding environment instead of taking from it? – AgreePark 

The stage is located within the only existing park in downtown Redding.  By the early 1990’s Library Park had become more of a parking lot than a park, but thanks to the efforts of several local businesses and the removal of the parking, it  has experienced a huge resurgence in popularity.  Improved landscaping, lighting and misting fans have attracted thousands of residents every summer to what has become a very popular gathering place.

• Listed on California Register of Historic Places. – November 5, 1999
• Recipient of Art Deco Society of California Preservation Award. – March 18th, 2000
• Listed on National Register of Historic Places. – January 17, 2002

The Cascade Theatre has always been a special place.  In 1935, the year the Cascade first opened, the theatre was capable of seating over 20% of Redding’s total population.  In its heydey, the Cascade offered Shasta County residents a place to escape from the daily struggle of life during the depression. - Cascade Theatre

Photos ©2006 Steve Whittaker/www.whittpho.com

Our project received a 2006 Merit Award from the Central Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  Following are the juror comments:

“The thinking on this project was very clear – there is a very rational collection of forms, odd geometries come together seamlessly.  It looks like it’s been knitted into the site.  It feels natural and right.  We appreciate the use of multiple building systems including rammed earth.  They were used in a way that really makes sense.  It looks like a fun building to be in.  A space this jury would enjoy!”

David Meckel, FAIA
Jim Jennings, AIA
Eric Haesloop, AIA LEED

I have said in the past that for us to “get it”, we need to see examples of what is possible.  That’s where the Redding School of the Arts comes in to play.  Designed as a virtual clearinghouse of eco-friendly ideas, it literally has something for everyone.  Green is not an all-or-nothing proposition.  If we all contribute in a small way, big improvements can occur in our planet’s health.  So, this school is being designed to be copied (and improved upon) in any way possible.  But in order to make it really easy to take the ideas being offered and use them in other places, we have decided to make ourselves very obvious, whether you are an everyday user or just a one-time visitor.  We want ot “hit you over the head” with the proverbial hammer.  It’s wonderful to build an environmentally advanced building, but its eco-friendly features need to be transparent to all those who travel through its hallways. – A News Cafe

 ”I had just turned nineteen when I first used stone in a building project.  I sensed that there was something special about stone, but I did not begin to realize its full potential until I built a black limestone exterior chimney about three years later.  While working on the chimney, the full force of the stone’s power and energy hit me.  It was an awakening.  I remember to this day going to the quarry, handpicking the stones to be used, mixing the cement powder with the washed sand to make the concrete to hold the stones in place.  I was doing all the work myself, putting in twelve-hour days of backbreaking labor.  At night I would find myself in bed, exhausted from the day’s work in the hot sun but still unable to fall asleep, just lying there on my back.  I waited anxiously for daybreak so I could go back to work and lay more stone, thoughts racing through my mind, excited about the hypnotic energy that the emerging patterns of stones were creating.” – Lew French, from his book Stone by Design

Watch a video of this amazing artist:

All Photographs of Lew’s artistry are courtesy of Alison Shaw.

If you have ever watched a disaster movie where a giant asteroid is hurtling toward the earth, bringing with it death and destruction to all mankind, you know what happens. Almost no one believes the warnings until they can see the danger with their own eyes, and by then, of course, it’s too late.  So it is with life, where today’s climatologists are confronted with continuing public skepticism in response to their dire pronouncements on the negative effects global warming will have on our planet’s health by the end of the 21st century. – A News Cafe

On that momentous day, Hobart Brown, a Ferndale sculptor and art gallery owner now known to kinetic racers as “Our Glorious Founder,” decided to try to fix his son’s broken tricycle. When the repairs didn’t work out as planned, Brown opted to weld random bits and pieces of scrap metal to the bike.  When he finished, the tricycle was more than six feet tall, and Brown had to add three extra wheels to the bright red, wobbly piece of art to stop it from falling over.  Shortly afterward, while recovering from his creative frenzy in a local bar with a refreshing beverage, Brown got into a heated conversation with local metal sculptor Jack Mays, who claimed he could weld together a customized tricycle that both looked better and moved faster than Brown’s bike.   Mays then challenged Brown to a race down Ferndale’s Main Street on Mother’s Day, the last day of the week-long seventh annual Ferndale Arts Festival. - Wired.com

 Below is the Hippypotamas, 1st place winner for engineering in 2009’s race.

The official Spectator’s Guide, full of both useless and entertaining information, is a must buy for any first-time race watcher. 

 For a true sense of this wonderful race, a  phot0graphic history is available for  viewing at the Kinetic Kingdom, where immediately you see the words “Transforming the Ordinary into the Sublime since 1969″.  The very first race in 1969 featured the entries of the creator of the race, Hobart Brown and a fellow competitor Bob Brown, both pictured below.

The technology may not have changed much in over the past forty years, the the art has certainly become more sophisticated.

But even with all the fun, there’s always a message.  And it’s delivery comes via a very convincing messanger.

For more on this “wild and crazy” event, visit our friends at The News Cafe.

She wanted to create a park within a park – a quiet protected place onto itself, yet harmonious with the overall plan of Constitution Gardens. The walls have a mirror-like surface (polished black granite) reflecting the images of the surrounding trees, lawns, monuments, and visitors. The walls seem to stretch into the distance, directing us towards the Washington Monument, in the east, and the Lincoln Memorial, to the west, thus bring the Vietnam Veterans Memorial into a historical context. – The Wall

This is a wonderful example of how art and architectural competitions can result in a great piece of design; an opportunity that otherwise would never have been available to Maya Lin at this point in her life.

 Finally, for everyone who has ever encountered a bad driver on the road, imagine a future where you might get cut off on the road…
…by a plane.

Personally, based on style alone the Moller Skycar would be our preferred choice for the future of hybrid transportation.  With an initial pricetag of about $500,000, this is definitely not going to change transportation overnight.  But for that price, you get a vehicle that is capable of travel at 30,000 feet with a ”comfortable” cruising speed of 275 mph and can be adapted for water operation.

The above video is an excerpt from the academy award nominated documentary titled My Architect .

” My Architect is a tale of love and art, betrayal and forgiveness – in which a legendary artist undertakes a five year, worldwide exploration to understand his long-dead father.”

“Today Sawaya has more than 1.5 million colored bricks in his New York art studio. His work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted and is both beautiful and playful. Sawaya’s ability to transform LEGO bricks into something new, his devotion to scale and color perfection, the way he conceptualizes the action of the subject matter, enables him to elevate an ordinary toy to the status of fine art. “-The Brick Artist

Watch Nathan create his LEGO block art (VIDEO) and just for fun, watch Nathan’s guest appearance on the Colbert Nation (VIDEO).

“The spirit of science, of discovery and illumination, is central to my art.  Ultimately, everything made is first found.  Yet, for both art and science, successful work must allow others not to simply rediscover what you have discovered, but to make, through the work, their own discoveries.  The work then remains alive.  Every thing has a source.  When the order of things eludes us, we often mistake complexity for chaos, and therefore miss the wonderful sources of things.” – Ben Butler

“In 1873 Marcus Peck purchased the Copper Hill Mine group for $6,000. In 1876, Peck discovered copper ore in an adjoining ledge and patented it as the Afterthought, a mining term that means an adjoining claim located after the establishment of a major claim.  During its early years, it was mined for silver, gold, copper, lead and zinc, but eventually became one of the largest copper mines in Shasta County.” – Dottie Smith

Apart from its story, however, this structure’s remains paint a fascinating picture of what happens to our buildings when they have outlived their usefulness, but somehow manage to avoid the wrecking ball.  As architects we can only watch this ever so slow return to the earth and wonder how our own buildings will end.

So, I set out on a road trip in search of the great, cheap house, a place that I can afford, that satisfies my need for a home, my taste for innovative design, and my desire for a more enlightened approach to homebuilding.  Unlike Walter Gropius, I wasn’t looking for a way to house the masses.  Honestly, I just wanted to buy a house for myself…and maybe a cat or two.

In this engaging story, you will find yourself pulled into the world of homebuilding as the author investigates a series of wide-ranging and often exotic ideas in home design.  Often amusing and always entertaining, this journey nonetheless offers some sharp insights into the challenges architects and designers have encountered in their attempts to design mass-produced homes that offer something more than a typical tract home.

The hard stuff – like building foundations, bringing in utilities, and getting approvals such as building permits – is all more expensive and complicated than putting up walls.  But so far the exisitng prefab companies are mostly concerned with the walls.  The only people who have streamlined the other processes – the foundations, the plumbing systems, the legal and financial niceties – are the big, conventional home builders.  The thing that the tract house builders have to offer is not good architecture or superior carpentry but a well-practiced proficiency at taking care of the hard stuff. – Karrie Jacobs

 This is a book for everyone who has ever dreamt for building their own home, but isn’t sure how to begin.  This is also a book for architects who want to design homes that can be built more than once. 

“In my work, I have two main purposes:  In my individual pieces, I strive to create beauty where there might be perceived ugliness, to redeem materials that otherwise might be thought of as junk.  In my conceptual, public art, I like to make life a little more magical and full of delightful surprises.  My life as a found object artist is a continual treasure hunt; I hope for my work to remind everyone that if we choose to, every day can be a treasure hunt, for something unexpected, beautiful, or heartening.” – Celeste White

Josh Cuthbertson

Trilogy Architecture

within the confines of its

natural environment, suffering neither deterioration nor neglect…

and in the process

actually become the better for it?

12/25/2003

These days it seems as though “Green” is everywhere we turn.  Environmentally friendly living ideas have finally made it to mainstream America, or at the very least, Good Morning America.  The message being broadcast is clear from coast to coast: “Green is good, and it’s here to stay”.  But in America’s haste to jump on the eco-groovy bandwagon, how do we separate the truth from the hype?

 

I want to discuss what I consider four of the more prevalent green myths: 

1. We need to be green because of global warming
2. It isn’t easy being green
3. It costs a lot of money to be green
4. Green has to be sexy to be good

rebuilding our cities

often begins with what seems

like a backward step:

It’s called addition by destruction.

12/25/2005

The removal of the first section of roof over the Redding Downtown Mall, Redding, California.

The above video is an excerpt from a film  titled Architectures 2 from a collection presented by Richard Compans and Stan Neumann.  This stellar series from European public television channel ARTE pays respect to the craft and art of architecture.  Shedding light on architects themselves, it also provides intimate glimpses into some of the world’s most stunning buildings. This release highlights Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax building, the Stone Thermal Baths, and much more.

If you hang around the renewable-energy business for long, you’ll hear a lot of tall tales. You’ll hear about someone who’s invented a process to convert coal into vegetable oil in his garage and someone else who has a duck in his basement that paddles a wheel, blows up a balloon, turns a turbine and creates enough electricity to power his doghouse…No wonder cynics often say that viable fusion energy or hydrogen-powered cars are “20 years away and always will be.”  But what if this time is different? What if a laser-powered fusion energy power plant that would have all the reliability of coal, without the carbon dioxide, all the cleanliness of wind and solar, without having to worry about the sun not shining or the wind not blowing, and all the scale of nuclear, without all the waste, was indeed just 10 years away or less? That would be a holy cow game-changer. – Thomas Friedman

Watch this brief video, titled From the Sun to a Sun to see how the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California may be on the cusp of changing forever our thinking when it comes to energy production.

“Credit is given to Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Department of Energy under whose auspices this work was performed.”

“While I may have a general idea in mind when creating a sculpture, the passages that constitute the whole are a surprise to me. Any durable material is fair game in this process, although steel is usually best for actual connections between mediums. I grab elements that are near at hand, realizing that chance and spontaneity are keys to accessing fresh visual territory. This maundering exploration often involves stumbling corrections and meandering whimsy, but eventually concludes with a satisfying map of the journey.” – Bryan Tedrick

“Architects seem to need authorship.  It is what motivates them.  They feel that they own their designs in a deeper sense than merely owning the copyright.  Sometimes they assert their ownership even when it is against the interests of the client.  Persuading clients to spend more than they wanted to on a design they don’t really like is a skill that ambitious architects learn quickly.  Any alteration in the balance of power between architect and client (author and reader) is likely to be strongly resisted.  But, paradoxically, this is precisely what must happen if architects are to gain some influence over the design of ordinary, serially produced buildings like houses.  Authorship must be shared with both the customer and the manufacturer.  An architect submitting a design for a house to a manufacturer will be asked to alter this detail in order to make it easier to produce, and that detail in order to make it easier to sell.  It will be an open collaboration, and the temptation to cry ‘but this is no longer my design!’ will have to be resisted.  The only alternative is for architects to give up their ambitions to influence the everyday environment and go back to designing art galleries.” Colin Davies

What makes America unique is not that it built MIT, or that its grads are generating economic growth and innovation, but that every state in the country has universities trying to do the same.  “America has 4,000 colleges and universities,” said Allan E. Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education.  “The rest of the world combined has 7,768 institutions of higher education.  In the state of California alone, there are about 130 colleges and universities.  There are only 14 countries in the world that have more than that number.” – Thomas Friedman

“I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and “found” tools–a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.” - Morning Earth

Here is a wonderful video that offers some insight into the workings of this amazing artist 

as a creative process, what we really do as

architects is to “recreate”, whether it be

a feeling or fantasy, mood or memory;

architecture is often more about imagery

than

about images.

12/25/2002

Fantasy Fountain, Redding, CA

On those rare occasions where students are given an opportunity to comment on the quality of their learning environment, one answer always seems to make the cut – “give us more Soft Seating.”  Almost every surface in school that students sit on is hard.  To make things worse, the hard surfaces are rarely designed to be ergonomic and almost never are they designed for students to sit in them for hours and hours each day as is the case.  Some estimate that as many as 50% of all Americans have back problems.  It would be interesting to find out how much of this could be attributed to the unhealthy seating arrangements during 12 years of school. – Designshare.com

The paper cut sculptures explore the probable and magical transformation of the flat sheet of paper into figures that expand into the space surrounding them.  The negative and absent 2 dimensional space left by the cut, points out the contrast to the 3 dimensional reality it creates, even though the figures still stick to their origin without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in many of the cuts. – Peter Callesen

it remains

for man to believe that it can be

manipulated to create a more beautiful art form.

The question we must ask

is whether this is the

result of man’s arrogance toward his environment

or the mere

playfulness of a creative spirit?

12/25/2001

 Turtle Bay Exploration Park is a private, non-profit organization dedicated
to education and interpretation of the environmental, historical and cultural components of the Sacramento River watershed. The 8000 square foot Turtle Bay Visitor Center marks the south entry of a 300-acre site in Redding, California. The careful siting of the building between the parking area and an existing boardwalk allows the building to serve as a gateway to the park. From the interior, the largely transparent pavilion allows expansive views to a natural wetland and riparian forest beyond. The Visitor Center employed a number of sustainable building strategies including a straw bale wall that wraps around the classroom wing. Deep overhangs shade the interior spaces from the intense summer sun and extensive use of glazing helps reduce dependence on artificial lighting. Through its deliberate site strategy, program composition and articulation of materials, the Turtle Bay Visitor Center provides a rich experience for the visitor and a dynamic gateway to the entire park. -BCJ

Every year for the last nine years, the Design Futures Council and the journal DesignIntelligence have produced a ranking of the architecture schools that best prepare students for professional practice.  The results are determined through a poll of firms and organizations that hire graduates.  Many of the country’s leading firms participate; collectively, these participants employ more than 100,000 people. – architecturemagazine.com

And if you want to purchase the results for 2009, go to DesignIntelligence 

UPDATED March 23rd:

At least some in our office are no longer bothered by last year’s school rankings as 2009 results begin to circulate. – Cornell University

If you think these houses are unusual, check out this site – hemmy,net

“No more can we applaud designs that fail

 to take our planet into consideration. 

 The time has come to let go the architecture of convenience

 and to embrace an architecture of connection.”

But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests of Canada.  Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.

Customers “demand soft and comfortable,” said James Malone, a spokesman for Georgia Pacific, the maker of Quilted Northern.  “Recycled fiber cannot do it.” – nytimes.com

Seventh Generation Recycled Toilet Paper

I interviewed nearly three thousand children and parents across the country, in urban, suburban, and rural areas.  In classrooms and living rooms, the topic of the children’s relationship with nature sometimes surfaced.  I think often of a wonderfully honest comment made by Paul, a fourth-grader in San Diego: “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the outlets are.” – richardlouv.com

The problem with clean technology is that it’s always competing with an existing, cheap, dirty alternative.  - Thomas Friedman

In the preface to his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,  Venturi quotes T.S. Elliot to explain how tradition – “a conscious sense of the past” – guides his own work.  It seems  appropriate then that our Carnegie Stage follows his example, designed to serve as a reminder to the library which once stood on this site in downtown Redding.

If you went down to the Thames today you were sure of a big surprise.  This giant sculpture of a polar bear stranded on a block of ice floated 7.5 miles from Greenwich towards the centre of London to highlight the problem of melting ice caps. - Daily Telegraph

Our civilization is in trouble because of trends we ourselves have set in motion.  The good news is that momentum is building in efforts to reverse damaging environmental trends.  Just to cite one example, in early 2007 Australia announced that it would ban incandescent light bulbs by 2010, replacing them with highly efficient compact fluorescents that use only one fourth as much electricity.  Canada quickly followed with a similiar initiative.  Europe, the United States, and China are expected to do the same soon.  The world may be approaching a tipping point on a political initiative that can drop world electricity use by nearly 12%, enabling us to close 705 coal-fired power plants.  This “ban the bulb” movement could become the first major win in the battle to stabilize climate. - Earth Policy Institute