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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2019 16:37:36 GMT -5
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2019 16:49:39 GMT -5
Dan Price’s underground home, art & philosophy on $5,000/yearKirsten Dirksen
Published on Sep 20, 2015
When Dan Price returned to his home state of Oregon in 1990 he was determined to avoid mortgages or rent (he and his family had just finished caretaking a mansion with a heating bill of $500/month). He found an unused meadow in Joseph, Oregon and began renting it from his neighbors for $100/year (in exchange for cleaning downed trees and repairing fences).
His first underground structure was actually built to shelter his home/office, namely his copy machine, essential for publishing his zine “Moonlight Chronicles” which he started in 1992 (it was sponsored by Simple Shoes for a decade).
www.moonlightchronicles.com
In his meadow paradise, Price now also has an underground "hobbit hole" style home, as well as, a composting toilet, a propane-powered shower (using river water) and a pine wood propane sauna. He’s not hooked up to city water (he discovered a spring on the property), but he’s hooked up to the grid and it’s been approved by the county and city.
faircompanies.com/videos/dan-prices-underground-home-art-philosophy-on-5000year/
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2019 16:51:54 GMT -5
In Residence: Jim Olson - inside the architect's treetop house
NOWNESS
Published on Dec 2, 2015
Climb up to the Seattle-based architect and founder of Olson Kundig’s 14-foot by 14-foot treetop house in Longbranch, Washington, in this episode of In Residence. Read the feature on NOWNESS - bit.ly/1OFptHK
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2019 16:55:36 GMT -5
'I live in a bank'
CNN Business
Published on Oct 31, 2013
This former local bank branch in Spring City, Penn. was converted into a private home, replete with the two vaults now used as a full bar and a sauna.
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 30, 2019 3:36:02 GMT -5
Ok, so this 3D site is amazing. Check the link out.Lloyd Wright’s Sowden House, 1920s Hollywood Landmark & Black Dahlia Suspect’s LairPosted on September 22, 2017 by Kim Cooper in The Esotouric Blog and tagged 1920s, 1926, 1947, 20th century, 3d, art deco, black dahlia, craig sauer, elizabeth short, george hodel, habs, historic preservation, historic-cultural monument, lloyd wright, los feliz, marvin rand, mayan, national register, restoration, xorin balbes.
craigsauer3d.com/3d-model/john-sowden-house/fullscreen/Welcome to the sixth in a series of 3-D explorable tours of historic Los Angeles spaces, created by Craig Sauer using cutting-edge Matterport technology. This one is special, as for the first time in our partnership, Craig got us inside a building we’ve been longing to explore!
A decade ago we launched Esotouric with our flagship tour, The Real Black Dahlia. And on nearly every Dahlia tour, someone asks us about the murder suspect George Hodel and his sinister-looking house on Franklin Avenue. Although we don’t subscribe to his son Steve’s theory that George Hodel killed Beth Short in the basement, the house itself is fascinating.
Constructed in 1926 by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son and collaborator Lloyd Wright, using techniques similar to the elder architect’s “textile block” concrete forms, Sowden House is a classic Spanish Rancho-era California home filtered through a Mayan Art Deco sieve and updated for the jazz age theatrical set who lived to entertain. Presenting a blank white wall to the world outside, the house opens up to a magnificent sun-dappled courtyard, ringed all around with public and private spaces.
While we’d never been inside, the house could be understood by consulting a lovely set of 1971 Marvin Rand photographs and plans for the Historic America Building Survey (HABS), viewable on the Library of Congress website and above.
In 2001 Sowden House was purchased from its seventh owners by crystal-loving designer Xorin Balbes, who in the course of “restoring” the National Register and Los Angeles landmark, added many garish contemporary touches. He also apparently demolished the site-specific sculptural tiled bath. In recent years, the house has been used as a filming location and hosted George Hodel’s son Steve poking around the basement with a “cadaver dog” named Buster, seeking evidence of a seventy-year-old slaying.
But you can’t keep a misguided preservationist down, and Mr. Balbes has moved on to ruin other significant Los Angeles buildings, like the Hiram Higgins, or Willard house, a strong candidate to top our annual list of historic preservation nightmares. Sowden House was sold in 2013.
And just this summer, its tenth stewards took possession of Lloyd Wright’s bold building. Among their first acts was to ask Craig Sauer to document the property with an immersive 3-D scan—but only after the thick jungle of yucca, palm, bird of paradise and banana that has obscured the facade for years was removed. And like a handsome man who finally shaved off his awful beard, all we can do is wonder what took him so long.
As you click to enter the newly stark facade through Craig’s Matterport scan, then ascend the spartan staircase—ignore the contemporary rustic risers, which were originally bare concrete tile tread—you’ll find a house that is happily regaining its architectural integrity. Gone are the climbing vines and thorny succulents that clogged the edges of the courtyard, which Mr. Balbes had already rendered semi-usable with poorly-proportioned small pools instead of replicating the lost 32’ pool with its upright block structure supporting a water organ. The textured walls and columns change subtly as the sun moves across the sky and night falls.
The new owners are philanthropists dedicating to helping animals, promoting art and artists, and supporting social activism. They founded Canna-Pet and its non-profit organization, Pet Conscious, and plan on sharing the Sowden House as an event space to connect with other foundations and nonprofits in the L.A. community and help with fundraising. Perhaps an evening at Sowden House is in your future? But for now, we urge you to explore this Los Angeles treasure at your leisure.
But one part of the structure doesn’t appear in Craig’s scan, so don’t bother looking. Although every armchair Dahlia-ologist is curious about the basement in which George Hodel did or didn’t do something terrible to Beth Short in 1947, Craig felt that it just wasn’t architecturally “interesting” enough to merit the effort of scanning. So here, for your ghoulish pleasure, is a view of the dirt-floored basement and its primitive raised storage platform. We couldn’t visit the house without seeing it.
Now when we offer our Real Black Dahlia tour, as we will again on October 7, we’ll be able to direct interested parties to virtually explore the house where George Hodel danced a delicate duet with the cops he knew were bugging him. Maybe they’ll spot a clue, or one of the pussycats who are getting settled in to their new home. Certainly, they’ll be ensorcelled by this marvelous place!
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Post by the Scribe on Oct 25, 2019 1:11:38 GMT -5
HAPPY HALLOWEEN The Architecture Behind The Quintessential Haunted HouseOctober 30, 20174:44 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
3-Minute Listen
Transcript www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560920908/the-architecture-behind-the-quintessential-haunted-house
NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Mary Jo Bowling from Curbed on why Victorian architecture came to be associated with everything spooky and scary.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Picture the quintessential haunted house. Maybe you're imagining the Addams family home, or perhaps the Bates Motel from Hitchcock's "Psycho." They have one thing in common - I mean, besides being spooky.
On this night before Halloween, Mary Jo Bowling from the website Curbed joins us to explain the theme. Welcome to the program.
MARY JO BOWLING: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: OK, what's the answer to the quiz? What do these houses have in common?
BOWLING: Well, they're all Victorians.
SHAPIRO: So we're talking about towers, ornate, decorative trim, turrets. The Victorian period was named for Queen Victoria, who reigned over England through a lot of the 1800s. What does she actually have to do with us thinking of Victorian houses as haunted?
BOWLING: Well, Queen Victoria had a lot of sadness in her life. She lost her husband. And in an age where mourning was something of an art and a social tradition, she took it to a new level.
SHAPIRO: Queen Victoria actually wore black in mourning for decades.
BOWLING: Mmm hmm (ph).
SHAPIRO: And that obsession with death, you write, translated to some of the architectural features that we find in Victorian houses.
BOWLING: To our modern eyes it did seem like Victorians were obsessed with death. In fact, they would often put funeral images, funerary urns, things like that...
SHAPIRO: Medusa heads with snakes coming out of their head instead of hair.
BOWLING: Yeah. Medusa was said to ward off evil and death. And that was worked into the architectural trend. Death was a real part of Victorian life. People did not, you know, typically die in a hospital. They would die at home. And many Victorian homes had particular rooms where the dead were laid out and visited by and mourned by relatives.
SHAPIRO: These rooms were also so crowded, ornate, full of fancy furniture and ornamental objects, that they seem hard to keep up, so easy for them to get cobwebs, dust, the sorts of things that we associate with haunting.
BOWLING: Well, it was layered, and it was dark. That is true. And the homes themselves, the exterior, that was hard to keep up. So when Victorian architecture started to fall out of favor toward the 1930s many of these homes, which were very large and very ornate, they were hard to keep up. And they became for many cities the homes that were starting to crumble and...
SHAPIRO: The spooky old house on the hill.
BOWLING: Exactly.
SHAPIRO: I wonder, as our fear evolves from ghosts and spirits to fear of technology, do we start to see more contemporary architecture? Like, I'm thinking of the movie "Ex Machina," which is about, you know, what's a robot, what's a human, and it's suspense and thriller set in a very contemporary, beautiful building. Do you think as our fears evolve the architecture that represents those fears evolves as well?
BOWLING: Possibly. In architecture and interior design it's like a pendulum. So what's beloved and cherished today is often the thing that is out of favor tomorrow. So, you know, Victorians in their age, they were very proud of their homes. They would have never thought this is spooky. But then the pendulum swings. So the things that we really cherish today, the clean, minimal lines of modernism, that could be looked at as cold, brutal and frightening in a later age.
SHAPIRO: That's Mary Jo Bowling from the real estate website Curbed. Her research on spooky Victorian architecture caught our interest. Thanks so much, Mary Jo, and happy Halloween.
BOWLING: Thank you. Happy Halloween, Ari.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE SIMPSONS' "THE SIMPSONS HALLOWEEN SPECIAL END CREDITS THEME")This victorian home was smack dab right next to my high school. It was turned into a funeral home. I vividly recall during the cold, winter months after track practice I had to pass by it after sundown. Not sure if the owner realized it but the embalming room faced the school side parking lot. It had several large frosted windows with the embalming table against the windows with the lighting creating exacting images of his embalming the bodies coming through. I used to have nightmares about this place. When one of our teachers died young we were allowed to go next door to view the body during school. Did I say that after that I had all kinds of nightmares about that place?
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Post by the Scribe on Nov 3, 2019 6:01:59 GMT -5
PHOTOS: Yugoslavia's brutalist relics fascinate the Instagram generation Yahoo News Photo Staff•October 30, 2019 news.yahoo.com/photos-yugoslavias-brutalist-relics-fascinate-the-instagram-generation-155222975.html
Genex Tower, also known as the Western City gate, stands in Belgrade, Serbia. The building consists of two soaring pillars, connected by an aerial bridge. The tower is one of the most significant examples of brutalism, an architectural style popular in the 1950s and 1960s, based on crude, block-like forms cast from concrete. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
BELGRADE — Genex Tower is unmissable on the highway from the Belgrade airport to the center of the city.
Its two soaring blocks, connected by an aerial bridge and topped with a long-closed rotating restaurant resembling a space capsule, are such an unusual sight, the tower, built in 1977, has become a magnet for tourists despite years of neglect.
The tower is one of the most significant examples of brutalism — an architectural style popular in the 1950s and 1960s, based on crude, block-like forms cast from concrete.
Brutalism was popular throughout what was then the East bloc, but the former Yugoslavia made it its own, seizing on it as a way to forge a visual identity poised between East and West.
A security worker walks inside Hall 1 of the Belgrade Fair in Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Interest in the style is soaring — particularly since a 2018 exhibition at New York Cikty's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) called “Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980.”
"We have dozens of people every week interested in taking our Yugo tour around city landmarks built from the 1950s to 1980s," said Vojin Muncin, manager of the Yugotour sightseeing agency, which guides tourists around the Serbian capital in Yugos, the former Yugoslavia's once ubiquitous car.
"Genex Tower is among the most interesting sights. People see it on their way from the airport, and it immediately draws their attention."
Today one of the pillars is empty, while the other is residential. The rotating restaurant was last open in the 1990s.
Keen to capitalize on the interest, Belgrade authorities are now considering opening parts of another masterpiece of Yugoslav brutalism: the Palata Srbija government building, which is currently only open once a year.
The Museum of Contemporary Art stands in Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
BUILDING A DREAM
After World War II, socialist Yugoslavia led by Josip Broz Tito set out to reconstruct a land destroyed by fighting. Initially allied to the Soviet Union, Tito broke with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1948.
Residential blocks, hotels, civic centers and monuments made of concrete shot up across the country.
The architecture was supposed to show the power of a state between two worlds — Western democracy and the communist East, looking to forge its own path and create a socialist utopia.
But after Tito died in 1980, and economic crisis took hold, the new elites sought to distance themselves from the socialist regime, including its architecture. In 1991 the series of wars began that led to the collapse of Yugoslavia.
A crystal chandelier hangs beneath a nineteen meter dome weighing more than nine tonnes in Yugoslavia saloon inside the The Palata Srbija building, Belgrade, Serbia. The Palata Srbija building hosted former world leaders. "It is a shame to keep such a master piece away from the eyes of the public," said Sandra Tesla, curator of the building. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
"Now enough time has passed [since Yugoslavia fell apart] and people have begun to appreciate the architecture of Yugoslavia," said Alan Braun, lecturer at Zagreb University's architecture faculty.
He said the style was oner of a kind because of its visible influence from the West, reflecting Yugoslavia's unique position.
Residential areas were planned to have enough parks, cinemas, swimming pools and even parking space.
The Palata Srbija building hosted former world leaders such as U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and Russian leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.
The Eastern City Gate apartment buildings complex stands in the Konjarnik neighborhood in Belgrade, Serbia. Brutalism, an architectural style popular in the 1950s and 1960s, based on crude, block-like forms cast from concrete was popular throughout the eastern bloc. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Each of the former Yugoslav republics had its own salon with a central room called the Hall of Yugoslavia. Furniture and carpets were custom-made, and some of the most prominent artists produced paintings and mosaics.
The outside of the building is concrete, but the inside is marble. Its centerpiece is a crystal chandelier beneath a 19-meter dome weighing more than nine tons.
"It is a shame to keep such a masterpiece away from the eyes of the public," said Sandra Vesic Tesla, curator of the building.
Other examples of Yugoslav brutalism include the huge memorials commemorating the struggle against fascism by Tito's partisans, often placed in dramatic rural settings.
A formally used Yugoslav passenger aircraft sits in front of the Aeronautical Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Many of those pieces of art remain in disrepair, such as the monument to the uprising against fascism in Petrova Gora in Croatia. However, the Tjentiste memorial, commemorating the killing of 7,000 people by the Nazis was renovated last year.
Miodrag Zivkovic, the 91-year-old sculptor of the 19-meter-high concrete Tjentiste memorial was among the first artists in the former Yugoslavia to use concrete.
"It is stable material, resembling stone, but it is easier to work with," he said.
"For every project back in those days, there was a national contest, and artists from all over the country had the opportunity to apply, and that competition produced quality." (Reuters)
Photography by Marko Djurica/Reuters
Writing by Ivana Sekularac, Editing by Alexandra Hudson
Clinical Hospital Dubrava stands in Zagreb, Croatia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
The Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija stands in Petrova Gora, Croatia. Examples of Yugoslav brutalism include the huge memorials commemorating the struggle against fascism, often placed in dramatic rural settings. Many of those pieces of art remain in disrepair, such as the Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Chairs inside the Yugoslavia salon, within the Palata Srbija building in Belgrade, Serbia. The Palata Srbija building hosted former world leaders. Each of the former Yugoslav republics had its own salon with a central room called the Hall of Yugoslavia. Furniture and carpets were custom-made, and some of the most prominent artists produced paintings and mosaics. "It is a shame to keep such a masterpiece away from the eyes of the public," said Sandra Tesla, curator of the building. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Karaburma Housing Tower, also known as the "Toblerone" building, stands in the Karaburma district in Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
A staircase within the Great Hall inside the Palata Srbija building in Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
The Milan Gale Muskatirovic Sports Centre in Belgrade. After World War II, socialist Yugoslavia led by Josip Broz Tito set out to reconstruct a land destroyed by fighting. Residential blocks, hotels, civic centers and monuments made of concrete shot up across the country. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
Windows face out of the structure known as the "TV building," on Block 28 neighborhood in New Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
A staircase inside the Block 11 apartment neighborhood in Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
A chandelier hangs from the top of the Croatia salon inside the Palata Srbija building in Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/oBXj9_RVQ_Z3kx.slLJhLA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyNDI7aD04MjcuOTI0MzI4Mjc2MzY2Mw--/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/UDmRfXF2k3jg7WshF0GYww--~B/aD0zNjQ3O3c9NTQ3MTtzbT0xO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/https://media-mbst-pub-ue1.s3.amazonaws.com/creatr-uploaded-images/2019-10/934fb000-fb1c-11e9-af7e-b0b182a45a10
A dated Volkswagen Golf car drives past Block 61 in an apartment neighborhood in New Belgrade, Serbia. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
A couple walk in front of the war memorial monument "Battle of Sutjeska" in Tjentiste, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Examples of Yugoslav brutalism include the huge memorials commemorating the struggle against fascism, often placed in dramatic rural settings. Many of those pieces of art remain in disrepair; however, the Tjentiste memorial, commemorating the killing of 7,000 people by the Nazis was renovated last year. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
A couple walk in front of the war memorial monument "Battle of Sutjeska" in Tjentiste, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Examples of Yugoslav brutalism include the huge memorials commemorating the struggle against fascism, often placed in dramatic rural settings. Many of those pieces of art remain in disrepair; however, the Tjentiste memorial, commemorating the killing of 7,000 people by the Nazis was renovated last year. (Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters)
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Post by the Scribe on Nov 18, 2019 13:57:52 GMT -5
These are the homes shortlisted for the RIBA House of the Year awardYahoo News UK Yahoo News UK Thu, 7 Nov 04:12 GMT-7
MORE PHOTOS AT uk.yahoo.com/news/riba-house-of-the-year-shortlist-111236303.html
 
RIBA House of the Year
The main living space uses stone and concrete and has underfloor heating (Picture: Jack Hobhouse)
These beautifully designed homes are some of the best in the country.
The grand designs have been shortlisted for the RIBA House of the Year award.
The award, which celebrates excellence and innovation in home design, goes to the best one-off house designed by an architect in the UK.
Inside the half-finished Grand Designs house that lost owner £5 million and wrecked his marriage
Kevin McCloud says Grand Designs fan Meryl Streep never replied to him
The houses were whittled down from a longlist to a shortlist featured in Grand Designs: House of the Year, which started on Channel 4 on October 23 and showcased seven shortlisted houses over four weeks.
The final winner will be announced in an episode on Wednesday, November 13.
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Post by the Scribe on Nov 29, 2019 2:56:38 GMT -5
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