at the land

weekend sketching

2011-12-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

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... daydreaming a little bit over the weekend about (the someday) human scale additions to the wilderness garden/ small lot eco-development at the land. maybe those monolithic walls are board formed concrete like that described in the post below, and maybe some of them are the locally quarried limestone. height is probably the main factor in deciding which is which. the infinity pool you see in the foreground and the converted studio/ tiny house are for visiting prospective clients and guests. once we get around to clearing the juniper, it is conceivable that for several weeks out of the warmer time of the year here, someone could wake up and enjoy doing laps down the stretch which is perfectly aligned to a sunrise on a flat horizon five miles distant with shallow valley in-between. or, one could sit at the waterfall and absorb the new rays reflecting the length of the pool, coffee mug and breakfast burritos at hand.

homemade concrete

2011-12-05T11:34:00.000-08:00

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this summer, some friends ( i'm married to one of them now! ) and I got together around a bonfire for the usual: to share good stories, good drinks, and good roasted marshmallows. while we were at it, I thew some limestone in the fire (only cook limestone in an extremely well ventilated area as this process releases carbon monoxide).

i did this because cooked limestone ( quicklime ) is one of the key ingredients to concrete and i wanted to find out if i could make some in my own back yard. it's another one of those basic human skills that many people used to know how to do with what was around but few now know about as a result of the complicated technological manufacturing processes which have re-mystified this ancient art for us.

for those who don't know, "the land" (the name of the property this blog is about) is also a place where we experiment with ways to continually reduce the area from which we draw resources for our way of life. the eventual goal of this hobby (perhaps i'll do this full time someday) is to create a walkable glocal culture. - this means a community of people who can participate in knowledge sharing with the world of the global economy while having everything required in the forms of relational capital, food, water, shelter, and beauty within a walking distance from where they sleep. the walking distance part is huge because this helps to prevent the culture from participating in ecological and economic overshoot.

anyhow, concrete is the foundation and structure of most new buildings on planet earth and many of the oldest and best ones. making it can be a complicated process to be sure, but that's my job: to know how the process works and to clearly disseminate that information to others. since i'm so into local economies, i've documented the process below for anyone else who might be interested in utilizing this knowledge as part of their own local economy. i'm only making a very small batch in this case for testing purposes so you'll see hand tools and buckets in the photos but hopefully it communicates the basic steps and a few of the basic principles clearly enough for someone to take away a few ideas about possibilities to upscale this process within their particular situation. with a decent sized earth kiln, a commercial mixer and some dry storage space, one could produce copious amounts of local concrete without ever having to visit lowes or home depot again... if they get the mix right.

so with no more delays, here is a summary on how we did, and you can, make home made concrete:

1) gather the sandiest looking soil you can find. don't use beach sand. beach sand makes low grade concrete (the granules are too worn and smooth to be an effective aggregate - the recipe calls for sharp sand). i'm just using a shovel and wheel barrel for the gathering job.

2) sift the soil through a fine steel mesh screen into a bucket or some vessel that will hold water and in which the soil and water can be stirred in a large enough quantity. this step removes much of the organic debris, clay (which is often clumped with other clay) and small stones.

3) once you have sifted enough dirt into the bucket or trough (enough being as much as you can fit and still do what i'm about to describe), fill the vessel up with as much water as you can and begin to stir. i filled the vessel just under 1/4 full with dirt before adding about 1/2 bucket of water so that i could stir it all around and not make too much of a mess. the idea here is to get the clay to particulate into the water. the second you stop stirring, the sand begins to settle to the bottom. most of the sand content in the soil will settle within the first five seconds because it is heavier than the clay. i then begin to pour the muddy water (full of the clay particles) into another bucket where the clay will settle for the next several hours. once the clay is settled, i can reuse a portion of that water for mixing or i can water the landscape and set the clay aside for other purposes (clay can be useful.. think clay tiles on your roof or floor).

repeat the above process several times and you will begin to notice that the sand in the bottom of the bucket becoming purer and purer until the bucket is ready to be emptied of water for the last time.

4) scrape the sand out onto a smooth dry surface from which you can gather it up when it is completely dry ( i didn't let the sand dry completely on my first batch which hurt the quality ).

5) now you have the sand, one of your four main ingredients (sand, lime, aggregate, water), it's time to cook the limestone.

by the way, try not to use salt water (ocean, sea water) for any kind of conventional concrete. salt water is only used with special cements using elements like MgO. the salinity can potentially weaken the long term strength of the concrete and corrode steel reinforcing if you're doing a structural pour.

limestone is fairly easy to identify once you know how. limestone comes in a number of varieties, some of which are better for making construction grade lime but that's a science in and of itself that i'm not even going to touch here. cooking lime is a part of the process where you have to be: a) safe, first, foremost and b) inventive. i'm not going to get into either of these very much, i'll just show you what we did.

the first objective is to find a place where you can light a really big fire that won't catch on the surrounding landscape. we chose a pit which is in the side of slightly inclining terrain, sort of like digging in to the side of a hill. we then covered the space with sheet metal supported by angular steel members and weighed down with stones. we placed the stones on a steel grill so that we could get a really hot fire going and before pulling the grill out from under the payload of stones that drop down in to the hot coals. there we leave them lying until they are visibly red hot. the major mistake i made at this first batch came from only letting them cook for several hours. depending on the kind of limestone and the size of the pieces, it can take over 24 hours for a stone to cook all the way through. i'll describe this phenomenon in further detail below. you want the stones to stay red hot for around 18 hours if they're about the size of a fist or a little larger, so that they can cook right through to the core.

6) don't get too close to the fumes from the fire (carbon monoxide) and keep a close watch on the heat, you want to keep the stones red hot.

7) as mentioned, i only cooked these stones for several hours so only the outer 1/4" of stone became quicklime. you'll know it's quicklime because it will flake/ break right off and turn into a fine white powder if you squeeze the rocks with your (gloved) hands or strike with an object like a hammer. traditionally, once the cooked stones had cooled, they would be thrown at a tilted metal or wood grate with 1/2" - 1" gaps and the stones that were pulverized by the impact and fell through the grate were used for construction grade projects while the stones that didn't make it through the grate were kept for agricultural use (altering the ph of the soil upward in highly acid soils).

always wear gloves when handling this stuff, it will severely dry out any skin it touches. it will also crackle, smoke, hiss, and reach temperatures of around 130 degrees F if it gets the slightest bit wet. putting moisture on the limestone is called slaking the lime. you want to slake the lime later on. for now you want to keep it dry and break it up as much as you can to get the good lime for your concrete/ cement mortar mix.

8) i'm jumping a few steps ahead now to mention that before you do what you're about to do which is mix homemade concrete, you want the form or mold you plan to pour in to afterward ready. here we have a simple form as i try to make some experimental Roman dimensioned concrete pavers.

9) now we're ready to set completely dry sand onto the smooth, clean, dry surface where we will do the mixing.

10) 1 part lime (which is your cement), 2 parts sharp sand, and 3 parts aggregate ( which was traditionally a small gravel, often a metamorphic rock, that could be sifted for locally but which is not used here ) are your solid ingredients. add water to this mixture and stir until you have the desired consistency for your pour.

here we're using a method which was often used to make a lime cement mortar before the industrial revolution. you hollow out a small area in the center of the sand with a shovel. pour the parts of lime into the hollow area, and then pour 1 part water onto the 2 part lime in the middle of the 3 parts sharp sand around the outside.

11) then to the best of your ability, smooth the sand up over the lime making a smooth sand dome. here you see the sand begin to crack. it will actually billow up and crack open because of the reheating taking place within the freshly slaked lime. try to keep the dome smoothed down to maintain pressure.

or, you can just slake the lime and begin to mix the two together.

12) i don't really show step 12 but after about 20 minutes of step 6, begin chopping and mixing the sand and quicklime with your shovel or trowel and adding just the right amount of water to keep the consistency about where you want it to be leading up to the pour. you want to be sure to really mix the two together well. during this stage, you can add the 1 part aggregate as well if you want to make a structural concrete. here, we're really only creating a rustic cement mortar mix and solidifying it in the shape of a block, but add some aggregate, quality quick lime (which this first experiment failed to produce in quantity), and some steel reinforcing, and you're looking at some very tough home made concrete.

pour the mixture into the form and let sit for the recommended time for the size pour you're undertaking. i let this paver sit for several days before I pulled it out of the form. most concrete will cure to within a few percentage points of it's final strength within a month of pouring.

click here for a brief intro into how the Romans did it. also, I'm really interested in others' experiences with making concrete and mortar mixes from the basic ingredients, so feel free to comment below and share with the rest of us what has and hasn't worked in your situation. thanks goes out to the Elliots and to Emily for all their help and for bringing tacos.

plenitude concept updates

2011-07-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

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sketch concept diagrams...

one proposed construction method involves fabric form networks which are pumped with MgO cement and re-inforced with fibrous ( secret ingredient ) cables ( not carbon ). the second is a construction method ( renderings on the way ) which are a take off from Wolf Hilbertz's nets... that is, robots connect to the pumps which secrete the rapid setting cement into a tapering funnel that compresses the mix into a cylindrical shape around the fiber reinforcement cables as the robot moves along the web.

who knows, if the drought trends like the one we're on continue in west Texas in coming years, sustainable designs for the future of desert regions like morocco ( one in which the majority of public spaces are shaded and alternative energy is used as much as possible ) may not be merely a matter of personal preference for those in places like west Texas, but a matter of survival.

from the local news station KTXS last tuesday: " ABILENE, Texas -- Tuesday marks the 47th day of triple digit temperatures and people in Abilene are getting frustrated with the record breaking summer heat.

Forty-seven days of triple digits in Abilene breaks the old record of 46 from 1934, nearly a century ago... The sizzling temps have been relentless, staying above 100 degrees for the last 15 days in a row."

On top of this, a drought, which the NOAA describes as "exceptional." The average rainfall by the end of July for the Abilene area is 12.44" ( NOAA ). We're up to 6.48" on the year ( NOAA ).

We're not even through with July and still have the hottest month ahead of us, not to mention September and October which will probably add a few more days to the tally. It's one thing to break a record, and another thing to shatter it. Shattering is an indication that the pattern is changing.

How about this as a proposal for a new, sustainable project for the enrichment of the Abilene area in the face of climate change: a rainwater fed, uv filtered, shaded, sustainable, terraced, walkable, WATERPARK. This could act as a catalyst for social change while serving as a great economic generator for the region. Some might have ideas as to why building a sustainable water park in west Texas is not necessarily a bad idea, but an impossible one. The answer is: if people can go skiing in dubai, then we can have a sustainable water park in west Texas.

new project work website

2011-07-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

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My apologies on the lack of posting. New ( and old ) project work can be viewed here: blakesmithdesign.com While project work at the land is ongoing in an intermittent sort of way, I am definitely in a capital raising stage for further developments at the land which, unfortunately, is not yet a financially viable, self sustaining local economy in and of itself. But this, and places like it do contain elements of that vision such as reduced scale of built environment and a greater equality in the prioritization ratio of indoor space to outdoor space within a give living area, and forever remain a great place to have a barbecue ( assuming there isn't a fire hazard ).

It doesn't look for the moment as if fall festivities ( exhibition or building event ) will be in order this year, due to the drought and extreme fire danger across Texas right now, but I will definitely update everyone if that changes.

For now, I'll continue to post updates to project work going on elsewhere which has implications for what may happen at the land in the future or which is connected to what the land is now.

In terms of future priorities for the land: While more building stock is the next step for permanent habitation, the very next item on the list is water storage. The small studio II roof harvests over 5000 gallons of water per year in an average year of rainfall, but can only store around 1/100th of that without the overflow tanks hooked up. As water is continually becoming more precious, now is the time to begin to capture the water both for human use in cistern systems, and for the use of the natural environment, in the form of swales and other water catchment areas which are designed to prevent runoff.

I imagine a kind of oasis of plant and animal life emerging over the coming decades as water is saved, year after year, into the root stock of the mid sized deciduous canopies of oak and elm. Maybe I'll live to see a micro-forest of sorts which will continue to provide good shade and good times for many cookouts in years to come, regardless of the weather, and have enough water at hand to safely barbecue anytime regardless of severe drought.

Living City Design Competition

2011-05-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

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Plenitude

Making it into the top 25 of hundreds means that someone noticed our work... it also means that we apparently end up in several competition publications and traveling exhibitions...

Bazaar.

Plateau to valley.

The suggestion was a bold one... we sort of bent, no, broke one of the main rules of the competition: retrofit an existing city. I was a collaborator in charge of minimal material use/ branching structure design. Pliny ( cmpbs.org ) and I collaborated on the structural project design, it was my job to turn those concepts into architectural visions ( images shown in this entry ), operating within a rather rigid set of parameters, ( which had a tendency to move around from day to day )... but I have to say that the project improved with each new week, and with each week, a new generation of solutions was born. At the bottom of the page are several process images.

The blimps on top, are blimps ( Helium not hydrogen ).

As mentioned, it was Pliny's idea to restore, not a city, but the abandoned phosphate mines of Morrocco, making a connection between the vast abundance of MgO and salt water, towers arrive on site, serving as wells for the building materials ( and a local economy ) which are then used to 3d print the surround infrastructure into place, pumping the materials in cementitious form into some tbd cast ( Francois Roche style ) and 'monocoque' style fibrous cement shells.

"Gravity Cars" "Solar Thermal Chimneys" "Greenhouses" "Public Gatherings" - a bit of what this structure is.

The latest dynamic photoresponsive skins are applied to these structures, filtering sunlight and rain like living organisms, distributing these harnessed energies in the form of electricity and running water to the human/ agricultural population. As implied by the project title "Plenitude", the idea is that we're meeting more than just the need, and that the surplus of these resources becomes a form of wealth for sale and donation which is owned in some collective manner by the community.

From the social side, we're addressing the improvement of working conditions, by going to the most difficult work settings, and some of the most damaged landscape types on the planet... clean, healthy cities of the future located in what were once mine camps. So in that sense, there is a vast re-habilitation of infrastructure which occurs.

What does this have to do with the land? .. is a good question. The idea of this blog, is primarily to showcase work I do which occurs at the land and pertains to meeting several of the design briefs I've set myself for the habitation of this place. Work which started out at the land has also led to a life of tackling the same issues I'm dealing with here, on projects which look to apply them at a different scale. So above, you see visions of the kinds of paradigms I'm involved in bringing into final product around the world. It's amazing how a lesson learned in one location, can have profound implications for problems which need to be solved in other locations at other scales. I was brought onto this project because of my thesis work on unmilled tree building systems with an overlooked scrub tree in west Texas. I add this info to show how I end up working on things that seem somewhat unrelated to the story here at first glance.

inversely, there are lots of lessons I learn on these other projects where conditions are more harsh, that give me a vision not only of what might be possible at my location where similar parameters apply now or may in a future where climates have shifted. design for increasingly arid climates will continue to grow as an issue.

iterations and interviews

2011-03-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

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first of all... thanks are in order for KTXS who aired this story on studio II today. i'm encouraged by the level of interest from media outlets lately... the reporter had done some homework on sustainable design and had a good stack of questions queued.

as mentioned in the video, the design solutions for studio II arose, as often as not, from time spent in lecture halls, semi-conscious of what was happening in the rest of the room but primarily attending to my sketchbook. I don't mind working to a backdrop of insightful commentary on spatial design... in fact I prefer it. what happens is: profound paradigms verbalized, percolate with the drafty lecture hall air, and circulate in my subconscious as something not entirely unconnected flows down my arm and out the pen. that said (to be entirely truthful about the process), sometimes drawings like these were merely the result of profound boredom.

iterations: are nothing to be ashamed of. iterations are indicators of where an idea is headed. iterations arrive at destinations and become final products. they are the way to somewhere. i remember one of the first lectures from my undergraduate studies in the UK, when a tutor, while standing on a desk Robin Williams style, clicked through slides of incomplete and often poor work. he would pause in his criticism every now and again to mention that the previous ten slides had been provided by DaVinci, or Michaelangelo, or some other great master, old or contemporary. the point, as he made clear at the end of the lecture, was that for every good piece of work you see, there are about a thousand "rubbish" pieces of work you don't see. that is how they become masters. but in the end, those iterations aren't exactly rubbish... they were the necessary next step in getting to good, and every bit as valuable as the final product in a sense.

it only takes a bit of flipping back through the blog to notice that studio II has been envisioned under a number of different scenarios, and that it's current state is probably not the final result.

iterations can provide great entertainment. i'm living in one now and i enjoy it/ can't help but encourage others to do the same.

also, for those who may be new to the blog and to sustainable design altogether... definitely check out some of the links in the sidebar... the world is full of great work and ideas in this realm and it's getting better every day.

frayed edges

2011-03-05T23:10:00.000-08:00

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I've always had this image of good architecture as a kind of colorful patchwork woven into a vast tapestry, comprised of mandelbrot sets, voronoi diagrams, knots, and splices... colors, textures and patterns are: social issues, materials, a sene of humor ( or several senses of humor ), etc... and somehow this introduced patchwork intensifies or escalates the value of these various patterns, or at least addresses them, either through some degree of disruption or continuation. along all these strands, connection points, fibrous interactions, we find points of contact, edges, that must not be left alone. As often as not, isn't it best to take a straight boundary and pull it into adjacent territory, and then pull a swath of adjacent bounded area into the initial boundary?
It's because people don't want "look but don't touch" scenarios. We want to be in the middle of the coolness, right next to the edge, on the horizon, seeing what it sees, in the tree, and yes, the river should course directly though the middle of our abode. No two ways about it, Fallingwater is, for example, the deal.

Above is a proposal for new workshop area at the land.

In a second year project, ( Piazza Caricamento competition 2004, Genoa, Italy ) the object was to re-establish a connection between the people in the ancient medieval city "fabric" and the waterfront which had once coursed against the footsteps of the old city buildings but is now separated by subways, industrial and commercial shipping yards, and elevated roadway, and a long strip of cast gray pavers. My answer was to literally begin to zip the two back together along a combination of extended visual corridors and buried harbor walls.

I should mention that I was talking to my friend Miller Talbot about all this sort of thing a few years back in regards to weaving landscape features like grassland and grove into one another and he summarized my description by saying, "you're increasing the edge... which is a good thing".

This scheme ( which may be a reality at the land someday )... is "frayed edges" as a nod to that conversation.

Some of the threads of continuity hinted at here are also the result of some great brainstorm time with another great designer and friend, Ben Langford of Bernard Trainor + Associates. One of Ben's suggestions was larger gesture of low stone walls which find a way from one end of the property and provide a datum of comprehension for the overall plan... a method of treatment, framing the edge of the grassland and thicket, corralling runoff, and orienting vista corridors etc etc. It's always best to sort out everything out at once when you can.

That is one good lookin grassland... thanks to all those who have helped me groom this area back to a state of native health. I actually find Texas horned toads in here! ( Thanks Ben also for this groovy photo).

Finally, party on the roof of the new workshop if this ever comes to realization and I put up code compliant railing, because the view from up there will be enough on a clear summer night to frame and merit quality time wasting.

attheland on the boards

2011-02-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

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... almost... these are sneak previews of an eco tiny house which is scheduled to be under construction at the land soon. we'll keep you posted via photos as the project evolves. the first is a very initial concept for the space at rest. the second shows the shelving closed as it would be in transit... the project will probably go a very different direction from what is shown here, but the concept of gathering daylight from outside onto the work surfaces and into corners which would naturally be the darkest spaces in the place may well stick.

in other news, we're well back into campfire season in the outdoor living room here. the best thing about outdoor living rooms is that constellations and meteor showers project themselves in panoramic hd across the ceiling while, inexplicably, people stand around and talk to the backdrop of campfire.

the campfire feature can randomize air waves and cast visualizations onto surrounding surfaces like tree trunks and people.. people like you and me who might be slightly shifting their weight to see each other in the super trendy, flickering light or sometimes tap their feet because someone brought a guitar and the stand of oak trees came equipped with a tremolo effect for when the wind passes by. thanks wind. and, that sort of collaborates with the strobing woodlands show as more people arrive with their new generation of cell phones that can be light sabers or flashlights hover between the bare limbs of all kinds.. and I look around and say to myself... " this is a quality venue "... (and I haven't even tried). add s'mores to the equation and people threaten never to leave...

branching out: adaptive tree geometry and branch collars

2011-02-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

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In a collaborative competition entry with a certain design firm, (that I may not mention just yet), I'm getting to put my knowledge on branching to use in inventing minimal material building systems for hot arid climates ( in conjunction with other biomimmetic principles ). I can't unveil any further project/ process information until after the submission is complete, but here is a sneak peek at some of the sketch models I'm getting to create. Nothing too close to these will end up in the final scheme... we've gone in a drastically different direction since this point.

For those interested in architalk:

A bit of self critique: the roof system/ connection to the stem is of course a bit goofy... but we needed something to space fill while we round out the rest of the program ( that was, before a massive program change and the scrapping of this aspect ). Most of the forms created are a sort of compromise between Frei Otto's observations on minimal path systems in trees, and observations from the world of "tree architecture" an obscure area of biology dealing with branch mechanics and the 37 identified structural patterns evidenced in tree growth. These patterns teach us about optimal element taper scenarios, branching ratios for minimal paths, optimal element sections from mature adaptive trees and joinery structures such as "branch collars". It turns out that trees are some of the most efficient structures on the planet, growing in mathematical patterns up to a certain point at which loads become such that a new layer of "adaptive geometry" kicks in. In the adaptive geometry stage, the individual tree modifies it's in-built in algorithmic "bifurcation ratios" and fibbonacci-esque recursions to respond to site specific shade scenarios, wind loads, slope conditions etc. The tree responds by "throwing on wood" or altering it's cellular structure, and it's branching structure to meet unique needs for it's condition. Branches begin to form sectional shapes which resemble an I beam section, "co-dominant" stems will separate at the "pith" or the core of the trees structure and begin to interweave growth rings so as to support perhaps the strongest cantilevered formation in the biological world on the planet. A branch collar formation in trees has the approximate strength to weight ratio of a steel weld.

The webbing between the columns is approximate for these purposes but based on load distribution with catenaries. Branches off the main columnar system are given a weighting which decides where and to what degree the moments will be located along the span of the web between the columns, and this in turn defines where the apexs of the catenaries will occur.

The scheme struggles at the moment with context and programmatic resolution. The columnar system is defined not only by minimal material, but by the schematic requirement of interacting with a sort of minimal path plan ( which speaks to the abundance of resources throughout the chain of oasis... depending on the size of the area serviced by the grid ( and therefore the number of rays emanating from the point in the plan diagrams ( the tree will have a corresponding number of columns... the more columns the larger the tree = the larger area the tree must provide infrastructure requirements for ). It's a bit mechanical, and heavily dependent on intelligent decisions about placement within the landscape context - seriously in danger of becoming an anonymous, free standing, projects which doesn't quite help in all the ways it means to and lacks personality/ responsiveness/ adaptability. I've written about this before - the need for schemes to find themselves as potentially regional vernaculars of the future... fortunately, this program is based around that... but how that is, I'm not allowed to say just yet. We also hope to avoid that downfall with a diversity of schematic elements of which the tree is but one... ( but whose structural system will translate across to larger objects within the masterplan. In any event I'm having fun with the software, and I think the implications for tree mechanics and tree architecture on the world of building have hardly been touched by anyone in any serious manner.

there's a deck!

2010-12-10T22:02:00.000-08:00

in these woodland halls...

strewn with boughs of holly...

before the decking

inside/ outside

as it were on the typical texas day

studio ii, as originally planned, is now a finished product. anything from here on is an evolution above and beyond what was originally hoped for. to mark the occasion, the time has come for the party mentioned several entries back - it's as much for the village who rasied this child as it is for the child... this has truely been a "barn raisin" so thanks to Dad, Grandpa, Jeremy, Austin, Xander, JM, Andrew, James, Ted, Jordan, Chris, Daniel and John K who helped make this part happen... and Grandma for bringing the food.

indigenous carpentry workshop

2010-11-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

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click here for the full carpentry workshop slideshow

for those who are new to the blog, it's about more than a survival attempt in an off grid house the size of a shipping container. in the long term, it's also about thriving in the setting of hand made objects ( a building in this case )... or other locally contrived commodities, each of which help to strengthen the base of what I like to think of as an emergent local economy operating on the judo-economics principle ( that is the utilization of existing market system intertias against themselves... by implementing their products in such a way that dependence upon materials outside the area of walkability is decreased until the old market is no longer necessary with it's possibly cumbersome trappings that might have included say, the two hour commute, getting to see your family/ friends about 5 hours a week and a society in which comedies such as "the office" can emerge - and be funny for the reason that they aren't so far from fact ). it's about the different jobs, and the different culture that goes with belonging to a concentrated geographical area, and people you know. it's a paradigm that will probably work for everyone everywhere in their own ways... etc... so this is just one. the blog is also about this and this and this... and this also. check it.

it's also about the workshop:

as many well know, the initial plan was to begin construction on the indigenous carpentry workshop ( thesis project ) last spring... these plans fell by the wayside as additional research and development was required in order to secure a masters degree in architecture... and because it is so comfortable to lay in a hammock under trees in the warming weather with a beautiful setting at hand.

this done, and the weather getting cooling down, the project is still in the works but we're waiting on additional outside funding (usfpl)/ investment before we delve into the launch of this building system. in the meantime, here is the final thesis presentation from last spring in low res... or you can click on the "thesis" link in the sidebar below for a grueling amount of detail on the design evolution...

comments, and context

2010-11-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

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here is a photo of the cross braced trusses going in atop the steel plate anchored beams. it's nice to place photos like this up against the building as it is now, 2 years on. I suspect that in another two years, the current building will be even less recognizable as the current studio ii.

I don't really like flooding a blog about spatial issues with text, so I've placed all the comments I could find in that section of the Abilene Reporter News article, in the comments section of this entry with my responses. I can tell there won't be time for this sort of thing in the future, but as this is the first article on this work in a public news setting... I feel I ought to oblige the interested public by setting a positive tone in that discourse. and now, back to my paying job...

in the news

2010-11-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

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Abilene Reporter News kindly gave my studio home the front page in this weeks Sunday Life section...

As the photos show: the deck extension for the studio is under way. Here, the beams are tied to a buried steel plate with 1/2" threaded rod.

As always, this would be going much more slowly without friends.

In other news, off grid.net has taken some interest in what is going on. You can read about it here.
Now that I'm living exclusively at the land and working full time for an architecture firm in indigenous calliche architecture, the rhythms of an alternative lifestyle are really setting in. I'm becoming a sort of native to my own homestead. My niece asked me the other day: "why don't you have a real door?" I smiled, telling her I had a real door. She thought about that for a moment and then said, "your door isn't like our door." I'm sure something like this runs quietly through the minds of most adults in this part of the country. The truth is, the "normal" front door on her house doesn't really feel like a normal door to me anymore either. Normal sub-urban american front doors don't have three operational positions ( helpful in this dry and windy climate ): fully closed, protected but allowing cross ventilation, and cross ventilation with screening only. Normalities are easy to shift... just spend one time doing something a certain way and it will eventually become normal, even comfortable. The thing about that is, not all normalities are equal. Some things are better than others, which is why it is, in my opinion, important to continually challenge the normal in building design until one of two things occur: I stumble into a comfort zone so deep there is no hope of ever lifting my finger again to improve the settings, or, I perish in the process. And, as I have encountered the repeated need for improvement in the space, I find myself extremely glad that the scope of this project is what it is. The fact that I am rebuilding my roof for the third time in an attempt to, with all finality, prevent the indigenous wasp population from having any loose flashing detail into which they can climb and build a nest, makes me glad that I'm not having to make the correction across 4000 square feet of roof space as is the norm. I've recently re-designed the cantilevered gutter detail which feeds the rainwater harvesting cistern. While this will also assist in the prevention of critter intrusion into the crevices of the structure, spanning details have become more elegant ( fewer materials, fewer connections, transitions ). As builts on the way...
Also on the way is some kind of studio ii completion party. As this building comes into focus, so does the possibility of hosting rather larger than normal gatherings in/ around the studio space. The completion of these decks gives me an approx floor space of 400 sq feet... that leaves enough room for two seated guitar players, a banjo player, someone on the harmonica, a fiddler, and if I'm not mistaken, a djembe, (and everyone else at the party). That way, the sounds can move either through the well ventilated doors, or out over the landscape, reverberating off the steep hillsides which create the valley in which I am at home.

interior 3.0

2010-09-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

at last, the long awaited new interior. there's an accompanying blog below on the mechanical parts. before I go any further... I just want to briefly re-visit a main point of this blog. that point is: if we want local economies/ communities, it helps us to, by degrees, rely less on conventional money. the more we can afford to do things which don't earn money, the more we can spend time restoring the social fabric of our culture by being a friend and neighbor, or inventing new/ more interesting normalities ( like taking extended naps in hammocks in the shade ). normally, wealthy people are the ones who get to play around with this sort of thing. this re-do on the interior was created from a budget of around150 dollars and in a week of spare time after work. the fewer bills one has to pay... the more time they have to explore the solutions which would normally require lots of money.

the interior featured here is close to the original plan for the space. (1) 2 x 10 shelf on the north wall contains a 3' x 5' foldout drafting desk, a twin size foldout bed, a bookshelf, studio materials shelf, and vertical and horizontal storage for architectural documents, painting equipment, and photography equipment. below the shelving is seating which doubles as the support for the foldout bed as well as the space for the illustrious drawing cabinet I salvaged from the junkyard at Taliesin West and a storage space for the computer bag/ briefcase.

and speaking of local economy, click here to see the updates on the new compressed earth block house. the link to this project is now in the bar at right.

gizmos

2010-09-22T22:08:00.000-07:00

I've spent some time oogling the work of Tom Kundig lately, a master of architectural "gizmos". dynamic spaces are designed to function under multiple configurations... provide multiple expereinces. one dynamic wall provides either a studio, a bedroom, or a kind of lounge area with a very small dance floor. unlike the sharp precision of the finely machined, extra zippy, intensly precise work of olson kundig however, we see here scrapitecture... found/ vernacular objects becoming my building. after all, this is west Texas, not the california coast. we're a former oil/ cattle empire... a fringe that nearly found itself folded into center during the rapidly waning global era ( and never quite arrived ), and may yet find a "center" identity yet as the world trasitions into a kind of glocal ( contemporary local economies ) future. this is beacause: the frontier mentality, for all it's failures, has engendered a sense of 'learning to make do'... to tweak and invent - fix the oil rig with scraps on site, because it's a long, long way to the nearest supplier.

ranchers often use oil field pipe for fencing; I use it for a counterweight to the lever arms mounted on spring hinges. turnbuckles balance the weight on the cables. a draw cord pulls the legs out of the storage compartment until the crossbar connecting them contacts a crossbar mounted under the table. the cord is looped onto a hook ( by user ), doubling as a safety cord to prevent the table from crashing back down in case the table top is bumped or lifted. to close the table into the wall: 1) pull the draw cord off the hook, 2) lift the table to remove the weight from the legs, 3) release the cord 4) lower the table.

the bed folds flush into it's seating space without destroying the mattress via the hardware below.

this gizmo is pretty straight forward... I needed to put the new power inverter in a place where it would be dry, well ventilated, and accessible.

this gizmo patrols the building.

abilene summer

2010-08-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

...

an explanation is in order: since the last blog entry, I've completed a graduate degree, switched over to a full time job at a sustainable architecture firm ( Universal Design Consortium ), upgraded the solar panel system on studio 2, and shifted the priorities for future infrastructure development at the land away from shock and awechitecture, and toward a simple, living - library space.

the deck was somewhat extended.

this change represents a new focus on the completion of studio 2, and a cozy sleeping, reading, lounging area for guests. on a side note, I wonder why resorts exist... we could do neighborhood planning the same way and everyone would live in a resort.

more sunrises have come and gone.

solar Jars were made

.
there was a kebab cookout. the first of many I hope!

a certain local limestone company exchanged 10 tons of beautiful limestone (raised beds etc...) for some preliminary architectural designs.

this short term move away from the shocking architecture I refer to is the structural round-wood lattice creation for which I have yet to submit a grant proposal.

the details of the building have actually been completed. the basic structural units have been built. however, before these grand architectural adventures are embarked upon, a bit more basic infrastructure is required to receive their presence... to make the project more, ahem, cost effective. It turns out that the irony of creating an indigenous, walkable, culture reliant on no industrial era infrastructure, is that a fair bit of transitory architecture is required. Transitory architecture is infrastructure which trains people to exist with fewer material possessions. That's what I'm working on now: off grid, rainwater harvesting living spaces which feed the inhabitants with quality air, water, thinking/ sleeping space and ( by way of rainwater fed raised beds) food. Beyond all these things... or rather as an accumulation of them all, the patients, clients, however you wish to deem them, are receiving a new way of life. I think it has been best in this case to use myself as the test subject on this first culture changing experiment. Take the following instances: last night it was sweltering hot. I found that I had to re-situate my solar powered fan next to my head in order to cool down enough to sleep. Out here in the middle of august in west Texas, it can be too hot to sleep without a carefully designed space ( or hvac, which I reject for these projects, there is a better way ). My front door has changed five times over the last year. It began as a zipper in a canvas wall. The zipper pulls broke and a screened door replaced the zipper. I desired more security in the space from potential "critter" exploration ( coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, deer, etc ) and added a trendy lattice system which could separate from the main door on days when less concerned about intrusion from a pack of coyotes... just wanted the beautiful view. As the weather shifted to bitterly cold, I added a winter panel. This new door did keep out the weather. However, on a beautiful breezy spring day when the lattice door attachment was propped open with the winter panel still affixed, said beautiful spring wind walked off with my front door, tearing it from the building - pitching it 30 feet from the entry. I've now fixed that design glitch and added simple grab bars on both sides of the door so that there is an intuitive way ( requiring no verbal explanation ) to open and close the door without putting a hand through the screen; and without creating a conflicting visual treatment or hindering the view of the outdoors beyond what I personally deem acceptable. I have (knock on wood) learned not to design spaces where wasps will nest. I'm learning how to design leak proof spaces with wood and metal alone. All this to say, I'm glad to be absorbing the cost of these learning experiences into my own flesh, rather than into that of a disgruntled client who would, through litigation procedures, find a way to extract the value of their suffering and then some from my person. Beyond that reason, one can't help but emerge from experiences like these with an increased sense of something to offer.

About UDC and the work we're doing:

This work is closely connected with my personal interests. Albeit, cloaked in a seemingly normal sub-urban building form, I genuinely believe that these building are a stepping stone for massive positive change. Consider some of the subtle design gestures: porches large enough for people to inhabit them and designed to be shaded from sun at the proper times of day. Indigenous
building materials in the form of CEB ( compressed earth block ). CEB are masonry blocks created by a machine which compresses the soil on site to 2000 psi. Solar passive strategies are incorporated, as are ADA requirements, adjacent park spaces in the neighborhood plan, alternative energy sources, rainwater harvesting and gray water recycle, to name a few. All of this is being done with the assistance of government funds for low to moderate income
applicants, adding another layer of depth to the implications of social impact for this project consisting of multiple homes ( and others like it to follow we hope ). Consider that these are being build in one of the most rural/ sub-urban environments in the middle of the United States. Consider what way of life goes with this, the sheer transformative potential for the most oil consumptive demographic in the world to, with a quickness, adopt buildings ( and an economy that goes with them ) of unprecedented efficiency. Imagine 200 million cowboys turning hippie = Atlas straight up dropping the ball and letting it roll. http://udcinc.org/ccc%20lmi-1.html
When not doing what I do at the land... I'm doing the things you'll see on this new blog I'm starting:http://lmi1.blogspot.com/
I'm also adding a summary page for the the final thesis presentation on structural roundwood lamella utilized in the creation of an indigenous carpentry workshop: http://sites.google.com/site/dsimagine/

sunrise from prairie studio 1

2010-04-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

blossoms = food

2010-04-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

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a tale of two cities ( and a village )...

2010-04-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

...

first, we're hoping to create an eco-village in west texas!

the slide above is about steps to a local economy:

1) source as locally as possible, resources you can acquire for free from your site... ( if not immediately then sometime in the future - mature wood stock for example )

2) create a basic infrastructure with these materials as a catalyst for a culture which is oriented around their use ( in this case a building economy based on local timber and limestone)

the eco-village on three acres surrounded by wilderness garden.

and now, a tale of two cities... and a village:

it was the best and worst of times... yet again...

two cities are compared here not for similarities they share particularly, nor even for common differences ( though they are similar in certain historical ways ). I'm comparing Oxford, UK

and Abilene, TX because I've lived both places, they are similar in population size and in their nature of being a great place for "dreaming" as there isn't much else to do in either location though I will say that Oxford has the upper hand in this category... and in several others. I'll go ahead and say it: Oxford is better than Abilene in most respects, though I see clearly the potential for the latter to become like the former in it's own way.

Dickens suggests that London ought to take a lesson from Paris and not do as they did. I suggest the opposite for these two cities and could say almost the same for any given American city as compared to any European city. we ought to do as they do on one particular issue ( I'll name the issue in a moment )...

or else? or else we may never know what we're missing: greater levels of community, neighborhood, family intimacy, and a few other important things which were traded off somewhere along the way for a really superb GDP.

if there is a revolution going on at the moment, a cry of discontent among the people... if there is a word which describes unfulfilled desires, that which is wanted passionately by myself and nearly all with whom I speak in this land of perpetually supreme GDP, the word is "community". It's on the tongue of the sub-urban and the urban alike ( for I suggest that so much of what the urban have had relationally, they do not necessarily have now ).

how do we get that back? assuming all actions are an overflow of the inner world of humans, I suggest a physical action which might result with profound inner consequences. a very simple action at that ( though perhaps seemingly unrelated to the problem ). it is: adjust the scale factor on our design drawing industry. I know, it sounds a bit, well, like telling someone to write anti French legislation if they want to abolish the English slave trade, or go make salt if they

want to free India, but well... these simple actions happened to represent key tipping points in the effort to win those solutions, and I think this might be another tipping point for a number of reasons.

this entry might also be called: a tale of two scale factors...

here are some slides which show Oxford and Abilene respectively in square three acre plots (three acres is the amount of land I have to work with at the moment).

Abilene Zoo... we can do walkable environs, but they are reserved for the animals?

Oxford, Radcliffe square area.

Abilene ( my old house is somewhere in there ) the old fields where horned toads lived are not.

Oxford, home of the turf tavern!

Abilene, with nicely restored downtown, but primarily accessible by car.

see the difference in density? notice that the country with the greater GDP has larger scale, lower quality infrastructure which is uninhabitable on foot, highly mechanized, and generally frightening? notice how the country with the lower gdp has mostly pedestrian access, a priority to the living environment in public and private spaces, and smaller, higher quality buildings and infrastructure which is more efficient as it is closer together?

At Abilene population density ( 110.6 sq mi & 115,930 people ), 5 people could live on these three acres. At Oxford density, ( that's 165000 people in 17.5 sq miles ) I could house 40 people. Going

by the densest portions of London, 140 people could live on the land according to my notes:

"so if people were stuffed into 1000 square foot spaces across the entirety of the three acres... totally covering the landscape... with no room for circulation on ground level... lifts and ladders transferring them to an artificial roof landscape which was covered with the density of growing food stock required for the town, they could just fit... of course, this is not the choice

course of action as it totally resurfaces the site... and so this same dynamic could be nearly achieved by covering half of the site area with 2 story buildings. for the living space... and by making these same buildings 3 story, we end up with a 2:1 ratio of residential to commercial and half the site undeveloped"

this could never happen because of lack of economic potential... or could it? it's an interesting game to consider that in coming years, the freedom from code & regulation, coupled the tremendously low land prices found in west Texas might lead to the emergence of thousands of neo-city-states which fuedalistically ( or in a peaceful symbiotic sort of way ) govern the remote old ranches and reaches of the wild west, which to a large degree, is still wild.

Anyhow, back to a reality which is not so exciting at the moment, but exciting enough...

I'm designing for the habitation of 10 at the moment. Double the density of Abilene, but also providing the food, water, energy utilized in the culture of this micro village. This density level holds true if a bounding area defined by two neighbors is included. The population then jumps to the level of 15. Over time it could be a great center of learning and culture, woven perhaps even more carefully into the landscape than the greatest cities of old. Might as well right? I don't pretend to know how this will actually play out specifically as all I really hope to provide in the near term is a place for people to come and go as they will in the spirit of cultivating their natural giftings, especially as it pertains to the world of design and craft, though of course not limited to this. Visiting artist bungalows which may someday transition into permanent artist bungalows and will inevitably serve as the quarters of my grandparents on vacation who have been needing a retreat to Tuscany for sometime now but have not been able to do so, may find a sliver of that experience in compressed earth villas on plains woven here and there with Cabernet growing atop local root stock.

that's all I'm going to say for now in comparison of these two places other than my "quality of life" ( more akin to happiness ) was far higher in the European setting than it ever has been in any American city ( I came back for the people and the sunsets ). I was a bit timid at first... but after three years without a car and cell phone, I shook at the thought of what I and so many other suburban Americans have been missing their whole life. I shed tears on the equally joyful and sad occasion of having women at the local Oxfordian baguette shop throw a wine party for me in my backyard as a going away party... similar instances persisted in my life that long week, but I digress...

I think the primary manifestation of resistance to community is "scale factor". it's what happens when you rotate the triangular ruler on your drawing table and render accordingly... you end up drawing things larger or smaller, faster or slower. the crazy thing about it is: they are built accordingly. then we all get to deal with them at 1:1.

a few more thoughts on scale:

shift the scale factor a bit too far up with drawing table fashions and zoning regulations and people no longer live where they work, have neighbors, - they must have cars and cell phones ( more liabilities ), they have no gardens and pedestrian spaces, they end up in over sized houses, cars which lend themselves to increasingly fatal collisions etc... you destroy the opportunity for community.

shift the scales down and you create family time, neighborhood time, greenbelts, bike lanes, front yard bbq's, and local shops and businesses... you can work where you live... you create the opportunity for community.

further archi-speak, and musing on the issue:

smaller things ( as in buildings and infrastructure ) are harder to tax, corral, get in debt over, become obsessed with financially and otherwise. In short, small items are less of a liability on one's life. they also lend themselves to materializing at a higher quality level... the larger the object, the harder to hold it together at every point, aesthetically, financially, structurally, etc... every point. true, there are economies of scale, but these only work when one applies a system that works on a small scale, to a large scale in a sustainable way. for example, a steel building system might work well as a series of smaller structures providing the required square footage on a series of smaller footings, woven throughout the natural texture of the site, as opposed to one large structure which cannot dance so intricately into the patterns of the natural world and the rhythms of human life. economically it falls down to the former application of the principle, aesthetically it falls downs or American cities are better than European cities... in other words, I'm right. structurally, we hit thresholds not worth our economy, trouble, psychosis ( read Chris Alexander for more ), and generally destroyed views of places.

to close: what regulations will not let most American cities do at the moment, they also for the time can't stop land owners doing: walkable community. the endgame is, of course, vast rehabilitation of existing infrastructure and re-modeling of the existing cities. walkable villages ( fredericksburg tx for ex ) are a step in that direction as they will create a demand for the regeneration and rediscovery of community in the more urban areas. I take it a step further in saying that not only will these new communities be walkable, they'll be local. they'll be local for a reason I don't mention until now: energy constraint... but mostly, they'll be local for the reason I've been suggesting all along: people crave community, and they're giving up suburbia and it's scale factors to get it.

Abilene square mile

Oxford square mile

archi-culture:

2010-03-03T22:15:00.000-08:00

...

links for architects and those who know them ; )

design:

pruned.blogspot.com

bldgblog.blogspot.com

inhabitat.com

http://architectureforhumanity.org/

http://archidose.blogspot.com/

energy:

energybulletin.net

theoildrum.com

environment:

http://www.treehugger.com/

http://www.realclimate.org/

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

academy:

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/index.php

http://www.sciarc.edu

http://www.arch.columbia.edu/

(and of course) : http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/be/about/architecture/index.html

superb information:

http://www.ted.com/

dtls.

2010-03-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

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thesis update: live from the wild

2010-02-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

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wintertime identity

plan showing the silt capture system, rainwater capture system, and terra preta beds

dtl of the insulated curtains closed

south elevation - the building situated within the stand of juniper

1" = 1' model of the space

2/3's of the lamella structure delivered to site

studio space at night

2010-02-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

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coming into focus

2010-02-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

the "portable tool shed" has been moved from the following pristine location:

and placed behind a recycled fence:

rot resistant juniper columns were used to connect the screen to the ground.

epic bonfire

2010-02-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

happened here. even though this was going on in 20 degree weather with a light drizzle and well saturated ground, several surrounding trees were "pruned" by the fire. 10 x 12 tin sheet walls had to be set up to keep the blaze from spreading. finally, the "close ups" are from about 30 feet away.

ecological defense: I probably displaced about 30 mice, 10 birds, a snake, and two ferrel cats in the process of removing this only portion of landscape (to my knowledge) which has been defiled by a bulldozer into a rotten wood pile some two decades ago. who knows how many btu's were released into the atmosphere... lets just remember that wood is in the surface carbon cycle. it's the release of sub surface carbon in excessive quantities that can get us into trouble. anyhow, I'm sure these fine woodland creatures will find a home in some of the many other comfortable habitat niches myself and other locals are working to create ( only not right next to my house ). when I think of the native praire grasses which will soon replace the scar... I feel no pain. Also, this turned a cold dreary evening into a simlutaneously gorgeous, heart racing event.

Thesis Update: my side of the mesa

2010-02-10T22:35:00.000-08:00

Not one unmilled tree, but many...

A quick rundown on this entire project:

Structural Roundwood Lamella utilized in the creation of an Indigenous Carpentry Workshop ( so the concept is really, indigenous carpentry workshop, but the crux of the project is the building method )

Concept and Structure:

This project is an indigenous carpentry workshop which showcases the utilization of an indigenous wood from the surrounding grove, in a construction method I've developed called "structural roundwood lattices." These lattices, or in the case of this building, the lamella, work by combining a natural three dimensional tree formation with other like formations in recursion to create a structural frame for enclosable space.

Concept cont'd... and Materiality:

This building addresses the selection of material in the following way: 1) We find what is on site and then source it as locally as possible. Once the building is in place, we have a workshop from which we can begin the creation of local indigenous buildings from material on site. In this manner, the building works as a kind of catalyst for indigenous civilization... that is, one based on a local economy. ( The economic base in this case is juniper and limestone, but more are meant to be added as time goes on ).

Site Analysis:

The site story: ( a bit about what I do ) The idea of the site is to create infrastructure which allows us to continually reduce the area from which we gather the resources to live. Self sufficiency as defined by : thriving on what may be found in "walking" distance is the long term goal. Many intermediate steps are required to attain this goal, an important one of which is the creation of this building.

Water and Nutrient Flows ( Food):

The building addresses other aspects of enhancing self sufficiency as described by recycling water and nutrients which flow across the site. We capture these substances inside a series of retaining landscapes. ... both gathering surfaces and storage spaces for redistribution into the landscape "loop". (The physical built landscape forms are based on site contour and building orientation lines. ) Various aquaculture and permaculture sites are included in the proposal.

Lighting and Thermal Comfort:

Lighting and thermal comfort are addressed in a similar fashion. Solar energy supplied in local wood stock provides space heating through the use of a stove, while solar energy converted to electricity provides shaded ventilation with fans. Natural daylight with assist from solar powered LED's light the workspace.

Aesthetics:

As a performance of aesthetics issue.. the use of roundwood Juniperous ashei is meant to show the strong correlation between the materials utilized and the natural setting in which the building finds itself. By weaving the structure of unmilled elements in into a grove of counterpart forms, the abstraction of milling and manufacturing and the dulled sense of materiality is removed... or rather, the sense of materiality about the structure is enhanced . The primary defining parameters for size and orientation are both structural and visual; A tapered lamalla form provides lateral strength with less material as in a diagrid structure where a single layer of structure is strong in x.y, and z. Naturally, the view to the west is funneled while the framed view to the east is enhanced by the entire line of the structure, generating a sense of visual procession through the space. In this case, the building view opens up out of a lower canopy Juniper grove into a higher canopy (45' tall) native deciduous grove of oak, and elm... what is now a rarity in this landscape.

Natural Environment:

1) the harvesting of this material (Juniper) responsibly restores the water table and the natural prairie biome to the extent that the federal government subsidizes this action on a massive scale.

Parting Theory Shot:

Nature, not architecture, is the main event. Architecture is a means of framing the human experience of an existing masterpiece. People are the most important part of nature, and therefore, at their best, nature is the most important part of a people's environment. Here, nature is referred to as the most optimal of life support systems in which the balance is such that minimal inputs of energy are required by all for the maximum energy availability to all. It speaks of total health. I do not necessarily refer to nature as that which is "undisturbed by humankind" as there is vast evidence from the past and present that humans have, in many cases, benefited their places of habitation, bringing a culture of sustained, increased energy availability to a system through cultivation of the "undisturbed world" rather than displacement of that world.

past languages

2009-12-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

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click here for larger images...

before hitting on the current unmilled wood building methodology which defines the structure of the new wood shop happening at the land (thesis), alternative languages were explored... here are (3), three week projects from years past ('07 - '08)...

the hensel park project was an evolved version of portable rain water harvesting cylinder with an umbrella like catchment area I'd been thinking of before spending some time in the desert in Arizona... I took a fair bit of inspiration from da vinci's sketches on kinetic structure as well... and I'd be lying if i didn't mention having seen this project a short time before (several years ago) produced by a student in London... obviously the concepts around celebrated rainwater harvesting events have a number of exciting possible manifestations... mine being an evolution of relic, industrial era infrastructure among a post industrial collapse society in rural texas - cotton, buffalo sinues, and Juniperous virginiana utilized along side local sculptural forms as both ceremonial centers and resource machines...

architecture as a catalyst for neo indigenous culture in the lake bryan project, as a lesson in utilizing local materials... juniper and wood fired clay in this case:

and another project with white pine:

solar powered merry Christmas!

2009-12-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

...

Merry Christmas!

rather than the conventional felled evergreen wound with colored incandescent bulbs as a visual celebration of Christmas, I've chosen a ( rather humble ) sun weathered juniper stump and an led rope light powered by solar rays. I'll call this gesture a symbolic act of hope in times of sparsity.

( slightly less exposure )

... it's a humble show, but a hopeful one... not as much gusto as neighboring light shows perhaps, but as beautiful? I'll also say that the subtle scene is better in person... and also symbolic of my particular enjoyment in the season, and the successful installation of a new sine wave inverter, which means clean energy for the studio and all its appliances!

it's been cold... but beautiful .

here is some quick info on the making of a mini off grid system. should you ever decide that you too must move ahead with a progressive off-grid life on a low budget, consider life on a land yacht. I've noticed that yachting appliances are profoundly effecient, ( feel free to write me if you're interested in the techincal information ). at the moment, I have a 140 watt panel charging an 85 ah deep cycle 12v lead acid battery. the solar panel has an amperage rating which needs to match the rating of a charge controller for your system ( or the combined solar panel amperage should you have more than one ). the charge controller bleeds off excess battery charge and makes sure that the current from the solar panel flows one direction ( to the battery ). the battery is then connected to a pure sine wave inverter ( DC to AC ) with a fuse on the positive cable and presto... you have a mini off grid system. usually, small grounding lugs on the inverter and the panel can be wired so that your system ( if large enough ) can avoid certain unpleasant phenomena related to the buildup of static electricity. all of these steps are pretty easy to DIY if you can get an electrician to draw you up a quick diagram and coach you through the basics.

life in ds ii ( land yachting ) is a bit like life on a yacht in that, I'm hovering over a sea ( albeit prairie grass and not water ). the view is great, no rent or bills, and the space could be described as "cozy." I have a small fridge with a fast freeze setting that will take the contents to negative 8 F in 30 mins. The laptop computer, printer, and all the lighting I need as well as a small fan to assist cross ventilation can be operated from this simple system. I only have to keep an eye on the power draw of the individual appliances and make sure not to do an intense architectural rendering on the computer while doing a fast freeze on the fridge with all the lights on, the printer printing, and speakers blaring etc. In this event, I would probably be out 18 dollars ( cost of the fuse on the positive cable to the inverter ). I don't think this will happan, and so far I have to say - I love this situation.

Belated Merry Christmas to all! And thanks for checking in on year one of at the land!

lattices part 1

2009-12-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

...

door lattices: they're adjustable so that I can have the cross ventilation and the view when I want it... or a lockable space. here they are, not to be confused with the rain screens featured in these images as something not so far from what I hope to build in coming days. special thanks here goes out to Xander for help with construction and detailing... and of course, again, Laura for that curtain idea. on another note: thermal comfort in the place is decent right now... we're dropping down into the 20's at night, and I can work at my drafting table with ease... the space is comfortable. I sleep under about 3 blankets comfortably... though I do notice that by about 4 am (6 hrs after tending the stove last), stove heat has about died out and the air temp inside has dropped a bit. large oak and mesquite logs are a must for the stove... fortunately I have plenty. juniper helps make for a fast start.

jargon:

as I blathered this to Xander who recited to Nichole... we may as well include here that: 'the dimensionality and frequency of the lattice members speak respectively to ( 'are conversant with' is better... he's right Nichole ) material presence and visual rhythms found throughout the composition.' that is to say, ripped 2x's on 14 inch spacing match an existing dimension of lumber in the roof (visual from outside) and the rhythm of the aluminum siding, the strongest lateral element on that level of the building. seemingly trivial i know, but significant in that it's a dimension which I would happily call inconvenient for intruders, but convenient financially and visually ( view allowed ) for this portion of the building... as a matter of practicality, the rain screens will be applied at a density twice that of the aluminum paneling ( 7" o.c. ) the point of all this? architecture like all things having to do with spatial arrangement, is susceptible to clutter, especially on small intense projects. for this reason, I'm calling it quits for the moment on adding new dimensional/ material elements to the show.

ripping lumber by... hand?

2009-12-06T19:46:00.002-08:00

...

strange as I know this sounds, there is something profoundly

satisfying about dusting off the handsaw and slugging through.

you remember that it's wood that you're working with and that

means something... the word "wood". it's a similar sensation

to the one achieved through reminding yourself that the brown

food you occasionally eat is called "meat" (and it was part of

an animal) by going out in into the backyard over thanksgiving

and observing a family member skin a deer he shot over the

holiday for some very nice venison. ( I always have this feeling

when I'm cleaning the fish from the last excursion into the rapids

with the fly rod... should I have been fortunate enough to have

hooked a nice trout, which I'm not sure wasn't generally cleverer

than I and for which I almost certainly exhausted my calculating

capacity for crafting the strike needed... paid the price of cold

legs, cold fingers, banged up shin etc... me absorbing the

cost of my quarry in other words ). but I keep going back for

more because it's real and I like it.

not only does working with hand tools provide fresh appreciation

for the qualities of a material... a poetic sense of it's essence,

but something about this opens your mind back up to delight in

that with which we interact that has not been machined to

within tolerances undetectable to any of our senses. there is

often nothing there for us to touch or alter even if it needs

improvement. it has been defined... the machined object, is

born in an optimal state, never to improve with the curing of

time... it's all downhill from there. for the machined, age is a

negative. not so for the handmade. i think we like hand made

objects more, mostly for reasons which are unquantifiable though.

that's a dissertation I won't set out to defend at this time, but for a

parting shot, i suspect that hand made objects will outlast the

machined both in the real world and in our imaginations... for that

reason.

btw, architects are the ones who stop by the side of the road to

pick up discarded building materials... ( it's that sad ). I used this

"weathered" (not rotten) ripped 2 x which I had salvaged from the

road... and from which I plucked nails (probably saved someone

a new pair of tires) to complete the galvalume roof on the east side

of the studio ii structure. I figured that the intended juniper lattice

would take ages to complete with all other projects on the agenda.

as what may only be an interim solution but part of me thinks is

there to stay, here it is:

night light

2009-11-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

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each night, solar powered led's cast shade of a prairie sumac (non poisonous) on a translucent wall of my humble home... here she is as a night light.

fall harvest

2009-11-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

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Progress at the ranch: A local rancher has kindly granted me access to his juniper population, under the condition that once in the juniper thickets, I wield my chainsaw with reckless abandon. The problem with juniper is: it drinks vast amounts of water and chokes out the really large, lovely, shade trees. The good thing about juniper is: once felled and debarked, it is one of the toughest, most decay resistant woods around. As an added bonus, the government subsidizes it's removal for the restoration of water tables and native grasslands which provide indigenous habitats (and increase it's grazing capacity).

step one, arrive on site to find that Juniper are encroaching upon the precious live, red, white oak population and the native praire grasses.

step two, find the tree for your building system

step three, cut er down and make way for the native oaks

step four, clear of extraneous limbs and leaves

step five, pile the brush to make habitats for the wildlife

step six, add to pile of building elements

step seven, strip the wood and it's ready for use... for more on that click here

A quick thought on free building materials: These are what architects dream about. Contrary to popular belief, we are the lowest paid of the professions. And so! good architecture usually happens from a love of the game (design). The words "free materials" are to the ears of an architect, the equivalent of the tinker toy box rattle in the ears children. They tend to come running from all over in order to gather round and imagine worlds free from the opression of codes, cleanliness, and all the things that make life dull. Some architects with access to free materials have been known to quit their jobs and go found civilizations of architect interns making utopias in the wilderness. For more info, click here. Oddly enough, some of these experiments have led the way in defining the architecture of the future, as freedom from constraint allows a quicker response to an increasingly quick change of surrounding conditions.

fall color

2009-11-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

point 14

2009-10-17T14:12:00.001-07:00

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Before I get back to work with what you see above, I'd like to share a thought on point 14 from Bruce Mau's '98 incomplete manifesto for growth:

I like a lot of what Bruce has to say here in light of what's going on attheland. I can't say I agree with point 2: Forget about good.... because it's what we're all working for. I mean, who wants bad?

I love point 14. I hold it up as an excuse for idealistic blog entries. Why not? So here it is:

14. Don't be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black, free yourself from limits of this sort.

The thing about cool is that it's at least half market driven in this country, and market driven here is less than half good for the human race I'm willing to wager.

Another statement along these lines was pointed out by Laura last week, found in this document:

"Theoretic chaos has replaced the idealistic thinking of old -- and, unable to reconstitute theoretic order, men have condemned idealism itself. Doubt has replaced hopefulness -- and men act out a defeatism that is labeled realistic."

I recently considered heavily editing out some of the more idealistic textual moments in the blog for the sake of some vague notion of increasing approachability. It's easy to ask oneself questions like "how will this ever work on a big scale?" Then I thought of Bill Mollison: "It’s curious that we never apply what we know to how we actually live." And another time he said something to the effect of: Do a small thing right first and then we have a hope of doing something larger well. I reckon it's going to take a while to sort that out.

At least for now, I've decided not to edit out any of the more idealistic textual moments, not even in the name of "professionalism" which feels a bit to close at the moment to the "defeated realism" mentioned above. Not that all successful professionals are defeated realists. Quite the contrary, quite a few I've met are highly idealistic, even utopian in outlook and incredibly hard workers. But they've labored courageously to stay that way and to make the kind of space I enjoy right now. So thanks to them, and the hope carrying on that possibility for others to enjoy.

Thus ends the critique/ praise. And now, it's back to building.

thesis sketches

2009-10-17T12:49:00.000-07:00

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a quick perspective of the whole tree lamella (a arch of trusses)... models are on their way, this was a quick something which happened during an unfortunately long lecture this week.

following are plans, dtls for linking to the ground, (that's limestone for the foundation) and aluminum sheet from the salvage yard for the building skin.

see the testing testing entry (just below) for the specifics of the structural joinery.

for more background info on this project try here (precedent architect's website), here (mind map of refrences), here (back story on thesis development) and here (technical paper from USFPL).

Grant proposals for US Forest Products Lab small diameter roundwood buildings are now under construction.

testing testing:

2009-10-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

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latest on the thesis:

here I am standing on a 3" depth whole tree joint. not a single snap, crackle or pop... the wood pegs are clearly doing most of the work, but the hose clamps (separated from wood surface by leather strips) do their share in compressing the members to maximize the surface area of contact, and to assist the wood pegs in lateral bending/ torsion.

the steps to creating these joints are few and simple:

1) debark wood (mostly peeling in this case)... debarked juniper is smooth as wet skin

2) using a jig, cut receiving surfaces into the joined elements (the angle is determined by dividing the number of elements across the desired shape of the arch).

3) secure the elements in place with cinches

4) drill

5) wood pegs

6) then hose clamps and leather

7) jump up and down to make sure you got it right.

(for the full photo story click here)

5 & 6

for more background on the thesis: (structural parametric whole tree lamella) click

monarchs

2009-10-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

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on their way to the beach... they always stop in Texas.

first bowl of oatmeal

2009-10-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

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cooked on studio ii wood stove... eaten by myself.

here you can see the new vent pipe.

there it is again!

competition entry: truss shelter

2009-09-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

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built interior: 8' x 16'

Here are several spliced photos which show a combination of how the shelter is and will be.

Recently entered in the "design it" shelter competition sponsored by The Guggenheim, Google (sketchup was the required entry medium), and Taliesin, this studio/ shelter is my current abode of choice. I live here 5 nights a week, commuting for the other two nights. It's a perfect base camp for planning the construction of a new wood/ carpentry shop on site... the first structural whole tree lattice building... er... anywhere? After a few minor delays, construction is scheduled to begin a few months behind schedule... we hope this means ideal weather.

Text from the competition entry (70 word limit): The truss shelter glides out above the terrain drop, showcasing views down through the prairie. The structural, spanning, skin enables a minimal footprint, and re-usable space as the shelter erodes or transforms into an expanded prairie habitation. Constructed from native lumber, recycled aluminum, and indigenous juniper shade lattices, the materials speak to the objective of reducing the area from which resources are drawn for enhanced continuation of life on site.

the bathouse!

2009-09-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

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Simple, elegant, constructed of recycled materials: aluminum grate from the salvage yard, plywood and aluminum roof and walls salvaged from an old shed, debarked juniper roundwood set in calliche footings as the foundation columns, recycled aluminum screen and gray 2x and 1x lumber... the bathouse offers a nice place to take a solar shower and features a new Sun-Mar Excel NE. I have Laura to thank for how well this space turned out. Once we reached a decision about the general shape of the building she completed the interiors (juniper shower curtain rod), original, quality details all around. Lovely. Approximate cost: $100.

studio i update

2009-09-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

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new structural shoring on the original studio...

exhibition / party

2009-08-10T15:01:00.000-07:00

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- A chance for the friends and family to see what architects dream up at secret studio locations in the late hours. What a dream come true. There we were walking around inside what began as daydreams materialized in sketchbooks during various lectures... thanks to the endless labor of the talented Laura Mast, co-designer/ builder of the bathouse and many many other talented friends and family over the past month. They came, they saw, and hopefully they'll be coming back because we now have a studio/ living space with solar power, a bathhouse with a solar shower, a composting toilet, and another studio in a tree... all places conducive to further dreaming - day and night.

Also, we want another party next year... preluded by a fall and spring work weekend ( thanks C ). Between now and the fall work weekend, a parametric juniper lattice wood shop/ detail library, should take final form. For now, photos of a bathouse with juniper foundation, a tree studio with a juniper column, and a studio live space which should soon house a juniper rain/ shade screen system are up. Thus we begin the indigenous phase of works out at the land! Major thanks go out to all the supporters!

Speaking of supporters... each time people come out to support, a new corridore in the collective imagination seems to be unlocked. New solutions, a new sense of possibilities awakens. Problems solved without petroleum or money? Wood pegs instead of steel bolts? Expereince the forest at the canopy level where the breeze sweeps over the juniper understory? Hurricane lanterns and solar - led light arrays are all we need? Outdoor rooms? Forest gardens, and permaculture? One is either re-inforcing a sense of the vastness in the solutions for higher quality living, or discovering an entirely new take on life. It could happen in a moment when the moon is rising over the surrounding mesas, sending rays right through the canvas openings of studio two, which acts as a kind of lunar ray magnifier, funneling rays across white surfaces and through to the prairie scape beyond. It could be as the evening wears on and a friend notices that everyone breaks off into little groups gathered around small hurricane lanterns and candles in woodland clearings where they seem happy to stay for a while (with food) and conversation, starlight and a warm candle light... no background music required.

At the end of the evening, I found 7 of us sitting around the moonrise... from the east porch of studio two... unexpected and perfect. I might have thought it strange if the whole scene were not so primally comfortable.

studio ii update

2009-07-14T13:59:00.001-07:00

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After a nice long break overseas, we're moving forward with the vision back at the land. Here we see Grandpa and Laura finishing up a bit of the west deck. We have a date for the long awaited party/ exhibition - August 8th! Here is a sketch elevation of where things are probably headed...

those somewhat vague lines indicating screen of some kind will perhaps constitute the first use of truely indigenous material here... in this case, juniper.

visual manifesto

2009-05-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

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The canvas walls have arrived! DS II interior construction starts as soon as it drops back below 100 Fahrenheit which is this weekend I hope. For now, here is a visual manifesto drawn yesterday for the three story house:

design inspiration

2009-05-06T00:18:00.000-07:00

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"My sources of artistic inspiration are many, but ultimately originate in One, big fun daydream from Who knows where about people living together in peace and harmony." - Sir Thomas More.

To be honest, (and slightly embarrassed ) I wrote that, but I reckon we all agree: the world is full of immense meaning, beauty, Intent! It wants to be perfect. I find that the moment I look at something, anything, I begin to find a story.

And that story becomes part of another story. And eventually, I find I'm intertwined in plots and dramas of epic proportion! Here one tries not to dwell to deeply on the butterfly effect, but is careful not to squash any insects whose progeny, due to global warming adaptation, may secrete an aromatic and irritation free natural sunblock in 20 years... etc. I see how things have gone a bit wrong, yes, but then I see how they want to be made right. Of course, we're woven into such a vivid realm of color, movement, life, rhythm, line, shape, texture, scale and on... it's a bit shocking sometimes - just the attempt of taking in a moment at random; "checking in with reality" for a second. Then, you might ask a question like: why is this all here? and what am I doing? and what does this mean? Follow any one of those rabbit holes and you're bound to encounter Significance in a way that may feel like falling.

The manifestations of design inspirations are as numerous as the people I've met and the places I've been. As implied earlier in the "out is the new 'in' " entry, the places I've enjoyed most, and have most profoundly stretched my sense of the beautiful have been encounters of the natural world with others. This obviously means that architects, and architecture, are not my primary inspiration for making more architecture. It never started out that way... and I've never had fun imagining it as such. I made a tree house because I wanted to be in the tree, not chiefly because I was excited about wood joinery and tensioned cable details. I realize that there are certainly more and less crudely crafted and contrived human made things, and I'm not saying that there is no point in architecture... I delight in it deeply. The point is, architecture is merely something that takes me somewhere... into something more important. It is the desire to be with people, under certain circumstances, in some experience, or alone even in some place... that drives the action to make.

To wax eloquent ( I hope ): in the midst of an essence, framed purely and poetically, or subtly - almost accidental, to slip into a fold of reality that pulls me into wrinkle in time-space, where things slow down, or dynamism takes place; somewhere where the tangibility is nearly overwhelming. Why be anywhere but there? These kinds of things happen all the time, with someone under trees under stars, or facing west late in a day, around a campfire with people, in a golden lit pub, smooth worn stone gleaming reflected amber draught and candlelight hues. Or sitting on dads shoulders as he wades a river, a lullaby from mom in bed. These memories come as hot torrent to a mind numbed by digital media and suburban traffic flows. Time in the untouched landscape made me want to find a way to be there without touching ( or touching lightly ).

Our place in nature is outside mostly; and "inside" only for the framing of action which needs to be there. We might filter moisture and wind, but not certain light for reading. There is filtration of all light and moisture, but not a gentle breeze for summer time sleeping, and the allowance of rainfall for a natural shower. The habitation of places with people - this inspires the architecture as facilitator. It started with camping trips and campfires. Architectural education was the next step.

An important and enjoyable step it's been; a time during which I encountered the work of fellow students, received guidance from tutors in seminar, critique, tutorial, and lecture settings. Encountering the work of fellow students and teachers in careful critique settings has been the most inspiring part of the educational process, - the encounter of individuals defending their ideas before an engaged audience. More than endlessly gathering the knowledge of others, it is in working with those who understand that each and every individual has a unique, new, experience and viewpoint... and therefore interest, that I have found abundant life in the academic setting. These mentors know that if ones latent interest is defined, refined, and then fed, a passion will grow within the student, and from that passion, a magnificent body of work will be born.

While to a certain degree, everyone is a unique movement, we learn in a context of precedent. Precedent does inspire. Precedent also gives groups of individuals momentum. Furthermore, it shows the client that your mind isn't entirely out to lunch with Utopians, and that you may even share a common cause with organic, yet unfathomably well organized, networks of like minded (contemporary and existent) individuals collaborating in a patterned effort. Paul Hawken has shown this to be true for so many people. I'm a great fan of that crowd, and in the same thrust, have compiled a reference of material from many others in the Architectural profession (and some with closely related work) who's aims and means share a close proximity with those of the "three story house" project.

post petroleum parametric

2009-05-02T00:05:00.001-07:00

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how will this:

best become this?:

perhaps like so:

Vernacular (Webster): 1 a: using a language or dialect native to a region or country rather than a literary, cultured, or foreign language 3: of, relating to, or characteristic of a period, place, or group ; especially : of, relating to, or being the common building style of a period or place

If computer generated architecture cannot become vernacular in nature, here that means: made by the people in walking distance, then it at least retains hope of habitation, use, or inspiration while remaining glossy and new. But as it weathers and wears, who will repair it? Who will enhance it? How will it's ideas live on? Or will it be mined for materials and re-compiled as relic fragments, -talking points grafted into neo indigenous, handmade shelters of a local economy future?

I wonder, what is the culture that goes with the digital, the computer generated? I'm not referring to more of what we see around us, rather, I wonder what happens when the principles learned from the petroleum era experiments with parametric design, scripting, biomimmicry, cellular automata, and the knowledge sets yet to emerge, impact local economies of the future?

I have visions of skilled craftsmen with calloused hands in fine rimmed spectacles, eying the carefully cultivated woodland groves surrounding their communities. They consider the selective harvest before them in gradations of tended "wilderness" ( having actually moved beyond the need for words like wilderness in the acknowledgment that humans are a helpful part of nature and have intertwined their own optimal existence with the optimal existence of the rest of the natural world). I see them discussing the matrices of possible bifurcation ratios in the scaffolding limbs on different tree species, sketchpads in hand, documenting the new formations and comparing their knowledge and experience for creating this and that joint in such and such wood grain. They search out the formations carefully among eligible candidates, in much the same way stone masons from earlier times would turn the stone, looking for the right seams to strike. These carpenters of the future have learned to recognize the optimized tree formations and have developed a number of languages and sub languages for building based on the optimal characteristics of formations... and the cultural needs of the time.

The existing structures evolve as the craft of wood working improves dramatically over the

years. People mend their own homes from the groves they maintain in this (moneyless?) society, enriching the existing structural stock. Meanwhile, children play with wooden models and toy building systems they are taught by family members. Every so often, it is one of the youth who stumble across the methodology which solves the latest design difficulty or pushes the craft to the next level of perfection. Eventually, the feedbacks of the increased application of principle toward physical experimentation open up new realms of mathematical understanding, formerly unattainable in the high digital technology era... ( as Margaret Wertheim has discovered ) ; and a method for modeling trees all the way through the "adult adaptive geometry" stage is developed.

Structures now sway beautifully in the wind when necessary, generating energy in their kinetic flexations, or humming like instruments through evening breezes. New dances and ways of walking and climbing have evolved over time as a result. Parkour is the expected means of travel for people in their prime, and the elderly have rightly regained their place in society as front porch commentators on the frivolity of youth, outwardly scolding of the expression of youthful vigor from swinging passers by. All scolding is of course done tongue in cheek, interrupted with knowing glances of admiration to one another at the impressive acrobatic display from their fellow treetopia citizens. The commentators (laughing boisterously) sit on kinetic Theo Jansen like rocking chair devices which pace their treetop porches as their sanftestructuren style living spaces are now well off the ground, the grafting process having begun earlier than the majority of the population in many cases. Fire hazards have long been dealt with naturally, utilizing permaculture techniques and naturally resistant resins and retardants.

A culture, once inwardly rich, can't help but manifest beauty, intellectual rigor, art, and freedom in all they do. Having evolved in light of these new processes, song and laughter and the sound of human life catches the wind as it drifts up from under the natural canopies, out across the open grasslands and into thickets dotted with similar but distinct microcultures, spread right across the earth, into waters, under waters, up mountains and under mountains, beautiful new cultures tucked into the folds of the natural world, touching lightly her beauty and bringing only enhancement and celebratory habitation to the existing immensity.

I hope that Tree Lattices are another step toward that world.

out is the new "in"

2009-04-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

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For a great spatial experience, I go outside. Biomimmicry is replaced with the biological. I don't even pay for the design or construction phases, it just happens. Nature, or states of highest biological productivity which produce as much as they consume or more... are the new datum, aesthetically and economically. Understanding, that lovely mesh of knowledge and wisdom, has carried us back around into the realization that nothing is so well ordered, structurally optimized, or beautiful, as the living. Shelter again becomes a tool to take the edge off of climate situations which are deadly to us and other organisms with which we have symbiosis.

The days of building stock real estate behind us, we can again begin to enjoy our outdoor rooms, utilizing architecture as a framing gesture for the habitation of the experiences which inspire us to go somewhere for vacation: the encounter with unbuilt ( though suspiciously well organized ) beauty.

But wait, there's more. It turns out that people are a potentially positive part of the environment. We can actually improve the productive capability of natural landscape without introducing depletion into the cycle as the permaculture founders Bill Mollison and David Holmgren have proven. This comes as a breath of fresh air for all those who have recently become accustomed to the belief that humanity's natural datum plane is the paved world. Years from now, reminiscing on the days of the industrial revolution when pavement was in style, we'll run our hands through the thick black richness of terra preta taking in the sweet aroma of flourishing foliage, smiling sadly at the remembrance of the nose burning sensation that accompanied smell of thick black asphalt. Thank God for biophelia, it turns out that we all belong in gardens!

(Fig plants in the nursing shade of native locals)

Looking at the landscape I inhabit, it appears so far that nothing I'm doing on the property is very visible from the air, making it potentially prime real estate for the future were it a bit more urban.

Not that such a market will ever exist in this place, nor would I plan on selling if there were. Who knows what amazing civilization may weave itself into existence between the canopies of deciduous groves and along the edges of thickets and clearings? Similarly, the permaculture landscape might weave undetected throughout the thick foliage and out into the thickets on the high plains - it's merely a matter of looking at what the natural realm is already doing and assisting it along that path. As Mollison points out, "people don't have the power of creation, only the power of assembly." Living building blocks are quickly becoming the most interesting

and avant garde materials in the design palate... pre-programmed with phenomenal, chaos theory rendering engines, vegetation, wildlife, and minerals weave shocking compositions of color, depth, intensity, intricacy, and movement, unachievable thus far in industrial era built environment.

For now, sketches and models about how to inhabit the new datum are beginning to appear, as well as a list of projects/ concepts.

These are scheduled to come to fruition someday in various evolving iterations. I'm interested to know if any of them come across as particularly appealing. Personally, I'm really looking forward to the foot access only valley pub microbrewery, which by it's nature, may end up as a makeshift inn almost immediately.

Up and coming design projects at the land:

- completion of ds II

- completion of indigenous shading superstructure for ds II

- installation of ds II kyocera solar power

- completion of the ds I bridge

- completion of the ds I vertical garden space

- completion of the bathhouse - compost toilet/ solar showers

- completion of the juniper studio/ gallery proposed by Laura Mast

- completion of the van/ workshop

- completion of the varmint free, Native American vegetable garden (hardware cloth and juniper)

- summer competition entries and collaborations with designers such as Ryan Collier, Ben Langford and Laura Mast

- guest sleeping village

- limestone valley pub and microbrewery

- structural parametric whole tree lattice thesis

- energy towers as scenic overlooks (more on this soon)

- indigenous utopias gallery show ( with Laura Mast et al.)

- village shop complete with: bicycle laundry, wax myrtle candles, prickly pear soap, underground cold food and seed storage, herbal gardens

- landscape restoration and enhancement

- visiting artist/ architect/ designer, wilderness garden installations program

- Callahan divide walks and stops

- the fire place enhancement

- spwtl grant funding/ collaboration with like minded architects

- inhabitable truss system development

I've written a personal design manifesto based on the three story house... these are the framing parameters and logic that will guide the exploration of attheland projects. At the land, people will have time to "do less better." Thanks to Andrew for stringing together that lovely phrase for us.

100 gallons!

2009-04-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

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In celebration of the first 100 gallons of rainwater harvested, here is a photo of the hose bib where overflow will soon begin coursing through lead free hosing into some, yet to be designed/ built rainwater event feature. I have visions of Barraganesque troughs positioned at transition spaces in the spirit of the Native American "welcome" gesture, shaded and planted with water lillies for cleaning, and thyme, clove, fennel planted nearby to thwart the thirsty ambitions of west Texas mosquitos.

three story home

2009-04-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

While we wait for the arrival of cotton canvas walls and a vestibule for the ds II structure, I'll introduce the project stories:

As mentioned earlier, ds II is another inhabitable truss; a very light structure meant to impact the surface of the site as little as possible. The viewing platform is wider than that of that of ds I by a foot ( 8' x 20' ) and provides a small, solar powered interior space ( 8' x 16' ) for competition work, sleep, etc...

The project has provided the backdrop narrative for several other story explorations: landing, tree lattices (spwtl's), and "landscape first". These in turn have evolved the identity of what started out as a simple living experiment. The fictions are materializing.

In "landing", the structure is actually a kind of catalyst for indigenous culture. This lightweight structure arrives on site, celebrating terrain change as the axis slides out into the valley, over a sea of grass and off into the west Texas sunrise/ moonrise. Situated on a ridge at the west side of the property, this space affords a vantage point, a kind of visual gateway down into the valley. The architecture begins a few feet away from the caliche road on site, carrying over the decline of the slope.

The actual "impact" on the site soil is comprised of three, 2' x 8' trenches, 2 feet deep. At the bottom of each trench is a steel plate which serves as an anchor for a corresponding 8 x 8 cedar beam, joined with threaded rod or steel cable. The stony rubble fill from the trench is then set back on top of the steel plate, as are the limestone piers which support the wood beam, thanks to dad for co-authoring this detail with me and to Ben for helping invent the version for use on the 20 foot cantilever.

The cedar truss with recycled aluminum and formaldehyde free osb wall panels sits atop these anchored foundation beams:

Numerous iterations on how this structure should function as an asset which performs aesthetically and economically have emerged over the years... like this one with a rainwater spine:

Refinement of the scheme (and limited resources) have moved us in the direction shown below, limiting the width of the project in the north/ south direction to 10'. This also forces me to maximize the spanning, load bearing potential of the truss, and spotlights the lightness of the building as it lengthens but does not widen (more iterations to come no doubt):

Landing... as opposed to take off, carries with it the connotation of arrival. In the past, it was unusual and or impossible to go somewhere. Today, the same is true about staying somwhere.

Landing is now counter cultural. Click here and you can see that the average American moves 11.7 times - let's call it 12 (note, the census bureau dates here are somewhat... dated).

I've moved 15 times in 26 years... it's actually difficult to describe because I only lived in Chicago and Austin, TX for three months each, but it doesn't account for the many inter city moves and building changes. Then, there is travel. I have at least one year in lifetime travel, including 2 months in Thailand and 1 month traveling Europe (twice). Dad and I racked up a few months of interstate travel in the US, hitting up major US national parks, and there was once a 1 month trip through British Columbia to the Alaskan island of Ketchikan. Summer camp in northern Wisconsin accounts for another 3 months of life. Also, I have the daily commute, where at least half of my day in most of the places I've ever lived was spent well away from my place of residence, that is 2 or more miles. Now don't get me wrong, this has made for a very interesting existence here on planet earth. However it does make for a rather difficult answer when asked: "so where's home"?

If someone was asked this question 3 generations ago, the popular answer would have been the same: a township/ neighborhood would be named. If you asked those individuals about where they had been in their travels, the answer would be the same. Ask the generation before that and, ( especially in the old world ), one could often name a particular home or cottage which would have been the family residence for centuries. Shortly after having moved to the UK, I was surprised to hear that many people would describe their home in relation to the closest pub... a building that had probably been there for hundreds of years, and served their family a local ale as long.

The Landing project is meant to provide for something like the old fashioned essence of home: a place you can stay. In staying, the opportunity arises to know people and place at an entirely new level of intimacy. Some consider community qualities such as walkability the most important deciding factor in the built environment for determining quality of life. Walkability implies that machinery like automobiles are not needed for life.

In order to stay, one literally needs food, water, and shelter from deadly weather. The structure would provide all of these necessities as a first step in allowing the inhabitants to continually decrease the area from which the supplementary resources necessary for a thriving existence are taken. In other words, landing is about setting in motion the re-discovery of indigenous culture. As one is afforded more time to work from having an asset which provides the essential resources of food and water (rainwater feeding native food gardens) and electricity from solar panels, the bills which comprise the primary expenses in life are no longer due. One has most of the time they normally spent acquiring money for these goods back, and can begin to explore how to further utilize the local resources.

Along the way, new kinds of forms and norms begin to permeate the consciousness. surrounded by the green/ yellow fluidity of the natural world, the hard lines and shades of the industrial world leave our mind and we begin to ask new questions like "what kind of architecture does a tree want to become"?

Structural parametric whole tree lattices are the first version of our answer to that.

It turns out that trees evidence mathematical rule sets in the formation of their structure. This means that these recursive formations create a complicated alphabet of naturally optimized building parts, far more efficient than anything produced in a man made industrial plant. Real plants produce better goods. It turns out that un-milled round wood is stronger than milled wood by at least 50 %. The explanation for that is here at the US. forest products lab website or you can read a well put summary by Roald Gundersen, whole tree architect. We also begin to understand that the aesthetic optimization of wood structure is far superior to that of the manufactured lines, the diversification of which is profoundly expensive. Finally, the labor savings are immense because trees work for free, and they like it.

Here we harvest Juniperus ashei which has covered the valley in an invasive manner, as a result of cattle overgrazing ( among other human interventions ). The clearing of this plant back to previous levels of natural thicket restores the top soil, ground water, and indigenous vegetation - prairie grass and oaks.

These new whole tree structural systems begin to integrate into the scheme as canopy layers and eventually evolve into one of the key languages of the indigenous architectural structure.
here we enter into the era of landscape first.

As time passes, we realize that the productive landscape is the most valuable asset in the world of "real estate". No longer interested in the liability of building stock, people in a state of energy decline become chiefly concerned with the lands ability to sustainably produce food stock, wood stock, and an endless flow of nutrients through resourcing. Rather than grading and clearing land before supplanting the natural beauty with another building, people will carefully craft lush, abundant landscapes, before inserting the lightest smallest buildings onto the site, for the sake of enjoying "life in a garden" and for the economic value of it. Architecture becomes merely a means of inhabiting and framing the beauty of a garden... the garden is now the main event.

An early idea of a landscape optimized for silt capture:

As these three stories materialize over time, the imaginary replaces what we thought was real, and we find that living in a good story is far better than leaving it in our heads.

For now, we're step of making a the second 20' cantilever out of weathered local wood and completing the interior space. Total project cost to date: under 3 K (we absorb the labor).

Finally, another round of thanks goes out to everyone mentioned in the previous post with the addition of Ben, Brian, our visiting photographer Deborah, a special thanks to grandpa for doing most of the work and to grandma for sending enough food to feed an army, and all the significant others who allowed loved ones to risk life and limb on a "barn raisin". Thanks, and like I say, we're all about due for another long evening of food, beverage, and could someone bring a banjo?

cantilevered house on the prairie

2009-03-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine and I would trespass all over the vast wild acreage of west Texas ranches for the same reasons we go to state parks... only this was free. Out there, you see bighorn sheep herds, vast horizons, sunsets so intense you're surprised that the wonder of them doesn't cause a kind of cerebral/ cardiac arrest each and every time. Even when all you have to go on is a sliver of gold slipping through below gray thunderheads, light streams through dust and moisture cutting a sharp black edge against an uninhabited landscape. There is a time after the sun sets where the red soil glows from a higher angle of light which reflects off some tangibility in the atmosphere... and the landscape re-appears in a self illuminating pink glow. Sometimes it lasts for moments. Sometimes it lingers and lingers, deceiving you about the time of day, before the sudden surprise of deep dark sets in. The dark would be complete if the sky wasn't white with stars. The wave of prairie grass in strong wind is as audible as a downpour. Anyhow, you get the drift. We still do this.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that it would be best to have a portion of this landscape available to me (legally) for whenever. 7 years on, this land is home, no matter where I am.
Eventually one tires of trying to figure out which parts of the unadulterated beauty to sacrifice for ones own homestead and begins to explore ways to touch/ damage as little as possible, to skirt the perimeters of clearings and sneak into thickets and up into the canopies of oak like wild game... just some way of enhancing the inhabitation expereince of whats already there.

This I had in mind for the first architectural gesture out on the prairie thicket: a kind of transition from the prairie level, up above the first layer of thicket canopy so that one could move from the sheltered movement along the ground corridors into the world of vistas out across the Callahan Divide mesas to the east.

Rather than running straight up a tree, it seemed that some transition, some approach, was necessary. -A vertical space and a long lean series of cantilevers which could nestle us into the boughs of oaks for shaded viewing pleasure...

...and for this somewhat ambitious 50' span elevated 10 feet off the ground, and a modest budget, I had what in mind? - Something that seemed impossibly light; almost non-existent on the level that one could confuse it's minimal geometry with surrounding thicket branches. A bridge was created, an inhabitable truss, the spanning capability absorbed into the handrail space. The entire apparatus including a 7' x 20' deck and a 3' x 50' walk sits on 10, 4x columns.

7' x 20' sleeps 6 with sleeping bags comfortably.
Here is view from the deck to my adjoining dining room.

ds 2 is also an inhabitable truss, this time large enough to contain an interior space for guests/ and generate competition design work for the future. But, before we get onto that story, this thanks goes out to all those involved in making ds1: Jordan, Andrew, Jon, Jon Michael, Miller, Dad, Grandpa (of course), Justin, Jason, Rick and for all you ladies and gentlemen who showed up to the brisket extravaganza after... that was ages ago, but is definitely slotted to happen again in the summer of 2009!

for the photo story of the land click here

poetic justice!

2009-03-23T23:57:00.000-07:00

I can't help but revel in the following: that which was designed to hold fossil fuels for wanton burning is now used to harvest rainwater and grow gardens ;)
I was mulling about a scrap yard a year or two back, looking for some likely candidate as a sort of rainwater harvesting cistern. In the end, I walked away with an unlikely candidate (a diesel fuel tank for big rigs) which, though somewhat coated in petrol residue, was and is: a 150 gallon aluminum, chrome plated tank which is light enough for me to carry (with some difficulty but not too much).

The end cost for the weight of metal in aluminum and the shop work (2 holes drilled and 2 aluminum (female) threaded pipes welded into place ( I cut the lid off the tank with an electric saw) was around $200. Regular brass hose bibs ( with chromed handles ) have been fitted into the threaded pipes for the water outlet and the overflow outlet near the top of the cistern. A regular fiberglass mesh mosquito screen was then placed over the top and secured with rubber bungee chords and the lid of the tank turned over and set back on top of the cistern. Walla, done!
Well not quite, due to delays in life (such as the wettest year in the recorded history of west Texas in 2007 where the average annual rainfall of Vancouver put a stop to work) the cistern project has really been a while coming.

Initially, I had intended for the cistern to comprise the stem of a free standing portable oasis, which could be set up in some arid climate and feed it's local environ with increased gradations of shade and mositure until a rich habitat began to emerge. During this time, however, I simultaneously embarked upon a project for a small square footage enclosed space which hovered just over a sea of praire grass which sloped miles away to the valley below. The completion of this inhabitable truss structure we ( I ) affectionately refer to as Dream Studio II was also delayed for some time, but is now finally nearing completion. Some time back, I decided to limit the material palate of the project to recycled aluminum and Texas Cedar. Aluminum was a handy material in sheet (and cistern) form at the local scrap yard and the cedar possesses many fine qualities in the realm of durability. For these reasons, and more (aluminum is one of the better rainwater harvesting surfaces and the weathering of the wood through rough sawn rusty tones into rain beaten silver gray of the old cedar fence posts is as beautiful a finish one could hope for compliments to the environment) the deal was sealed. As the cistern fit the scheme perfectly, it was quickly annexed onto the DS II project.

Last week, galvalume roof in place and gutter channeling water effectively, we set to the task of the final scouring of the cistern only to discover that yellow jacket wasps had established some kind of hive inside the cistern while it had been upended and draining off the last dregs of residue. I had previously scrubbed down the inside of the container with Coca Cola Classic as I had heard that it dissipates diesel like no other. However, after a very helpful conversation with a local ACU professor in the chemistry lab, I cleaned out the remainder of the fuel tank turned cistern with acetone. This also got rid of the remaining wasps... giving them time to flee of their own accord before the rainwater brought upon them the fate of Atlantis. Flee they did, while we respectfully stood our distance and waited.
In the end, I decided that a simple truss like scissor brace would be the best (inexpensive way) to celebrate the verticality of this monolith... allowing vertical lines to reflect on the chromed surface and transferring the the horizontal load across the crux of the braces, close to the ground. I was also looking for a way to use a few pieces of scrap steel we had lying around and not spend a fortune on the project. In the end, the structural system cost just at $30. All told, hose bibs, lead free hose, structure, cistern and even 30 feet of gutter didn't add up to more than $300.
Thanks to all the family and friends who gave up time, energy, and a bit of common sense to help me out. The water will be going to the local polyculture/ permaculture landscape, and that means free food for you so stick around!