Now that I’m finally addicted to Twitter, I found this great link over at dezeen via Paul Pincus. Be sure to check out the entire post for a ton of great exterior and interior photographs:

Long Tall House is a residential project in Tokyo, Japan, by Kagawa Takanori and Tappei Ito of Spacespace.

This is cool! Wallpaper* magazine has a interactive floor plans on the site. Check it out here.

via Wallpaper.com

Scrumptious journals by Patty Van Dorin that I will never be able to begin to rival over at decor8, as well as the South of France book:

photo via decor8blog.com

Still laughing at the moggitgirls snark. Here’s a favorite from this week.

Got a “sneak peak” at the home of Meg Crossley, editor of Canadian House and Home magazine (a great glossy to pick up in these dark days of magazines folding) via Poppytalk:

photo by Poppytalk via Design*Sponge Guest Blog

I fear Twitter is feeding my increasing A.D.D. problem. I want all the information right now in 140 character words or less. With links. Feed me, feed me, feed me! I haven’t really read any blogs the old fashioned way since I joined, I just wind up following the ones I like and using their Twitter links. Hopefully the novelty will wear off soon, as I am late to the Twitter party anyway. I tried to figure it out back when Design Public joined and I had no idea what it was. Now I just want to do my Hatch blog posts in 140 characters or less. Is all this typing and photo insertion really necessary, or should I just “RT” all day long? I don’t know! Should I even bother to have real conversations with my friends, or just “@” them back on Twitter? Just how much more will my grammar deteriorate as I struggle to keep everything as brief as possible? 

As many of you know, The Farnsworth House has suffered great damage from the latest round of flooding in September 2008. The house was built in a floodplain, but Mies thought the water would only reach the floor in the most severe of circumstances. Apparently, he was wrong. The Farnsworth House site asks for flood mitigation ideas, but they also include a “heard it” list, which had me in stitches. I just had to share it with you:

Before you get started though…

We have, over the course of our five years managing this property, continually investigated solutions to the threat posed by the river.  To that end, we begin this discussion with a list of previously proposed ideas:

1. Placement of a pontoons under the building
2. Longer column extensions that slide out of their footings
3. Szikorsky Helicopter to lift the 300 ton house
4. Hydraulic jacks to raise it in place
5. Building up the site flood plain by 12 ft.
6. Move the house to high ground
7. Retractable flood walls surrounding the house.
8. Waterproofing everything inside the house (vinyl upholstery, plastic laminate wood?)
9. Inflatable raft under the house
10. Internal sandbags around furniture and core
11. Dikes and dams
12. Moats
13. Fixed Moment Frame below the soil
14. Sandbags
15. Temporary flood walls
16. Reverse aquarium designed to rise out of the ground
17. Giant Zip lock bag
18. Steel waterproof shutters

When considering these ideas we evaluate them against the following criteria:
• Cost
• Sensitivity to Preservation Initiatives
• Practicality

These are the same criteria the experts will use in considering your ideas.

The problem for me in finding a solution is that the house is so connected to the site. Moving it changes everything; the planned vistas, the way it relates to the topography, the idea of the floating house in the floodplain. Then again, I’m trained as a landscape architect so I am very biased towards the relationship of built work to site. If you have any bright ideas that do not involve a Sikorsky helicopter or the world’s largest Zip-Lock bag (hey Zip-Lock, have I got a marketing idea for you…), click here to submit it. For some reason, “Rollin’ on a River” is going through my head and I’m picturing some sort of Transformer action happening with the house and a tall stacks riverboat…and now casinos are now entering my mind. Not good.

• All photos from farnsworthhouse.org. The photos on that site are stunning, go check out the gallery if you need some inspiration today.
• Second photo by Jon miller, Hedrich Blessing
• Third photo by Tigerhill Studio
• Fourth photo by LPCI

In honor of National Landscape Architecture Month, ASLA is making the April issue of Landscape Architecture free online. You can check it out here. Page 15, regarding the environmental impacts of Christo’s plans for the Arkansas river is my favorite piece of writing in it. They also have a story about the push for an organic garden at the White House, which of course, we told you about months ago, but they make up for this old news with a feature on the parking lot turned wetlands near UCSB and the feature on Yellowstone before and after.

My favorite article is on the projects students completed in Chili using discarded lumber:

Wade through the ads for ugly playground equipment and check out LA online. It has enough gems in it to make it worth the screen squinting.

photos from Landscape Architecture

So sorry for the lack of post today – my internet connection is spotty because of our INSANE storm on Monday morning. A neighbor down the street had this happen, and there are still trees and lines down all over A-Town:

Wow. We are like, sincerely stoked to have been chosen by People’s Celebrity Baby Blog, for the new Lucky Jade Bamboo/Cotton Gown. Read how Hollywood understands that “green” doesn’t always mean green, brown, or papersack color. Instead you can dress your baby in fashionable Blue or Pink Bamboo Cotton attire. “We’d like to thank our babies, mom’s, babies mom’s…” and People!