Design Public

Just a quick note to let modern architecture fans in Atanta that the Modern Atlanta Home Tour is this weekend. I am told that most of the homes are within 6 miles of Midtown (except for the Serenbe houses in Palmetto, GA). This is good news for those of us who don’t like to use up gas going O.T.P.* I am really excited that the house pictured above is down my street.** I pass by it all the time and I’ve always wanted to check out the interior.

The tours will take place tomorrow and Sunday, from 11a.m.-4 p.m.. Tickets are $10 for students, $30 for a one-day pass and $50 for a two-day pass. You can purchase your tickets online, at the DWR store, and a few other places; click here for more information. Do note that if you purchase online, you still need to pick up your wristband and map beforehand, which is a bit of a pain for those of us who are spoiled by getting everything we want online all the time! However, just based on the three homes shown in this post, it seems worth the trip.

P.S. Buying a ticket also enters you to win this amazing Nais Chair by Alfredo Häberli, courtesy of Domus. Alright, I have to go buy my ticket and then use “The Secret” for the rest of the afternoon to make sure I win.

*O.T.P. - “Outside the Perimeter”: Those of us who live in the city fear going beyond the perimeter created by I-285, due to fear of traffic, endless stoplights, gated communities, and the proliferation of big box stores, among other things. I also fear going to Buckhead to get my ticket for fear of the extreme road rage that takes over my soul somewhere around the intersection of Piedmont and Sidney Marcus.

**Now if we could only get that Mockbee house two streets over on the tour next year, all of my nosy neighbor curiosities would be fully satisfied!

All photos from Modern Atlanta

Hey All!  I’m off to a slow start on my posts this week.  It’s hard to concentrate when this is going on next door:

Yes, the house was actually ugly, but had the potential to be renovated as the base of it had at one point been a cute 1920’s Arts and Crafts bungalow.  Now they are building a new house that is “inches from the limit” in terms of height. Why the height limit in my neighborhood is 35 feet I will never understand.  That is three and a half stories.  Like these monstrosities up the street that ruin the scale of the neighborhood.  Ugh.  I’ve got to get the hell out of here this summer!  Sorry to be distracted!

I received this notice from Flavorpill today and first of all I just LOVE Shana’s writing. What an clever paragraph. It’s so much better than the standard event announcement:

Steve Martin famously said that talking about music is like dancing about architecture; tonight at the Hammer, audiences finally get to see that idea (almost) in action, as unpredictable architect Frank Gehry has it out with Bard College president and renowned classical-music scholar/conductor Leon Botstein, who commissioned Gehry to design Bard’s performing-arts center in 1996. Expect an entertaining chat about the progressive relationship between architects and cultural institutions, how to deal with large-room acoustics, and what they really think of the new LACMA down the street. - Shana Nys Dambrot

This will be a free lecture this Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at The Hammer Museum in L.A and it should be fantastic. While in hot demand all over the world now, Frank Gehry has had his longest and most significant design relationship with L.A. over any other city. Furthermore, he has been crafting relationships between music and architecture for many years. He redesigned The Hollywood Bowl shell in 1970 and again in 1980, The Walt Disney Concert Hall in 1989, and The Experience Music Project in 1999. I’d love to know what he was listening to while designing each project. (more…)

 Who doesn’t love a firehouse? It seems they are truly en fuego right now as a trend.  Perhaps it started with this house, where the Ghostbusters had their headquarters:

Then there was The Real World: Boston, where a charming firehouse was renovated to house seven self-important, immature  strangers.  This was one cool renovation:

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A few weeks ago I was in a bad car accident in Cabbagetown. After I pulled over and was starting to sob, a couple of guys came running up to make sure everyone was alright. They had heard the wreck from a park about three blocks away. It calmed me down immediately and made me feel so much better.  These are the kind of folks that live in Cabbagetown.  In fact, one of them, Ziggy, was quoted in the paper talking about the neighborhood yesterday - I had been thinking of him this week, because this weekend, his neighborhood was ravaged by a tornado. It’s been wonderful to see how this tight-knit community is pulling together to help each other.

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I was just perusing Palm Springs Weekend last night and came across the charming drawings from the offices of Donald A. Wexler Associates Architecture and wanted to share. I hope it presents clearly on the screen. I love the composition with the top of the palm trees dominating the bottom left corner, and the way the cul-de-sac is literally the center of the page, with the hint of the mountains in the background. I like the way most of the roofs are flat, but occasionally they have a few peaks that mimic the mountainous backdrop. The architect here also understands the play between the tall vertical trees and the low horizontal structures. It was staying in an Alexander house in Palm Springs 12 years ago that sparked my interest in going to Architecture School - I wish I still had the connections to go back and stay again, knowing what I know now!

The other day I was reading More Ways to Waste Time and came across Leah’s review of Ghostly Ruins: America’s Forgotten Architecture, which reminded me of two gents I read about in The New York Times a few weeks ago. Rob Yasinsac and Thomas Rinaldi have dedicated countless hours to documenting the decaying landmarks in the Hudson Valley region. Yasinac and Rinaldi include and go beyond the ruins of famous estates and include factories, foundaries, steamboat hulls, icehouses, electric plants and many more landmarks that are not always the first sites that people want to save. With so much focus on environmental cleanups and the increasing value of waterfront real estate, we often tend to tear down, bury, fill in and erase places that powered the industrial revolution and provided jobs for generations. While a few enlightened projects have embraced and honored such sites, many more have perished.

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I just realized I let my membership to The National Trust for Historic Preservation and included subscription to Preservation magazine lapse, so I went to catch up and sign up again online. The online magazine has a wonderful yet somewhat depressing section called Preservation 911, which alerts readers to historic homes, buildings, landmarks and landscapes that are in danger. For example, here is a chance to save a classic modern home from being razed to make way for some tacky McMansion in Cincinnati. The Rauh House in Woodlawn was designed by international style architect John Becker and constructed in 1938. Although the estate has already been subdivided, the house and two acres are available for $450,000. For more information, click here.

photo from cincinnatipreservation.org

I love my TV shows either really really good (like “The Wire” and “Big Love”), or so bad it’s good. I admitted on AT:LA yesterday that I am addicted to “The Hills,” for example. As much as I love to hate reality TV, I must admit I am totally addicted to “Welcome to the Parker.” It’s delicious. I love Michael Twomey. I want to send him a bunch of strings to tie around his fingers to remember important details. I love the concierge, John Federbusch.  I wonder why every major hotel manager has a German accent.  I love the manager of Mr. Parker’s.  You can check out all of their blogs at bravotv.com - they are kind of fun, much better than the blogs over at Flipping Out (another show I love - my favorite character is Monkey the cat).

After watching the show about The Parker, I am even more anxious to go (unlike “Sunset Tan” - now that is one weak basis for a TV show), though the best depiction of the hotel was on Lisa Kudrow’s high quality, hilarious show “The Comeback” (R.I.P.). I am not sure if it was accurate, but it was really funny (saving seats by the pool at 7 a.m., not knowing where to sit in the stripped down lobby, etc.).

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As I flipped through this month’s issue of Metropolitan Home, I found myself thinking “clean lines, modern, predictable…yawn, clean lines, modern, perfect but predictable…does anyone who lives here have a personality?…nice, modern, predictable…is this the same house I was looking at a few pages ago or is this a different one?” until I arrived at “The Well-Watered Garden.” As soon as I saw the industrial stencil writing on the wall, I knew it had to be Julie Bargmann’s work. I should admit a bias that Julie was my favorite and most inspiring professor. This space looks pretty damn cool though, bias or no. The only thing about it that through me off was that the writer used the term “water feature.” Julie would never say “water feature”, even if someone was trying to force her to say it via water torture. (more…)