Author: Jason King
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Peril of the Forgotten
One of the most amazing and sad sights from my trip last year to Detroit was a swing ’round the disheveled and crumbling Michigan Central Depot, a massive train station built by the same architects responsible for NYC’s iconic Grand Central Station. With it’s monumental scale and litany of busted out windows, our group was…
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Alt/Urbs
A kind commenter directed me to the site Alt/Urbs. An online journal billed as ‘an electronic potlatch’, the site is open for submissions of unpublished work related to ‘alternative urbanization, design, and radical urban geography’. It’s an interesting usage of the term ‘potlach‘ to describe the process – but overall the idea is good… and…
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North Dakota – Mobile Chaplet
It is not too often that North Dakota architecture gets the nod from Some recent coverage from Bustler featured one of the 2009 AIA Small Projects Awards for the ‘Mobile Chaplet’ by Moorhead & Moorhead. :: image via Bustler“Mobile Chaplet is one of six portable spaces for reflection commissioned to travel to rural communities around…
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Horizontal v. Vertical Farming
As a continuation of a common recent theme, Treehugger offers some additional questions, as well as a really cool example of a horizontal farm – The Zuidkas, by Architectenbureau Paul de Ruiter from the Netherlands. The post makes the case for horizontal vs. vertical farming as perhaps a more realistic opportunity for integrated urban agriculture.…
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Escape to Book Mountain
As a self-professed bibliophile… I was excited by the recent visuals fo MVRDV‘s Book Mountain – the coolest library I’ve seen since the Seattle Public Library by Koolhaas . Check out more from World Architecture News, with some description of how the project “…will feature the literal translation of ‘a mountain of reading’ by creating…
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Experiment in Urban Chickens
I’ve posted before about the preponderance of urban chickens (especially in Portland) – and I just had to share the plans we have for our deluxe urban eco-coop in the back yard… (now if I could just register for LEED with this… 🙂 I’ll post some progress pics as is goes together… for now some…
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Bad Idea of the Week
This one from Treehugger made me question what the actual point of this exercise was in the grand scheme of landscape and furnishings… “Michel Bussien has designed a new way to help you get up close and personal with nature–by turning it into furniture. The “Growing Chair” shown is a sharply designed mold that allows…
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Pringle Creek + the Gravel Verge
Building on some recent posts on the SEA streets in Seattle, and Crown Street in Vancouver, BC, a few images of Pringle Creek – the uber sustainable community in Salem, Oregon. A significant feature is the use of the gravel verges – popularized by Patrick Condon these curbless sections allow infiltration on the edges of…
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DeWinging: Dragonfly
Ok, let me start off by saying I’m a big fan of wildly speculative work that pushes the boundaries of thought and expands the thinking of our urban spaces and landscapes. That said, I’m started to chafe at the preponderance of overwrought schemes flown about under the guise of skyscraper or vertical farming (previously discussed…
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It’s a Quantity Thing…
It’s interesting to see the yardstick in which trends are measured… in the case of green roofs, it’s pretty easy to add up square footage and declare a winner. A recent post on Land8Lounge showed the annual sizing up of metropolitan areas in North America… and impressive listing for sure with a total of over…