A House for John
John’s house is finally under way. Saturday, I helped notch the piles and build the rim joists along with a group of students from Keesler. Since then, Jeremy, Molly, Doug, and Colleen have been making progress on the floor.
Perception and Color
I came across a very interesting article by IBM researchers Bernice Rogowitz and Lloyd Treinish. It’s called “Why Should Engineers and Scientists Be Worried About Color?“, and it deals with how human perceptions of color can affect the representation of information. While graphic designers may or may not be familiar with this, it was certainly new to me.
Ultimate in Nola
To expand our small circle of Gulf Coast ultimate frisbee friends, Doug, Jesse, Alan, other Doug and I went to New Orleans on Saturday afternoon to play a couple games and spend a day in the city. We met up with a group of players from New Orleans and, despite the heat and brief rain, we had at least 14-15 people and played for about 2 hours on the Fly, a grassy area between Audobon Zoo and the levee with a great view of the Mississippi River. It was an excellent time. For anyone interested in playing with us, the …
Lighthouse Restoration
Scaffolding has gone up around Biloxi’s iconic lighthouse as the city begins a $400,000 restoration project that involves lead abatement, repainting, and restoration of the brick-lined interior and a wrought iron fence. From the City of Biloxi: The project is significant because the storm-ravaged Biloxi Lighthouse — erected in 1848 — has come to symbolize the city’s resilience, standing tall amid the debris in the days after Katrina. In 2007, two years after the storm, the likeness of the lighthouse was chosen for an award-winning Mississippi license tag. Today, the flag-draped lighthouse remains one of the most-photographed icons in the …
A House for Lorena
The rebuilding efforts of many Gulf Coast non-profits have been proceeding slowly lately as some funding sources have dwindled and others, such as funding from the Mississippi Development Authority, have been slow to materialize. Yet progress is still being made. One of my houses, in Long Beach, is being funded by its owner and is moving forward thanks to the efforts of International Relief and Development and Training U, a construction training program. The house is for a lady named Lorena and features two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The compact design also includes a screened porch (see below). The plan …
Rural Studio
Several months back, in early May, I visited the Rural Studio for their end-of-term closing ceremonies and pig roast. A program of Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction, the Rural Studio is embedded in rural Hale County, Alabama. Throughout Hale County, the Rural Studio puts architecture students to work designing and building creative, low-cost, high-quality solutions to the needs of rural communities. Auburn/Rural Studio alumni Jessie and Britton led us on an amazing three-day tour of this special place.
A Low Impact Woodland Home
Head over and check out A Low Impact Woodland Home — a beautifully crafted, organic, environmentally friendly house in Wales. Its approach to green building is about as far from LEED as you can get. Imagine how it would be to live in a house you had designed and built yourself, in four months, for only $5,000? In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to …
Southern Live Oak: A tree, a journal
We conclude our series on the Southern live oak with a look at dead trees that have taken on new life.
Hurricane Katrina and the Southern live oak
Back to our series about the live oak, we’ll see how Hurricane Katrina affected the oaks of the Gulf Coast.
The live oak in Southern cities and culture
In this installment of our ongoing series, we visit some of the great Southern cities to understand the role of the Southern live oak in urban design and Southern culture.