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Why We Build: Staying in Our Place, a blog about building a new house

Irion Company's Furniture

Fine Woodworking magazine is featuring the work of a company named Irion Furniture Makers for a particular customer in the article titled Greatest Commission Ever which requires a subscription. However, there's a photo gallery of a number of the 90 pieces including four breakfronts, three secretaries, three high chests, 15 tables, four tall clocks and over 30 chairs.

Scan the slideshow of pieces made for a Pennsylvania house which is 35,000 square feet in size. There's also a short piece available on the Irion Furniture company itself.

The Winterthur Collection was visited before some of the furniture was made as well as collections at New York City's Metropolitan Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Excerpt

From Daniel McGinn's book, House Lust:

"For the last few years, everywhere you turn Americans have been talking about, valuing, scheming over, envying, shopping for, refinancing, or just plain ogling homes. The writer Daphne Merkin has described this widespread yearning as Real Estate Lust, “a condition whose symptoms include a compulsive scanning of real estate ads and incessant discussions of who paid what for how much, as well as a fascination with the size and shape — down to the number of bedrooms, closets and bathroom windows — of apartments and houses that belong to people other than ourselves.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson diagnoses the condition as the moment when “a house or an apartment becomes not just a place of shelter or an emblem of status or even a considered investment, but an obsession that haunts us no less intensely than Vladimir Nabokov’s nymphet Lolita tortured the imagination of poor, sick Humbert.”

"To my ear, “real estate lust” sounds too economic, too transaction-oriented. It’s too focused on profits-and-losses, and doesn’t capture all the complicated, non-financial emotions that come into play when we think about our homes. Most of us aren’t in love with the game of real estate — we’re obsessed with the trophy at the end. So I prefer a simpler coinage: House Lust.

"Rachael Brownell, Andy and Susie Sincock, and Nicole and Marc Lombardi suffer from it. Maybe you do, too. As comedian Jeff Foxworthy might put it, if you can instantly identify whether a countertop is made of Argentine Balmoral or Giallo Imperial granite, you may have House Lust. If you’ve visited the website Zillow, which estimates home values, and plugged in the addresses of friends, co-workers, and exes to see how much their houses are worth, there’s a good chance you have House Lust. If, upon hearing that a friend has bought a new home, you can’t resist asking its square footage, the lot size, and the year it was built, it’s very possible that you have House Lust."

Read the entire excerpt at Daniel McGinn's site

Electronic Swatchbook

The Powerhouse Museum of Science and Design in Sydney, Australia holds an electronic swatchbook of fabric designs in the public domain gathered from the past 300 years. They include fabric, braids and laces, dating from the 1830s to the 1920s.

Another home resource at Powerhouse is DesignHub. Part of the interior and furniture section of DesignHub

The patterns on this site are in the public domain in Australia.

Exhibition

From Dairy to Doorstep;
Milk Delivery in New England 1860 — 1960

Washington, DC's National Building Museum in conjuction with Historic New England has presented an online exhibit of a phenomenon that an older generation knows and appreciates: milk production and home delivery:

"Two hundred years ago New England milk and cream traveled only a short distance from the cow to the table. In the hundred years between 1860 and 1960, people moved away from farms and cows, and dairying changed from women’s work at home into a mechanized industry. A delivery person — the milkman — brought dairy products to villages, towns, and cities. At first, milk route men, and occasionally women, came in wagons with milk cans and dippers. Later, the wagons were replaced by fleets of trucks rattling with glass bottles. Without milkmen, generations of families in cities and towns would not have had fresh milk in their coffee, cream on their cereal, or pudding for dessert. Infants would not have had cows’ milk to fill their bottles."

"In the same time period, dairying and the milk delivery system had to adapt to change. New processes and government regulation made commercial milk from far away dairies safe to drink, and science and mass advertising persuaded homemakers of milk’s nutritional value. By the 1960s, social, economic, and industrial changes caused milk delivery to shift to the self-service supermarket, and platoons of home delivery milkmen said goodbye."

(You knotice that the gender of the delivery person is male; the coming of women's liberation didn't include the era of milk delivery.)

“As soon as milk comes into the house it should be boiled, as it is a notorious carrier of disease germs .... Use an earthenware pitcher and let the milk remain standing in the same after cooling ... .Boiling and cooling it rapidly afterwards will keep it sweet for 24 hours ... and the time may be further extended by keeping the milk pitcher set in a dish of cold water.”

Eighteen pages online of text and illustration take the reader through the decades of milk production and delivery.

Where did we last have milk delivered? Two years ago to the doorstep of a cottage in Snowshill, England.

Article

Roberta McReynolds, Soap Opera: Determination won over my apprehension over handling alkalies. If my grandmother could make soap for her family a hundred years ago, then I could do it, too. Besides, I had decided to draw the line at rendering my own fat from butchered animals as she had done, so how hard could the saponification process be?

The Art of the Paperweight

Paperweights (and particularly the millefiori technique) have always attracted us. The Corning Museum of Glass is featuring Worlds Within, exhibiting glass paperweights from the mid-19th century to the present.

"More than 180 paperweights and paperweight-related items from around the world illustrate a variety of significant changes in paperweight making since 1845, including experimentation with new forms and techniques, and the development of the idea of the paperweight as a microcosm containing artistically rendered scenes and figures."

"The earliest paperweights appeared in Europe in the mid-1840s. Venetian glassmaker Pietro Bigaglia created and exhibited the first signed and dated weights at the Vienna Industrial Exposition in 1845. He, like other paperweight makers of the time, revived many ancient glassworking techniques to create his weights."

"In 1851, Prince Albert of England sponsored the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, housed at the Crystal Palace in London, to showcase international artistic innovations, some of which were paperweights. The Vienna Industrial Exposition, The Great Exhibition and subsequent world fairs played a significant role in introducing paperweights to the world."

"Following the Great Exhibition, paperweights were produced in many countries, but French designs were the most widely varied and finely executed."

An intriguing part of the Corning site is the section dedicated to teachers. There we found, alongside activities that will engage our grandchildren, the following 'secret instructions':

When you set up the foundation of a good furnace to make glass, you first search in a favorable month for a day of good omen, and only then can you set up the foundation of the furnace. As soon as you have finished building the furnace you go and place Kubu-images there. No insider or stranger should enter the building; an unclean person must not even pass in front of the images. You regularly perform libation offerings before them. On the day when you plan to make (glass), you make a sheep sacrifice before the Kubu-images (religions statues); you place juniper incense on the incense burner; you pour out a libation (drink honoring a deity) of honey and liquid butter; only then can you make the fire in the hearth of the furnace and place the glass in the furnace.

And, of course, there is the Corning shop.

"A Prairie School Gem"

"The Purcell-Cutts House is one of the most outstanding examples of Prairie School architecture in the country. Architects William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie designed the house for Purcell, his wife, Edna, and the first of their two children; it was built in 1913. Purcell wanted a house that would support a modern way of life for his family. He and Elmslie followed architect Louis Sullivan's principles of organic architecture to create an original and beautiful home that would be a strong contrast to the revival-style houses popular at the time. Both from Chicago, they had worked with Sullivan and learned these organic principles firsthand."

So begins the introduction to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts online tour of the Purcell-Cutts House, a part of the Unified Vision: Architecture and Design of the Prairie School exhibit. Prominent architects examined are: William Gray Purcell, George Grant Elmslie, Frank Lloyd Wright, and George Washington Maher.

Visit the first floor, second floor, the 'nuts and bolts' section (including a peek at their laundry chute) and a Elmslie's sawed-wood design on "the beam-end at the house's front entry. It contains an abstracted organic design (cut out by a skilled workman in Chicago) and the phrase 'Gray Days and Gold.' " Don't overlook the octopus gas furnace.

From the William Purcell's own notes:

"The daily use of these rooms reflects very definitely the background against which they were framed. On fine Minnesota winter mornings when the first level sun rays come slanting over the snowy house tops just at breakfast, the table time and again is laid in front of the Living Room fire. The electric toaster sits on the end of the hearth and the coffee and cheese and jam come down from the kitchen above at their leisure. On Sunday evenings the great chairs and the littlest chairlets are drawn up around the hearth; the bread and milk, cookies and apples are had with stories and chatting, and with the firelight for company."

And do take the architectural tour of other Minnesota Prairie School examples.

Glacier Circle

This Davis, California co-housing community was recently profiled in The New York Times. We have referred to co-housing a number of times at Seniorwomen.com and like to highlight those that have received some publicity.

The philosophy of Glacier Circle is described in full at their website with an emphasis on the mission, membership and group process statements:

Group’s Mission Statement
The mission of Glacier Circle Senior Covenant which is read out loud before every meeting.

We, the members of Glacier Circle, covenant: 

• To listen deeply and thoughtfully in our dialogs, mindful that our relationships are sacred.

• To be patient with each other, appreciating our differing gifts and welcoming creative ideas. When necessary, we will confront courageously with love.

• We agree to assume appropriate leadership roles and to participate fully in the group process.

• While we value our time together, we also respect our members’ need for privacy.

• We will remember to assume the good intent of others and to strive to treat other members as well as ourselves with loving kindness.

Membership

Members range in age from 70 to 84. Most of the members are now retired. Their professions include:

• Three women are psychotherapists

• School teacher and watercolor painter

• University professor and writer

• Physicist

• Education college professor

• Environmental health scientist.

Group Process

The community makes decisions by consensus. Members of the Glacier Circle community have known each other for a long time — in some cases for 40-50 years. Group members see each other regularly through social activities outside of the cohousing project. Some are members of a dream group, others are in a writing group while a handful are in a women’s group together.

Read the rest of Glacier Circle's community description as well as sources for further contact and information.

Book Excerpt

I can't help it if I want to live in the past — the time forty years ago when there was still some wide-open space into which to insert some dreaming, and still some darkness at night over it. There was quiet, the birthright of all us animals, and somehow there was more time in a day than there is now. The world belonged then to the people who lived in it.

We nostalgists are bravely marching into battle, eager to face the advancing tanks of human history. Our vernal tendencies to believe all endings are happy ever after prevented us from seeing the rotting carcass of truth right in front of us: "progress" is just another word for larceny. Now our hearts are filled with the strength of righteousness. Take up arms in readiness: our plastic cocktail swords glint green and red in the sun. The war correspondent's reports to the home front make you laugh at our fatal narcissism. Don't you know that you can't win? And why would you even want to? We're not like every other species that has inhabited the same ecological niche for hundreds of thousands of years without the need for an eight-bedroom house where three used to do. We alone do not emit those mysterious pheromones that slow procreation when the carrying capacity of the land has been reached.

Our neural pathways were formed by millions of years of existence in communities of our fellows where daily congregation and rituals and exercises made us what we became, and thus whole. Then a few years ago, give or take, they thought up the fetishization of personal property and the automobile and the installation of industry at the tippytop of the rights chain, and bingo: no more meeting places and no more walking and no more breathing of air and viewing of sky and mythmaking to explain the experience. Now you drive to a slushy parking lot and gingerly step into Walgreens for a newspaper and some Rolaids and quickly back the car out after assuring the concerned clerk (he asked, after all) that you're fine today and equally concerned about his psychic well-being (you asked, after all). You then leave the site of what was formerly a heavily used sidewalk in front of a bank, a café, and a shoe store that your grandparents, lacking a car but living nearby, used to walk to. Invisible hands reached down and changed it all around like chess pieces, and you don't know whom to bite. No one else seems to have noticed.

Read the rest of the excerpt from The Place You Love Is Gone: Progress Took It Away by Melissa Pierson at the Orion Online site.

The American House's Size

From the Journal of Industrial Econology article at the Greener Building site.

Since 1950, the average size of new single-family houses in the United States has more than doubled, even as the average family size has steadily shrunk. More area (square footage) per family member is being used than ever before, and projections are that the trend will continue. As house size increases, so too do the environmental impacts associated with buildings and development: resource consumption increases, the land area affected by development grows, stormwater runoff increases as impermeable surface area increases, and energy use rises. In addition to carrying larger environmental burdens, larger houses cost more to build and operate. For single-family houses, "small is beautiful" in terms of environmental performance.

Because single-family, detached houses account for 63% of total dwelling units in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001), this study focuses solely on single-family houses. A broader study that examined single-family attached houses, multifamily buildings, and mobile homes would produce somewhat different and probably less dramatic results.

Demographics vs. House Size

The U.S. Census Bureau has been collecting detailed information on household size since 1940 and tracking certain characteristics of houses since 1963. Data on houses were collected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies from 1940 to 1963. Average household size in the United States has dropped steadily from 3.67 members in 1940 to 2.62 in 2002. The average size of new houses increased from about 1,100 ft2 (100 m2) in the 1940s and 1950s to 2,340 ft2 (217 m2) in 2002. Factoring together the family size and house size statistics, we find that in 1950 houses were built with about 290 square feet (27 m2) per family member, whereas in 2003 houses provided 893 square feet (83 m2) per family member (NAHB 2003) — a factor of 3 increase.

Other trends in American single-family housing have been similar. In 1967, for example, 48% of new single-family houses had garages for two or more cars; by 2002, that figure had jumped to 82%. In 1975, 20% of new single-family houses had 2.5 or more bathrooms; by 2002, that figure had increased to 55%. In 1975, 46% of new houses had central air conditioning; by 2002, 87% had it.

Quantity vs. Quality

With single-family houses, the notion that bigger is better has been a leading driver of the real estate industry. Large houses are a status symbol. Even retirement homes built for "empty-nesters" (couples whose children have left home) are usually a step up in terms of size. Virtually all segments of the American home-buying market are buying the largest houses they can afford.

Designer-builder John Abrams of the South Mountain Company in West Tisbury, Mass., describes three factors that are driving the popularity of large houses: "First, with less of a sense of community and public life in our culture, the home becomes a fortress which needs to contain everything we need, including multiple forms of entertainment, rather than basic shelter; second, the building industry has been selling 'big is better' and the message has been heard; and third, diminishing craft and design generosity has resulted in sterile homes people mistakenly think that what's missing is grandeur: more space."

Read the rest of the Journal of Industrial Econology article at the Greener Building site.

Object Stories

A section of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London is devoted to object stories providing a narration for some of the pieces from their furniture and furnishings collection.

Many of the pieces you may not have heard of: The Isokon Penguin Donkey Bookcase: It was named the Donkey because it had four legs and two panniers. The space between the side-compartments could be used for magazines. The Donkey impressed Allen Lane, the publisher of the new Penguin paperbacks. He inserted 100,000 leaflets for it into Penguin books and the newly renamed Isokon Penguin Donkey looked set to be a great success. The shelves in the bookcase were just the right size to house the distinctive orange-covered Penguin paperbacks. Unfortunately the Second World War broke out at exactly the time that the Donkey was launched. Both the publication of Penguin books and the production of the Donkey ceased. Only about a hundred Donkeys were made, which all sold very fast." 

The Juxon Chair from 1661: "Two family traditions have linked the chair with William Juxon who, as Bishop of London, attended Charles I on the scaffold at his execution in 1649 and was present at the coronation of Charles II. It was indisputable that the chair belonged to William Juxon as it had been passed down through his family but it was not clear as to whether either of the two family stories held any truth."

"One of the stories which had passed through time was that it was in this chair that King Charles sat at his execution and that ‘his Majesty kneeled on the stool when he received the fatal stroke’. This led to the suggestion that the stains on the seat of the chair were that of blood. After the execution, so the story goes, Juxon took the chair, as part payment, to his home in Little Compton where it remained until 1794 when it was then sold to a Mr Sands. The second story relates that the chair has a connection with another Charles; this time Charles II at whose coronation in 1661 Juxon was present, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and that it was after this occasion that Juxon took the chair home."

The Kozma Drinks Trolley: " The history of a little drinks trolley, given to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1997, links it to the great theme of emigration at the end of the Second World War. In 1947 both its owner and its designer left war-torn Hungary ... This drinks trolley came from a flat in Budapest, Hungary, and was added to the V&A collection to represent Hungarian modernism, and the work of a woman designer. ... With the aid of a colleague at the Applied Arts Museum in Budapest we discovered Susan Orlay, now in her eighties, living in a Sydney suburb. She confirmed the piece was her design from almost 60 years previous. She wrote to the Museum:

'Selecting the same profession as my father (interior decorating) I was very much under his influence and whatever I achieved I can only thank him. To be in such illustrious company makes me feel humble, but through my fathers’ spirit I accept the great honour to be exhibited in the V&A.' "

Other stories, those about a Korean Red Lacquer Chest, Queen Elizabeth Virginal, a symptuous Lawson cabinet, a confession by a young woman in the form of a 19c sampler and the surpising geometry of the Ardabil carpet can be read at the site.

Classic Home Collection

"Here is a type of high-gabled stucco house which has proven particularly appealing in the attractive suburban districts of the eastern United States. The design is of English character accentuated by the half-timbered work in the large gable. The exterior is of stucco and the roofing is of copper, slate, or asbestos-cement shingles in varying colors.

"The large brick chimney is capped by clay chimney pots, adding a touch of color. The windows throughout are of casement type, and flashings, gutters and leaders for this type of house will presumably be of copper with ornamental beads in stock designs. The plan is of elongated shape, offering an unusual opportunity for attractive interiors, and the architects have not failed to take advantage of these possibilities. The central hall provides access to the dining room and living room, from which French doors lead to a long tiled terrace and a large sun porch."

A feature of Architecture Week is sampling from their CD-ROM of Classic Homes Collection that features editable 3D models. The homes range from a 1930s steel and concrete construction to a 1977 Bay Area Modern, a wood-frame rural type.

The Statement is a monthly ezine 'for the professional designer,' produced by WilsonArt International, a producer of decorative surfacing products. We found it while looking for more illustrations for an exhibit that the hosting museum was willing to display on their website.

We used a drop-down window for archived happenings, color, ideas, constructions, ideas, trendspotting, explorations, reviews and personalities to find many articles with generous accompanying illustrations. Here's an excerpt from an article on gold:

"It is a metal. It is a color. It is a standard of value. It is a noun. It is an adjective and it is an attribute for which most of us strive. We may love gold for its value or color, but it is a uniquely versatile metal. It is so ductile that a single grain may be drawn out 500 feet or hammered into a leaf four-millionths of an inch thick. It is a high performance metal — so durable that it will not melt below 1,065 degrees celsius, and even then it will retain its properties instead of breaking down. Pure gold is very soft and is usually alloyed with different metals to increase hardness. This is why your 10K gold ring scratches less than your 18K gold ring. 24 karat is pure gold. 12 karat is a half and half mixture of pure gold and another metal."

Vasemania at the Bard Graduate Center is presented here in an article with large, well defined photos. An essay on A New Way to Look at Mauve contains the following:

"An eighteen year-old English chemistry student named William Perkin (1838-1907) invented mauve, the 19th century word that describes a family of shades of purple, in 1856.

"Perkin was trying to develop an artificial form of quinine, to be used in the prevention and treatment of malaria, by extracting elements from coal tar. The extraction possessed a purple color, which he proceeded to develop as a dye.

"Mauveine, as it was originally named, was the first commercially successful artificial dye. (Other artificial dyes had been developed but they were not permanent and usually washed off in the laundry). Mauveine was colorfast, lightfast and standardized."

The fiber art of Junichi Arai is explored and celebrated in the personalities section based on his MoMa 1998 exhibit as well as that of Michele Oka Doner, an artist, a sculptress and a jeweler.

2004 ISDA Design Awards

Who would have thought that homey, familiar Tupperware would receive an award for its Eleganzia bowl? Actually, we bought some products a few years ago not only for their practicability but for their design.

Mint, Inc. developed a salad bowl, Insalada, wherein the two steel servers interlock and mate with the inner curvature of the bowl.

And Black Magic automotive cleaning tools are so good-looking that you might want to adapt them to household rather than garage cleaning tasks.

Each corner of Five Senses baking dishes is formed like a spout to pour sauce or get rid of unwanted liquid. Dishes can be stacked inside each other to save space on the shelf. Lids double as small trays that allow the user to carry hot items without burning their hands. What a neat idea.

If you have an Apple i-Pod the TuneDok was developed to be the first widely available cup holder-based holding device for the iPod. No more knocking the cup onto your keyboard.

Even if you have a dishwasher, the System Dish rack makes sense. The designers divided users into three groups: Heavy users, who wash a lot of dishes; light users who eat out often and often purchase a smaller rack; and people who don't want to own a dish rack and will use their dishwasher as a rack. 'To unify these groups behind one product, designers created a configurable dish rack that can be custom tailored to the individual needs of each person. Other features include separating walls for utensils, a knife block for safe drying of sharp cutlery and an extra wide storage area for pots and pans."

Since a broken leg bone has necessitated a wheel chair for six weeks, we're interested in the washer/dryer that Panasonic Design came up with for client Matsushita. To create a drum-type washing and drying machine that is easy for anyone to use, designers developed a drum slanted 30 degrees. A large, round, see-through door allows users to see all the way inside and the control panel is set at a user-friendly angle. The flat top makes a perch for a laundry basket so items can be tossed in without bending over. The unit saves 60 percent more water than previous model. The machine can be used by a wide range of people including seniors and those who use wheelchairs.

About time.

The Un-Private House

A MoMA site, The Un-private House, provides an essay about the relationship between the public and private in architecture: "The literary critic Walter Benjamin came to see the nineteenth-century private house as not only separate from the public world but, more significantly, as a retreat from it. Perhaps for a similar reason, Swedish artist Carl Larsson was moved to devote a series of watercolors (A Home, 1899) to his family home, which he described as the place he 'experienced that unspeakably sweet feeling of seclusion from the noise of the world.' "

A part of the essay relates to those of us who are single and/or have no children living with us any longer:

The Family
Radical changes in the concept of privacy are paralleled both in terms of scope and pace by the transformation of the family and family life since World War II. Today people who live alone or with one other person are the general public in many parts of the industrialized world. For example, around a quarter of American households now consist of one person. Half of the families in America consist of couples without any children living under the same roof.

"There are very different spatial requirements for a couple with children compared to those of a couple (or a single person) without children. Without the need for acoustic and visual privacy, as one would have with children in the house, the traditional upstairs/downstairs separation of the private and public spaces is less compelling. Instead, the loft model has been deemed to be appropriate; its flexibility and openness are in marked contrast to the structured spaces that typify the traditional family house and reflect domestic rituals revolving around the presence of children."

The projects page of the site contains a walk-through experience for 26 homes that represent the un-private house; the essay expands on the living situation of the owners.

The Aware Home

Georgia Tech has posed a question that it attempts to answer by organizing an interdisciplinary research project known as the Aware Home: Is it possible to create a home environment that is aware of its occupants whereabouts and activities? If we build such a home, how can it provide services to its residents that enhance their quality of life or help them to maintain independence as they age?

The Design for People aspect of the venture has broken the task into subjects such as Social Communication, proposing the Digital Family Portrait and Dude’s Magic Box as means to improve social communication between extended family members.

The retrospective reel aids in memory recall, such as forgetting whether medication has been taken to recalling how many scoops of laundry detergent of the five scoops required has been added.

The Gesture Pendant "allows ordinary household devices to be controlled, literally, with the wave of a hand. The user wears a small pendant that contains a wireless camera. The user makes gestures in front of the pendant that control anything from a home theater system, to lighting, to the kitchen sink. Therefore, hard to use, hard to understand remotes can be replaced with simple hand gestures. The pendant system can also analyze the user's movement as he/she makes gestures. This means that the system can look for loss of motor skill or tremors in the hand that might indicate the onset of illness or problems with medication."

Building an Aware Home is a section of the site that can be referenced, in a power point presentation using slides.

One article, Sensing the Subtleties of Everyday Life; "Aware Home" with human-like perception could improve quality of life for many, especially senior adults is a good summing up of the George Tech environment.

Blass Collection

Bill Blass, the clothing designer, collected objects and furnishings for his homes the way some women collected his designs.

Now, part of his holdings have been sold at Sotheby's auction house. Blass' fascination with architectural models was in evidence as well a large assortment of classical design drawings and paintings.

John Richardson, the art historian captures the essence of Blass, the collector, in an article for Sotheby's, Singular Vision:

... Bill, who was my neighbour in the country, asked me to help him look for paintings, drawings, sculpture and furniture that would enhance his rooms. As soon as we started visiting the galleries and the antiquaires, I realized he had little need of advice. Insofar as an eye can have perfect pitch, Bill’s eye had it. Like all good collectors, he was quirky. He didn’t want anything religious, allegorical, pretentious, flashy, morbid, precious or sentimental. He loved Classicism, the style but not the subject matter; he could not abide the nymphs, fauns and putti traditionally associated with it. The only genre he scrupulously avoided was fashion.

Historic US Places on the Endangered List

This year's list of the Most Endangered Historic Sites identified by the National Trust include the following:

Urban Houses of Worship

Bathhouse Row, Hot Springs, ARK

Little Manila, Stockton, CA

Ocmulgee Old Fields, Macon GA

Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, Chicago, IL

East Side and Middle School, Decorah, IA

Amelia Earhart Bridge, Atchison, KS

United States Marine Hospital, Louisville, KY

Minute Man National Historical Park and environs, Concord, Lexington, Lincoln and Bedford

Zuni Salt Lake and Sanctuary Zone, Catron and Cibola counties, NM

TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport, NYC, NY

The National Trust devotes a section of their website to Buying and Selling a Historic Home which highlights resources for that purpose. They also carry resources for historic homeowners, which include information on finding, buying, restoring, and protecting a historic home.

Grammar of Ornament

Trained as an architect, Englishman Owen Jones (1809-1874) became fascinated by Classical architectural polychromy drawing upon what he saw while visiting Egypt, Turkey and Spain where, in particular, he studied the Alhambra:

Jones believed passionately that the 19th century should produce a recognizable style of its own that would result not simply from the study of past styles but from the adoption of new materials. In attempting to carry through this ideology in his own work in the 1840s Jones relied heavily on Islamic sources and was much criticized as a result.

Jones' Grammar of Ornament developed from lectures he delivered and he "evolved his principles into 37 axioms of design, which appeared in his influential publication the Grammar of Ornament (London, 1856), illustrated with examples of historical styles of ornament." Today, many of these principles still can be applied to decorative and decorating settings.

Pedestrian-Friendly Communities

"The development of pedestrian-friendly communities that promote walking and biking as a substitute for driving, rather than for purely recreational purposes, presents challenges that are formidable, but not impossible, to overcome, concluded participants in a recent land use forum hosted by the Urban Land Institute (ULI). The pedestrian-oriented development forum was held as part of a ULI project funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to document and raise awareness of the value to real estate developers in creating communities that de-emphasize auto use as the primary means of transportation. As the first phase of the project, the forum aimed to clarify the specifics of pedestrian-friendly development, including connectivity features and appealing public spaces that encourage physical activity. The forum also explored how to build interest for such projects among the development community.

While there are a number of communities nationwide that cluster housing, recreational amenities, shopping, and, in some cases, office space in close proximity to each other, few of these developments are well connected to other neighborhoods and do little to curb driving within the surrounding community, participants noted. “A big challenge for this (walkable communities) movement is figuring out how to connect with the rest of the community,” said Gary Fenchuk, president of East West Partners of Virginia, Inc., in Midlothian, Va.

“What we are talking about is choice,” said Forum Chairman Nancy Graham, president of Urban Properties LLC in West Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. “In so many places, there are no choices besides driving.” For instance, while Florida contains a high number of mixed-use communities, several cities in the state have been ranked by the Surface Transportation Policy Project’s “Mean Streets” study as being among the least conducive to safe walking, she noted.

With obesity rates in the United States reaching epidemic levels, traffic congestion paralyzing entire regions, and social interaction in communities severely limited by automobile-dependent development, there is little question that more pedestrian-friendly development is needed. However, an analysis of walkable communities should distinguish between those designed to permit walking or bicycling for just for exercise, and those that encourage “destination” walking or cycling to school, offices or shopping, forum participants pointed out.

From Building Places for People, Not Cars: ULI (Urban Land Institute) Assesses Challenges, Potential of Walkable Communities

Ceramics on Display

The Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art has a permanent collection of objects as well as a series of exhibitions online. The museum "at Alfred houses nearly 8,000 ceramic and glass objects, ranging from small pottery shards recovered from ancient civilizations to contemporary sculpture and installation pieces to advanced ceramics reflecting the cutting edge of ceramic technology."

Articles

Peter Katz, founding director of the Congress for the New Urbanism, writing in Utne magazine chooses the ten most enlightened suburbs in the North America. The magazine issues an invitation to its readers for further submissions of communities that have met the same challenges.

Here are the ten:

Read the article 10 Most Enlightened Suburbs in Utne

"In the bucolic west country of England, in the little village of Malmesbury, there stands a 7th century Benedictine Monastery where you will find a stained glass window of Elmer, an 11th century monk who by the grace of God built himself a pair of wings, climbed the Abbey tower and tried to fly. He ended up a cripple, but otherwise lived a long life, a visionary inventor of the old school. It is from this same obscure corner of the Cotswolds that nearly a millennium later another mad inventor has developed a new vacuum cleaner that will forever change the way we in America clean up. Called the Dyson, this remarkable technology proves that our long reliance on vacuum cleaner bags is both inefficient (as the bags almost immediately get clogged and lose suction) and, well, disgusting. More than that, it creates an internal cyclone that generates 100,000 g's of centrifugal force that will suck up horrors we can't even imagine in the darkest pit of our domestic dread."

"We are dirty beasts. Our skin continuously dries up and comes off in flakes. We refuse to live in hermetically-sealed quarters, so dust, spores and grime are always encroaching. We shed hair, drop bits of foodstuff, and generally create such an ungodly mess that dust mites enjoy a cornucopia that they can't eat and poop back out fast enough. This then is the real war at home, a domestic front civilization has been investing untold fortunes and countless hours battling. We have been fighting our own filth for centuries, and we have been losing. And it is this dichotomy, that pit and pinnacle where actuality and aspiration meet, which is the clean linens and dirty laundry of our psyche. Here, where our phobias of infection, death and disorder meet the guilt of our own hopeless biology, is a zone of such schizophrenic perversion that we must invent ever more ornate forms of exorcism -- from the scatological to the sublime. And into this world of fetish maid's outfits and sploshing has come the most beautiful and brilliant vehicle for our ultimate salvation."

Read the rest of The Clean Machine: The Dyson and the Art of Sucking by Carlo McCormick in Paper Magazine

"For much of the last century architects and designers have wondered why the home-building industry couldn't be more like the automotive or aircraft manufacturing industries. Cars and airplanes were the apogee of the machine age, precision-engineered in factories with the latest materials and technologies, their aerodynamic forms molded by functional requirements. Houses were the opposite: dumb boxes laboriously hammered together on-site. Designers, architects, and even governments spent untold hours and dollars trying to force construction to go prefab. "We have only to apply to building the same techniques of design, manufacture, and selling that have given us a motor car for every four people in the land," wrote Walter Dorwin Teague in 1942. "In this way the American genius of mass production that is winning the war can win the peace as well." Offsite: The MIT Home of the Future Consortium.

"Peace is an elusive target, and so is automated home building. Even the most ingenious of schemes for mass-produced prefabricated homes—Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Dwelling Machine, and Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann's Packaged House—became treasured failures of architectural history. Fuller pulled out of the Dymaxion project in the late 1940s, ditching a few thousand orders, and Gropius and Wachsmann saw only 200 houses built before their company closed down. The "house of the future" has consequently remained a curious artifact of the exposition showground.

"But in the last three years Kent Larson, an architect at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been laboring to revive the Modernist dream and produce a housing system of the future that will have a real and lasting impact on home building. The twentieth-century smart home was doomed by its prescriptiveness, according to Larson. "It became a timeline of buildings that essentially had no effect on the industry because they were single-purpose structures with a single form driven by one ideology," he says. The MIT project, on the other hand, is infinitely adaptable. "It's about creating a methodology that can be scaled to different climates and people," Larson says. "What we're proposing is that houses should move toward a mass-customization process."

Read the article, Living for Tomorrow, in Metropolis Magazine

Articles

"The Main Water Supply Valve: How to Find it and Shut it Off

As the wife of a military officer, Kathy knew that home is where the military sends you, so she was careful never to get too attached to a house. She also knew from experience that as soon as her husband boarded his ship, something in their base housing would break. Not wanting to join the ranks of a long waiting list for repairs, Kathy decided to start learning how to fix things herself. Her first order was locating the house's main water supply valve after the kitchen faucet broke off in her hand. It was rough seas at first, but now it's smooth sailing ahead."

"Finding the Valve

Fresh water enters into your home through the main water supply line. The valve controlling the water flow through the line is typically found in the basement or utility room near the water meter, water heater, or on the front wall closest to the street. In older apartment buildings, the main water supply valve is located in the basement. However, in some new apartment buildings, main water supply valves are located on each floor in the utility room."

"When you locate the main water supply valve, place an I.D. tag on it."

From Dare to Repair by Julie Sussman and Stehanie Glakas-Tenet

A series of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle highlights the both designers and builders of housing are taking note of the aging and more safety-oriented population. Here are some of those articles:

Home for the Ages: No Place Like Home - Because more and more of us are reaching ages in which frailty is common, it is important that our homes support rather than hinder our lives.

Ways to make home more accessible - The major consideration as one ages and intends to live in a home for many years to come is the prevention of possible accidents.

Gaining some leverage: Easy access means getting a handle on knobs

Making a bathroom safer - Considering that there is a growing population of at- risk seniors as well as aging baby boomers, it is no wonder that bathroom safety is taken seriously.

Article

" 'Can you point me to the tomatoes again? I’m lost," a woman pleads to the clerk at an outdoor farm stand not far from Poolesville, Md. "If you go past the pumpkins," comes the reply, "you’ve gone too far. Just go straight."

Read the Arnold Berke article, Suburban Harvest, at Preservation Magazine

"Usually I have been hired by the real estate broker with the enthusiastic support of their client -- a reluctant client would not agree to having a decorator help market their house. The time framework is usually two hours and clients tend to be very compliant. Their attitude usually is characterized by a wish to 'just do it so it looks great but keep it looking like my house.' I don't disagree with that premise."

The Color of Candles: Case Studies

Links

• ArchInform - A large number of images, authoritative documentation and informative links characterizes this German website (with English version). The site specializes in 20th Century architecture and one can search by architect (like Charles Francis Annesley Voysey), geographic choice or building itself.

• Architecture Links on the Web - A directory of web links compiled by an Boston College associate professor of art history. A project that began as a supplement for architecture students, Jeffery Howe links to historic preservation sites and engineering resources with such diverse destinations as a Parisian urban sanitation before the 20th Century and photographic study of European bridges/ Some famous architects have their own section as well as career, theory, landscape architecture and urban planning.

• Bad Designs - The is the kind of site that might not solve your problems as they focus on designs that don't work but nonetheless makes you feel absolved from feeling as though you've failed to make *#@&%*#@ thing work. We had a laugh over the examples of rental car with cup holder blocking access to the radio and cassette player; trying to remember which side of the car the gas cap is on so we know which side of the gas pump to pull up to and that ever-popular design quandry: how to flush the toilet.

  If you're into designing new products this site also has a link to a firm that will review it for you: TWS Inc.

• Better Homes & Gardens - The well-known magazine with bright, well-illustrated short articles about decorating. There are sections on food, gardens, health, garden, travel, shopping and a link to their cable TV show as well as and a discussion forum. There's an extremely helpful do-it-yourself encyclopedia with sections that tell you not only how to do the project but what materials are needed ahead of time, what cautions to take, how much time is needed, etc. Take the guided tour of the encyclopedia which is helpful about navigation.

• Certified Forest Products Council (Wood Products) - The issue of timber woods responsibly harvested throughout the world is one constantly fought: the council, who advances forest stewardship through certification of forest management practices and marketplace labeling of certified forest products, is part of this database that explains the process of certification and created a site that potential customers can use to locate a supplier in their immediate area. Dealers are still a small percentage of the total suppliers in the country but it's well worth the search to ease your conscience about using exotic and endangered woods (Eco-Timber in Berkeley, Ca., is a company our youngest daughter worked for). Part of the mission is to acquaint  the public with underutilized wood species.

• Do It Yourself - A compendium of hints and suggestions for do-it-yourselfers, from automobiles to woodworking. Links to contractors and suppliers. A bulletin board is available for those questions you have when stumped by your project or how to tackle it.

• Eplans - Search for house plans by type, amenities and company names. There are tips for choosing a plan and then a guide for products, finding a contractor, permits, financing, interior decorating and landscaping. The customer service area is helpful for the FAQs you may have.

• FineHomebuildingMagazine - My husband has an extensive collection of both this magazine and Fine Woodworking, so extensive that he felt it worthwhile to bring decades of issues across country in our recent move (he probably has visions of eventual eBay earnings in mind). A great resource not only for the professional contractor but for homeowners who are handy or aspire to be one day. The site has a compilation of recent articles covering a number of homebuilding aspects, such as Ten Important Elements of a Good Bathroom, The Hardest Working Room in the House (natch, the kitchen!) and Painting Walls and Ceilings. There are video clips for demonstration purposes, too, to view. These articles are usually written by professionals from the trades so they are more authoritative than those generally available.
  

• Good Housekeeping - Any institution as old, respected and reliable as this one who can write headlines about testing vacuum cleaners: "Suck It Up", is remarkably young in spirit. Buyer's guide, health check, money strategies & family. 

• Great Buildings - Documents hundreds of buildings and leading architects with 3D models, photographic images and architectural drawings,  plus commentaries, bibliographies, and web links, for famous designers and structures of all kinds. Much of this site is for professionals and scholars but the architectural enthusiast can access images as well as a DesignWorkshop (a 3-D modeler) software in a limited download version.

• Home Energy Saver - At the Energy Advisor, enter your area code to receive energy use estimates; additional information inputs will produce customized results. Recommendations for individual upgrades to gain even greater energy efficiencies are available as well as links and a glossary. 

• Home Portfolio - A service featuring top-of-the-line products and with sources to purchase items using a personal portfolio approach...a scrapbook that organizes your search. Manufacturers such as Chicago Faucets, Corian, Dana Robes, Gaggenau, Grohe, Siematic, Acorn, Aga, Amadega Machin and so on. Some of the suppliers are "To the Trade Only," but Home Portfolio will connect you to a decorator through whom you can purchase the item (hopefully at a discount). Fun to look at even if you're not in the market at the moment. If you are, you'll find designers that are not usually seen. 

• Hometime - That familiar PBS show on non-professionals engaging in remodeling, repair and home improvement present a professional, no-nonsense site. It's divided into four main categories: Projects, Info, TV, and Store. 

• ImproveNet - Uniquely, this site checks and updates the legal, license, credit and job performance histories of virtually every contractor (over 600,000) in the nation. Recommendations and ratings come from users as well as from industry pros.

• IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America)- A professional site, yes, but fascinating for those consumer products and furniture that have been chosen as the best designs of a particular year, a number of them designed by well-known architects.

• PaintQuality.com - All those questions about types of paints, how to deal with underlying problems before you paint and color choices are dealt with step-by-step painting guide, a glossary of painting terms and an explanation of paint ingredients. Special techniques are explained such as sponging suede or rag rolling  and an index of common painting problems and their solutions.

• ThePlumber.Com - A homey site done by a Washington state plumber (with a daughter named Rosie) complete with FAQs  such as the crucial "Where and how to shut off water," and subjects as, codes, licensing, permits, maintenance and the inevitable leaky pipes. Sharing problems and solutions through a forum as plumbing products and news rounds out the site.

• Illustrated Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings - A dense, richly illustrated site that is of interest to anyone with an older home (it doesn't have to be historic) as it gives recommendations for methods to be used (and not used) to restore and rehabilitate features of your home from roofs, windows, entrances, porches, and storefronts, focussing on masonry, wood and metal detailing. Advice for new additions to older buildings are sensible and sensitive but not always followed by our fellow citizens: particular care must be taken not to obscure, radically change, damage, or destroy character-defining features in the process of constructing a  new addition. Other Park Service adventures/links are on the site to be enjoyed and traveled through included the "Good Guides' for the Technical Preservation Service for Historic Buildings.

• Remodeling Online - A thorough survey of services, guides to products, alphabetical listings of manufacturers and distributors, 'find-a-pro' section, a tool buyer's guide (chat rooms about Power Tools, Tool tests) and articles around specific themes (closets, curb appeal, basements, preservation, architectural designs etc).  More than you could ever want in this field and you'll probably find it difficult to tear yourself away if you have any projects in mind.

• Roof Help - Online Q & A library and glossary; manufacturers, contractors and architects answer question, guidelines for hiring a contractor as well as a database of contractors in your area; measuring tools for amount of materials needed (in case you decide to do this yourself, ladies; and repair information.