Northern California ShakeMap: Estimated Instrumental Intensity for the quake in Paso Robles.

AJ from The Architects via things.

Architects Unveil Revised Freedom Tower Design, oh yeah, hey, what, what it is, peace ’n’ freedom, more whoopee, yay.

MSNBC - New Trade Center tower design unveiled, hooray hurrah whoopee clap clap clap clap whistle.

Preservation Online: Today's News Archives: Farnsworth House Saved

Mies' Farnsworth House to be saved / Illinois landmark will be a museum

To die for: Hunkabutta.com photo - Wood in a truck, Tokyo

Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair

pallalink: "The courtyard was small and dark..."

Architectural Record | Daily News | ALERT! Last Chance to Save Farnsworth House!!

ARES5ch14.pdf (application/pdf Object) (lateral forces--earthquakes)

Lateral Forces

NCARB: National Council of Architectural Registration Boards for the exam

990000 weblog: "torquing design"

More Revisions in Plans for New York:

The nearly completed design for the signature tower at the World Trade Center site would recapture the title of world's tallest building for New York City without forcing anyone to work higher than 70 stories in the sky.

Gov. George E. Pataki, who effectively controls the rebuilding process at ground zero, will unveil the plan next week. It will bear little resemblance to the asymmetrical and angular design by Daniel Libeskind that has been in the public eye for almost a year. Instead, it is largely the work of David M. Childs, the architect for the tower's developer, Larry A. Silverstein.

The future looks like tweezers in baby steps and in big steps, Challenging Norms: Eisenman's obsession.

MachineDesign.com: Making water dance

Visual Expert Human Factors: Weather and Accidents: Rain & Fog

SCIENCE HOBBYIST: Touch The CLouds

The Weather Notebook: Snoweater

Other Lighting Effects: "MBT Brute II Fog Machine"

Wired 8.02: Making It Morph: "After thinking through various structures - some buoyant, some partially submerged - Diller Scofidio hit on fog, which was not only a local phenomenon but a dynamic one. To test the possibility, the architects rented a barge on Lake Neuchâtel and held a fog-off to test the nozzles of three companies. According to Scofidio, they chose the one that produced 'the densest, richest fog.' By last fall, they'd finished the structural engineering. The cloud building is an open-air system of glass-and-steel walkways enveloped in a thick haze created by 12,500 high-pressure jets. A built-in weather station controls the fog system: Measuring wind speed and direction, temperature, and humidity, it then sends the appropriate fog-demand signals to the 13 output zones."

Exploratorium: Science Snacks: Fog Chamber

Remote Source Lighting International
Himawari
Lighting Futures: "A honeycomb of Fresnel lenses focuses the sun's light onto the ends of quartz-glass optical (fi)bers."
YIL News: "We got a special lighting system called 'Himawari' for Eve. Actually, we are borrowing from the company who developed this system."

GOOGLEHOUSE | MARIKA DERMINEUR & STEPHANE DEGOUTIN | 2003 via boing boing

:: Sherwood Design Engineers :: civil, high recommendation

Archicool c'est aussi architecture annuaires actualites architectes

John Raabe - a short history of a solar home designer

Cottage, cabin & small country home plans you can modify sunrooms, additions

mbox: Re: GBlist: RE: How Ken Kern Died: "Ken, too, had an insatiable appetite for learning, for experimenting
with buiding. If I recall correctly (it has been a while now) Barbara, his
wife, asked him not to spend the night in the ill-fated shelter. He felt the
need to fully experiment including experiencing the structure in a storm."

Coblist:: Cob: ken kern bldg collapse: "The Ken Kern death was a result of a 100 yr storm, falling on an newly
made incomplete cement arched experimental dome he was building at the
time, with cob walls as the dome."

The Dwell Home via 10K

fabprefab - the home of modernist prefab dwellings

Rocio Romero, modern design and prefab architecture: This was in Dwell in a smaller version.

pallasite

F.O.B HOMES: kit house concept in Japan

Permaculture Institute of Northern California has a dragon building.

Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection>> Results >> Details Gold Hill Nevada, where Andi was first married (abandoned buildings).

Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection>> Results >> Details, a Greek Revival store.

Position Your Career for Success with Feng Shui

T406.HTM has the properties for wide flange shapes. For instance, the moment of inertia I for W24X62 is 1550 in^4.

Google Search: tw w18x35: "W" gives the web width.

Old Steel Properties for as close as possible Ixx of W18x35.

'WC water concept': salone dell’arredo bagno international on-line design competition

FootInTheDoor.Com for sales fun.

Andy Budd::Blogography: Doing Work On Spec: resolve do not do!

EARTH ARCHITECTURE via Antipixel.

M.A.D. - GDL -- Finnish page with beautiful chair

ArchiRADAR - Gdl -- a tiny English area

ArchiRADAR - Gdl -- remarkable tutorial in Italian

ZOOM GDL Page -- missed the summer sale

German GDL

Welcome to GDLCentral

GDL Alliance

prepare home has the info on structure and lateral forces.

990000 weblog because it's good and proper, suggests a weekly dose of architecture, specifically Selfridges via dezain.net - today.

IN THE CAUSE OF ARCHITECTURE: "Architecture, the expression of the materials and methods of our times."—1894

IN THE CAUSE OF ARCHITECTURE: "...while Le Corbusier as the hero (or villain) of Western architecture is a story that has often been told, his ambiguous standing outside of Europe and North America has seldom been thoughtfully considered."

Architectural Record | House of the Month | Wood House: "handicapped-accessible wing that acts as a full-time house and office adjacent to an early eighteenth century farmhouse in Connecticut"

HGTV :: Garden :: Articles, “Fundamental principles and tools of feng shui gardening” gives the rationale for the meandering path. Sometimes it is helpful to think of this for long corridors inside buildings as well.

Toxics Targeting Products and Services

Apparently, the WTC released asbestos and PCBs, and the EPA did nothing about it after 9-11, nor does it do anything now according to an interview on Democracy Now for today.

A perfect door hinge.

This looks like the perfect hinge.

An example of a continuous hinge and assorted channels.

SIPs connection details, lots of them.

A micro-connection system is proposed in this page. It refers to 3M dual lock such as this pdf.

Spline method of connection

A construction detail for panel connection, drawing only.

Products Listing shows low-priced institutional furniture.

KSTA.DE, Kölner Stadt · Anzeiger in a review of „Ring des Nibelungen” in Bayreuth has a picture of curved panel.

. . . ECOLIEBHABITAT . . . is the creation of Dan Liebermann, teacher and extraordinary organic architect. A friend worked for him on a house, and when it didn't win easy approval for permit, Dan's approach was to fight the building officials. But consider the outstanding results and the dedication to teaching and pro bono service, and the picture is so positive the combativeness must be worth it.

Suspended ceilings were a great mystery. Are. So several searches later came up with a Salt Lake City resource, and contacted Armstrong.

A potential ceiling or wall finish material turns out to be more than the budget a current project can stand. Panels for the ceiling would be $51,000. A four by eight foot panel of the least costly material would be a little over $400, and 32 panels would be needed to make up a $13,000 minimum order of 1000 sq. ft. Wall facing for the total project is approximately 7000 sq. ft., $91,000.

A digression is DSA Architects straw bale with research into stressed skin. Alusion is a quirky aluminum foam product that is mainly used decoratively, not structurally. Green Home Building has a good page on manufactured systems such as SIPS.

Results of "curved building panel modular foam" are not very good. This page gives some general ideas of curved architectural panels, and this page, Galileo, specifically calls for sandwich panels for this, but unfortunately it is European. Loxley provides many related solutions, but it is very difficult to find a real product for a low-budget project since the company is offshore. ThermaSpan residential has a metal and foam profile that matches imaginative ideas of colleagues of what a panel should be, but there is no picture of a curved panel, and the supplier is offshore. If the project were huge, then Radome might be the answer. Kalwall is a product that might be the answer, a real product that offers curves and light transmission. It has a person where the project is located, a spec, and systems applicable to walls and roofs. Todco can do almost anything in a curved panel, but apparently on a high budget. One of the approaches in mind at the outset of search was corrugated or honeycomb kraft.

Search for "building panel modular foam" casts a wide net. Here are some of the results. An Australian firm offers panels for structural concrete applications, Unibuild, with US application. The National Park Service uses modular construction for collection storage inside historic buildings or in separate outside structures and offers many pointers in this Conserve-O-Gram. Sustainable Building Sourcebook provides an overview of structural wall panels and green considerations such as molded expanded polystyrene (MEPS) are "acceptable insulation or an alternative that has no ozone-depleting chemicals must be used. Additionally, waferboard, OSB [oriented strand board], sheetrock and/or siding need to be used as facings....COST: $1.75 to $2.75 per square foot or higher (material only). This can be slightly higher than conventional framing costs." Vesta Builders, Inc., a residential contractor serving a specific local area provides solid guidelines for details and allowances. Structall is a typical panel manufacturer of a patented insulated panel. None of these systems lend themselves to curved walls, so try a different search.

Harrumph! has a brilliant post on Fourth Street. The deserted farms are worth a tour.

Goethean thought is a theme of Waldorf schools or Steiner or … The Trench is confusewd confused. However, it is worth noting the writing of Steve Talbott on the subject, To Explain or Portray?

Here are the pictures of the TransAmerica Pyramid shadow taken on the actual day of the solstice by another, June 21, 2003.

In gnomon land, there is a report to a co-worker as follows:

July 7, 2003

The more I work on the gnomon, the more needs to be done. For example, it might be a good idea to measure monuments relative to center of the Pyramid, and then graph against time. Then there might be a basis for correction.



The pictures you sent are quite something. Do you have a CD for them so that I can post on web with others? Lighting conditions on the solstice for conventional photographs, June 21, 2003, were much clearer than the day after for digital photographs, June 22, and film also has more resolution, but main reason to keep the digital photographs is the record of time when the observation was made.

As to the Coptic eye, I did look for the Great Seal on the web and have a quote from greatseal.com below. I also wonder if instead of the TransAmerica Pyramid, the Great Pyramid stood in the same place somehow, would the shadow actually clear the base?

Reverse

In the zenith of an unfinished pyramid is an eye in a triangle surrounded with a golden glory. Over the eye are the words Annuit Coeptis. On the base of the pyramid the numerical letters MDCCLXXVI, and underneath, the motto Novus Ordo Seclorum.

Visit AkuAku for scene of horse grazing in the ruins of 80% completed and abandoned hotel somewhere way far away.

Some solstice gnomon pictures are up. These are pictures of the shadow of the TransAmerica Pyramid on Columbus Avenue and later, Hotaling Place. Pictures are from the 22nd, and orange marks are observations from the 21st.

So there are words and sort-of words.

Brooklyn Bridge Hard to Topple, see cryptome, via newthings.

So the observations take place, beginning 11:55am PDT and continuing through 12:20pm on Columbus Avenue, noon in the middle of the street. Paint orange circles indicating the tip of the TransAmeica Pyramid.

Technique is to stand in shadow, approximately two feet. At the penumbra, where the shadow of observer’s head emerges from the shadow of the tip, mark. Verify previous observations, and another observer questions whether they line up.

1pm, stand opposite fourth support of the pyramid, its center. Other observer photographs position and verifies pyramid shadow extends up the side of 500 Washington buildings. 1:10 to 1:20pm, make two observations on Hotaling.

Columbus Avenue is a good bet for observing the gnomon represented by the TransAmerica Pyramid during the winter months. Say 10am.

Here’s to three square miles of Berkeley and Oakland hills after the fire, complete in one page.

When there’s a post to Trenches, watch out. Lenedra Carroll in The Architecture of All Abundance writes,

“He is wise who sees action in inaction and inaction in action,” the dream voice [an owl’s] had said.

and

Remember that you are an artist.
Know that you are more than the things that happen to you.
Always make space for magic to happen.

If an architect makes space, and anybody can be an architect, Carroll is a good, intuitive place to start. Now on to professionalism, even when it’s at the earliest stages.

Olympic Stadium concept. For whatever reason, the local museum looks more like a box.

Merriam-Webster defines gnomon as the pin of sundial. A tall building such as the TransAmerica Pyramid can serve this purpose, provided there is a marker of some kind on the ground indicating the shadow measurement at a specific time of day. If the shadow aligns with the marker, the time of day should match the previous time of day when the marker was set. Because the TransAmerica Pyramid is so tall, the behavior of the “instrument” is particularly dynamic compared to an ordinary sundial from the vantage of the observer. All bets are off in foggy weather and during an earthquake.

ΓΝΩΜΩΝ. A page in French on the web says Thales measured the height of the Great Pyramid at Giza by comparing shadows at the same time of day.

Consider a pyramid, height h unknown. However the length of its shadow, l, is known for a certain time of day, as is the shadow l’ and height, h’ of a reference such as a 6’ man.

h   h'

- = --

l   l'



    h'l

h = ---

     l'

Example: l = 962’, h’ = 6’ and l’ = 12’. Solving for h = 481’ = 6 x 962 / 12.

At an opening in Berkeley, C., a plein-air painter, says they rebuild "to the lot line" in the Oakland Hills. No manners. Of course he means to the setback, as reference shows the possibility of good manners to the lot line.

Another word from close, oh so close to home.

A word about internship from afar, oh so far away.

Via boing boing, tents or not.

Three churches among others(?), same architect, Charles Geddes. There was a good article in a recent newspaper, but can’t find it.

• Noe Valley Ministry, San Francisco, 1888
• Westminster Presbyterian Church (St. Procopius Church), Berkeley, 1879
• Community United Methodist Church, Half Moon Bay, 1872

See Witold Riedel for two articles on earth structures, one of which is a drawing with eight variations and the other article gives links to Nader Khalili.

Morning News sends a lead to Matt's possessions obsession by way of drawings and photographs and clever navigation.

Caterina brings us an article on Christopher Alexander. Agree that Alexander favors, shall we say, the shingle style, that is, a homey, crafty solution. He seems to hate modern solutions, but what if they're perfectly good? Toph uses PatternLanguage.com as a resource, but it nags him to register or something. It does have some fun stuff though.

Detroit. Remember Detroit? Detroit iron? Detroit anything?

Working. Draw a building. Crash the computer.

Stop work. Walk the grand all-American pit bull terrier by the crashing waves.

Working. Continue on the building. Get deeply involved in window placement.

Stop work. Walk. Look at the horizon all yellow, orange, red, purple, dark blue and black.

Grow a brain via newthings. This has a good section on architecture by real estate people.

Here is a cable reinforced system for protecting a floor from collapse, via boing boing.

To test the cable system, Astaneh and his students built a full-scale typical building floor with five support columns in Berkeley's civil engineering test bay. The steel cables passed through one-inch holes in the columns and were affixed to the concrete model floor. In one test, a support column was knocked out and a massive hydraulic jack — the largest in the country — applied 240,000 pounds of downward force to simulate the weight of a floor above. The test floor dropped three feet, but stayed connected to the remaining columns that carried the extra weight.

Reserve Cal Day, April 12, for a talk by the leading researcher, A. Astaneh.

Memory Foundations is the name of the thing.

Excellent analysis by John King of the WTC appears in today's Chronicle. He wrote that the (below) ground level pedestrian space was particularly brutal, but the ten-year design and construction timeframe should allow opportunity to fix shortcomings like this. When TT looked at the animation yesterday, which recalls dump trucks on the existing site with approximately 50' high slurry walls in the background during clean-up magically overlaid by gigantic new construction, he didn't recognize this problem, and only noticed a peculiar lifelessness of the stylized representation. Today, he looks and sees some amazing effort at realistic representation of people, though in an animation they should be moving, sophisticated coloring and texture of slurry walls recalling Anselm Kiefer and, of course, an array of exciting new, often colorful, often transparent geometric forms punctuating the plaza of death, and the new wailing walls are casting deep shadows around 9-11. It's frightening to think about.

It's the pits. Today is the announcement of Libeskind's selection for the new WTC. The New York Times has an article plus an animated demonstration.

Really nice picture of Zach and Annie on their bicycles. Takes a special gift to catch them relaxed like this.

Pictures of a contentious building pad condition are here.