Architecture
Criticism of the art of architecture.
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Demolition City
They sterilized the land the art deco department stores and the stumpy roots of the buildings of the Pacific Southwest Exhibition have been buried under concrete and rubble. every timber and brick that once shook during the earthquake of ’33 every roadside diner every steepled church; flop-houses and mansions torn down for mini-malls. the Tongva…
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Some (Really Old) Drawings
I found a cache of old drawings, actually prints of old drawings, that I uploaded here to share. I can see how my style has evolved over the years, but my love of architecture hasn’t diminished. …
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Imperial Hotel
Slow drizzle of rain the streets saturated Meiji era ending the new emperor ascending. Porcelain waiting under paper umbrellas, rustling. Tokyo midway from medieval flashfire wooden, newborn modern. Encapsulated, brick and tile with angles borrowed from here not imprisoned palaces brought by Europeans to mar the landscape. Here Ōya stones become glyphs, this seasoned lava…
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Sketching A Civic Center
I love architecture. The envisioning, design, and construction of buildings fascinates and excites me. I am a student of the form though I have no official education in it. I remember that my love affair started as a child looking at the buildings in my hometown of Long Beach, California…especially the French-Gothic wonder that is…
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Gordon House
My wife and I recently had the privilege to visit the only “open to the public” Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Pacific Northwest. The home, known after its original owners as the Gordon House, is located at 869 West Main Street in Silverton, Oregon. The house is located in a public garden where it was…
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Tacoma Trip Photo Essay
My wife and I recently had the pleasure of visiting the second city to Seattle, Tacoma. All of the years we have lived in the Pacific Northwest and we had never been! My impressions of the city were extremely positive. Every person we came into contact with was extremely nice, from helpful locals with directions,…
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LB Civic Center: A New City Hall
The current Long Beach city hall is a fourteen story tower of rough concrete and steel, faced in Darth Vader-black glass overlooking a decrepit and frankly hideous civic center plaza. A marvel of 1970s design and engineering, its structural flaws threaten to topple it in event of a major earthquake. In my dream redesign of…
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LB Civic Center: A New Main Library
The current main library in downtown Long Beach is a dark concrete cave set into the vibrant urban fabric of the city. At one time it was considered a modern marvel and it’s brutalist aesthetic was the height of 20th century design. As part of my dream plan redevelopment of the current civic center I…
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LB Civic Center: Historical Society Building
This is the standalone model of the building I designed for the Long Beach Historical Society as part of my LB Civic Center dream project https://thenuminouscosmos.com/2013/12/28/a-new-long-beach-civic-center/ The building would have space for traditional museum displays as well as research areas and a large model of the city, similar to the Panorama of New York city at…
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A New Long Beach Civic Center
The city of Long Beach, California is currently in the midst of pouring over proposals to replace it’s vintage 1970s era Civic Center with a newer, larger, more environmentally friendly structure. Long Beach has a rich history of city halls, starting from its first building constructed during the last decade of the 19th century. It…
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1930’s Long Beach, Colorized
I love visualizing cities as they existed during the many decades of their lives. The city of Long Beach has changed dramatically in the years since these original photos were taken. I ‘borrowed’ them from the Los Angeles Public Library’s digital archive. The photos show a semi-aerial view close to Lincoln Park and the second…
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Container Home
I designed this concept for a low-cost container home built out of four individual 60 foot shipping containers for a friend of mine here in the Pacific Northwest. The structure is designed to take advantage of the local environment and I focused on incorporating reclaimed materials such as wood siding/plastic sheeting. I also made use…
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So Long Frank Lloyd Wright, Finale
The 1940s brought Wright new challenges. Wright encountered success and failure throughout the 1940s. His strong anti-war stance, especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor, brought government blackballing to his extensive wartime housing projects, including the Cloverleaf housing scheme. His Utopian ideals couldn’t be destroyed, even in the course of a global conflict. Wright’s own…
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Deserving of Observing
My wife and I are from Southern California. I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by a wealth of beauty; from the shoreline of my native Long Beach, to the snow capped San Bernardinos; the rolling hills of Los Angeles, to the quite coves of Cabrillo beach. Even though I now live in Washington State…
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So Long Frank Lloyd Wright Continued
During this time of momentous change, Wright’s own domestic situation saw a change towards permanence with a much younger woman, Olgivanna Ivanovna Lazovich. Born in Montenegro of auspicious decent, she was very beautiful—with dark, mysterious eyes. She was also a follower of George Gurdjieff, a mystic with a large, cult-like following. Wright first saw her…
The Numinous Cosmos 