One thing I got while learning kung fu was this funny thing about our perception:  When we are used to doing a thing a certain way, when we go to make an adjustment towards a more proper/complete/m…

This is wild… from some angles this building makes me go woah and it looks completely weird and separate, and then from a different vantage point it does a 180 and seamlessly blends into the …

You have a responsibility to consider all aspects and sides of a problem. AND A responsibility to make a judgement. AND A responsibility to care for all involved, recognizing that picking a side do…

I’ve posted a bunch of barns here before, whether for wine or crops or livestock.  For a good reason too: design is available everywhere, even in the most “utilitarian” spaces.  T…

In life, I’d invite us to consider that we often “high stakes”-ify things that aren’t high stakes or simply don’t need to be high stakes. As in, we have elements in our life, or aspects of our life…

This little bit of adaptive reuse does that trope that I so do enjoy: it’s a box within a box! Well, mostly.  In this case, the existing roof had so fallen into disrepair that it had to be re…

“We may be … entering an age of credulity.  In a time of shortened attention spans and instant gratification, trained by web surfing and movies with an average shot length of seconds, w…

I don’t often do unbuilt projects here, but this competition winner totally caught my eye.  In a city not already unfamiliar with green roofs, this proposed mass timber building figuratively channe…

“It’s not that you can’t understand, love, trust, & accept yourself. It’s that abusers & oppressors on all levels want to avoid that outcome at all costs. Self-love …

Oh wow, this building has a certain compelling je ne sais quoi for me… or perhaps I should say un cierto no sé qué, given it’s in Spain.  It’s a new community hall that manages it…

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the classic horror trope of, “The call is coming from inside the house.”  And even if you’re not familiar with it from its horror roots, at least you’ve likely heard it…

This one is… interesting!  An adaptive reuse done in a fashion I’m not sure that I’ve seen before, taking the existing historical walls and their articulations and simply extendin…

YouTube video by BBC Global

There’s more great stuff in the What Now with Trevor Noah episode with Brené Brown that I touched on last week, but what also got me about it was the kind of conversation it was. Because it was tha…

One of the current things I miss about my current locale is the snow.  Living in snow.  The embrace of snow.  The celebration of it.  Tonight’s house has a simplicity to it in its concept and…

One of the fastest neuro-hacks to a feeling of belonging is collective schadenfreude. We are going to connect mutually in watching this person fail and fall. And it gives us all kinds of goosebumps…

Another nice school tonight, awash in wood and windows and waves (in both the roof shape and the solar panels that adorn it). Designed as three wings, two clad in wood and one clad in smooth white …

Love this straightforward funicular station in the Swiss alps! A simple gable from the front, but with a large prominence in back that follow the angled path of the train into the station that crea…

The far right has a new favorite movie, and I watched it so that you don't have to.

“You are allowed to think about the worst possible scenario. But you got to go out there and do something about it.” — Jalen Brunson In that great way of separating out our though…

Back in the earliest of the aughts, architecture lectures were held up in SF at the Yerba Buena theatre.  One of the first (perhaps even the first) I went to was by a firm I hadn’t heard of b…

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.” — Charlie Munger While clearly expressed as an absolute for literary effect, I think there’s a lot there as an excellent window an…

This one is a bit of a classic, having been built in the 60s.  And it has a certain showmanship that may rub some the wrong way, but I am definitively a fan of it when it’s deployed well! A c…

This may seem like an odd one… but there’s this interesting thing that I bet many of us have experienced where we made some poor-outcome choice and yet somehow are at peace or at least …

What I really appreciate about this new music/performance hall is how well it achieves its aim to become a part of the landscape.  Already low slung and stepping down and becoming an amphitheatre n…

Check out this cool pavilion that’s part of a public park/garden, with space for gathering, performances, craft vending, sports, and just general playing around. Like an inverted boat hull, i…

Cultural tropes and socialization – aka our inherited views and contexts about what’s right and about how things are the way they just are – aka “Some of the thoughts you have inside your head aren…

As I’ve noted before, I’m not immune to sweet and rugged little cabins.  And here are a trio of them!  All done by the same firm, designed over time on three different remote sites acro…

Remember your ABCs!!! ~~~ Always Be Cute! Deeply Embrace Friendship. Give Hugs Immediately. Just Keep Loving. Maintain Neverending Optimism. Pursue Quirky Recreation. Show Tender Understanding...

I’m going to guess that this design won’t quite be everyone’s… cup of tea?  Crud, mixed metaphors here, for this is a winery.  And as a Corten weathering steel box, it might…

It is not a stretch to imagine that it will be easier for AI to develop a new cancer drug than it will be at ensuring that those who need that drug will actually be able to get it. Not that a new c…

This “pool in the trees” is amazing.  A huge wide opening that frames the trees in a shed-like upper story with light peeking through its slat wall.  Beautiful.  But the WHY it’s …

Often those who create something momentous weren’t trying to do that. As in, they weren’t trying to wow the world, and they weren’t trying to become an icon. Instead, they were following an interes…

The oddity (incongruity?) of this aerial is what first drew my eye here.  That gable roof looks kinda oddly perched on this swoopy concrete grassy thing, doesn’t it? And yeah, it is perched. …

It can be worth checking in As we go about and experience the world In trips or visits or voyages or whatever That we don’t turn “not a 100% perfect and awesome experience” into being a failure ~~~…

Sweet mixed-use (retail, office, residential) pair of towers, clad in wood and shaped to maximize natural ventilation (but also to look cool) done on a former industrial site being turned into a si…

Jeremy Hansen’s very cool patch for his tour around the moon was designed by the First Nations artist Henry Guimond of the Turtle Lodge.  What makes this relevant to a Philosophy Tuesday post…

A nice little sports hall with a translucent fabric roof draped over a wood frame like a giant tent (albeit a bit of a reverse tent, with the high points at the corner). No surprise, plenty of ligh…

(This is equally true… perhaps even more so… in the realm of “social media” and “influencers”.  Both because, if they’re actual, regular, people, they can …

“We live on a fragile planet in the vacuum, in the void of space. We’re very fortunate to live on planet Earth. Another perspective that I’ve sort of learned from others through life is that our pu…

I love this seemingly obvious solution for creating a green façade: just make them potted plants. After all, potted plants is quite solved technology.  No need for fancy systems or special construc…

A lovely vertical lattice of wood inside of white concrete frames… That reveal themselves to be lanterns at night… But also reveal themselves to be more than just a fixed trellis by fol…