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Category Archive: info for home-making
A year ago today, the Fourmile Fire was raging in the foothills just west of Boulder. It started on Labor Day and I was in the studio, working, with the door to the balcony open when I started to smell smoke. That first hint of smoke grew and when I finally went out on the [...]
The majority of the heavy framing is done on the new house construction on our project up Sunshine Canyon. As every architect knows, the project, while decidedly unfinished, may never look so good again. When a building is no more than its simple framing, the rafters, joist, beams and posts artlessly revealed, it displays a [...]
I look at a lot of ugly houses. No one who has a really beautiful house needs my help as an architect – they are willing to live with a too small house or a dysfunctional house because it is so well-suited to its site and well-composed. No, as about half my work is in [...]
The beginning of every construction project starts with destruction. We demolish or excavate before we build. The first signs of progress are large piles of deconstructed lumber or mountains of dirt that have to get trucked off or re-used in some way. Foundations are poured and drilled, some framing is done, but nothing really strikes [...]
One of my ongoing projects is the construction of a new house up Sunshine Canyon just west of Boulder, Colorado. My clients, long-time residents, lost their house in the Fourmile Fire last Fall and we are trying to replace the spirit and energy of that house while making a new design that is better suited [...]
First, it is not a product. Second, it is not a function of the architect’s ego. Third, it is not a function of the bank’s commodification And last, it is not a machine. When LeCorbusier first said “a house is a machine for living”, machines and technology were seen as liberating, not the soulless leviathans [...]
Architecture is serious business. Not only because architect’s take themselves painfully serious, but because for folks who choose to go down the path of designing and building a custom house, it is probably the most money they will ever spend. Tends to be a bit sobering. A house is the daily landscape of your life. [...]
This may seem obvious, but often people think they have to compromise between function and beauty. They do not. Any architect should be able to design a project that lives comfortable in that slippery neighborhood of “beautiful”. It may be that this is hopefully subjective, but many aspects of a kind of architectural aesthetics are [...]