Loveland Feed & Grain

Just off downtown Loveland, Colorado  is the ancient and intriguing Loveland Feed & Grain building.  A many-year preservation and restoration effort has been taking place to find new uses for this magnificent building, expertly documented and researched in Christopher Th0rp's report and headed up by a non-profit and Novo Restoration.

I believe that we should all take extra efforts to try to find ways to save these agricultural buildings from the nineteenth century.  Loveland's thriving arts community has taken a kind of stewardship of this building and there are plans afoot to transform it into an arts complex with adjacent live/work artist's housing next door.

I have written quite a bit about trying to find a Colorado vernacular and folding this in to the making of a kind of critical regionalism for the Front Range.  I can think of no better example of a building to start with and a potential to fulfill.  A semi-public Request for Qualifications went out for the making of the live/work residences and we passionately submitted our team and hope to be involved.  Stay tuned.

(all photos by Mark Gerwing)

geometry and land patterns, part 2

field patterns, Louisiana

In part of an ongoing series, another look at fascinating land patterns created by the intersections of typography, irrigation, hydrology, agriculture and culture.

patterns of planting and fields, the circular geometry determined by meandering rivers, in Louisiana

field patterns, Ireland

Above, the small fields and pastures of Ireland, cut into an odd amalgam of shapes and geometries, more defined by pastoral farming than mechanized field work.

mouth of the Mississippi, Gulf of Mexico

Above, the beautiful image of the mouth of the Mississippi River as it enters the Gulf of Mexico, a stunning kind of squirrel-like hand grasping at the blue sea.  As related to the images of agriculture shown above -  the dead zone created in the Gulf as a result of oxygen-depleting agricultural fertilizers draining down the Mississippi, makes for a strikingly clear blue sea.