southwestern skies

The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, - and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

after the fire - Sunshine Canyon house completed

SZ LR 01

Eighteen months after the devastating Fourmile Fire swept away so many houses in the western foothills of Boulder, we have finally completed construction on a new home for Lynn and John Stasz.  Like all projects it has been an exciting, frustrating and time-consuming task for everyone involved.  This has been especially true for Lynn and John who did not decide they wanted a new house, but rather that decision was forced upon them.

These images are just some recent snapshots I have taken, not the professional photographs that lends so much to the look and feel of the house.  However, the photos do reveal much of the intentions of the project - to make a home again in the mountains that is simultaneously open and protective, light and airy but also firmly rooted to the earth and sheltered under the sky.

SZ Master Bathroom 03

A couple of weeks ago Lynn and John were able to spend their first nights sleeping up at the house, in the landscape that they have called home for 27 years.  We are really pleased to have been a part of making that happen and look forward to sharing a beer with them on the terrace.  Much thanks as well to Cottonwood Custom Builders.  Marc Anderson, Jeff Hindman and all their crew have taken the care and concern to make a nicely detailed, solidly built house and made the work of me, the architect, a little easier along the way.

SZ Master Bedroom 02

Congratulations Lynn and John and welcome home.

abandoned buildings

abandoned 01

What is the fascination with abandoned buildings?  There is certainly some attraction to the mystery and faint danger of these places, but I think there are darker forces at work as well.

In abandoned industrial sites, much of mystery of the place has to do with the fearful contrast of the quiet stillness of the place once so vibrant with noise and activity.  Of course this is also a confrontation with the humility of realizing that the promise and productivity of an industry or a hospital can be so swiftly displaced with the simple closing of the doors.  These places do seem so full of ghosts because so often the signs of human activity, the equipment and architectural elements that were designed to be engaged with the body, are still there, echoing the uses that have long since disappeared.  The door knobs and levers, the switches and furniture are all scaled for us, made for us, and are waiting for us to return.  I think this has much more to do with why these places attract us than the recognition of them as B-movie horror sets and gory extravaganzas.

abandoned 03

Of course there is a whole community of folks out there that explore and photograph these places, known as Urban Explorers or Urbex.  Their photos are all over the interwebz and they document more the desolation of these places than their lost grandeur.   These folks and their photos are more akin to dystopian novelists than the pioneering work of the early preservationists who documented the abandonment and destruction of these places as a last desperate attempt to pull the handbrake of so-called progress.

For my part, what is so intriguing about especially abandoned houses are the fading signs of seemingly tranquil domesticity decaying with time.

abandoned 02

These abandoned houses make you feel small, in the way that walking around an unfamiliar city for the first time does.  There is clearly a continuum that you are a part of, that you recognize, but that clearly posits you as just a tiny, maybe unconsequential part of the whole. That is something devastating to the ego and thrillingly liberating, especially for this architect.  It is a kind of existentialism laid bare and maybe even exposed in its own self-importance.

Preservation worth preserving

MTG328

I recently attending some sessions of the Colorado Preservation Inc.'s Saving Places 2012 Conference.  As usual with these things there are plenty of educational sessions that you can geek-out on various preservation topics, from process-heavy advice for preservation commissions to very technical analysis of window retrofitting techniques.

For me the most interesting event was the Saving Places luncheon.  (Mind you not the food.)  The keynote speaker was James Loewen, sociologist and author.  He gave an impassioned plea for inclusion and precision in the presentation of historic places, especially the painful omissions and/or outright misrepresentations of Native Americans and women in historical markers and interpretations.  A read through his Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong will be an interesting read.

The other event of the luncheon was the video presentation of the yearly "most endangered places" designated projects across Colorado.  These brief presentations  highlight more the stories of the people attempting to save the featured building or structure than concentrating on only the physical aspects of the resource itself.

What I was left with was how interesting and frankly touching are the stories of the people for whom an effort of preservation has become a meaningful aspect of their lives.  As an architect I think it is very easy for me to concentrate on the physical building and its character and details rather than the human aspects of the history of the place.  What is surprising here however is that I am not as interested in the story of the historical persons who might have lived in the building but rather the stories of the people for whom the effort of saving the building has become an important part of their lives.  The inclusion that James Loewen makes such an elegant plea for should include the second story of the place or building - the effort of the people to save or at least somehow mark the place.

Como roundhouse

Preservation, at least at these kind of gatherings and conferences, has become such an institutionalized and professional pursuit that it is easy to forget that its genesis was, and often continues to be, a grassroots, activist-lead endeavor.  I have written about Richard Nickel's pioneering efforts in Chicago and at the conference I heard touching stories of some folks down in Pueblo who have embraced the preservation of their down-at-the-heels neighborhood for whom  this effort has become the catalyst of self-discovery and community pride.

Richard Nickel -01

As a board member of my local preservation commission in a wealthy community, the projects I see are largely opulent proposed additions to fabulous, and fabulously expensive, large and expansive Victorian houses.  Our role is more often that of the preservation police, guarding and protecting historic districts from misguided contractors and careless homeowners.  Preservation as an aspect of positive community activism seems like a distant planet.

For some, preservation is rooted in identity and feels like a life and death struggle, a small cry against the erasure of self and place.  That is a kind of preservation worth preserving.