wrapped up in books

This will make for much more overburdened computers and much less cluttered apartments. Bric-a-brac is generally unfashionable now. Designers see apartments full of amusing memorabilia – the matchboxes from Berlin, the Soweto tin car, all the stuff that children love – as dust-gathering and space-consuming. We no longer respect the Cabinet of Wonders as a guiding principle of decoration.

So we lose forever the pleasure known to humanity for 500 years of taking a stroll up and down the aisles of someone else’s brain by perusing their bookshelves. Gone will be the guilty joy of spending a rainy afternoon at a cottage with the remnants of someone else’s childhood: their Nancy Drews, their 1970s National Geographics. Without bookshelves, you will never know the warning signs contained in the e-reader of your handsome date – you will not know for months that he is reading The Secret and Feng Shui for Dummies, even if you stay over. You will never be able to ask, as casually as you can, “Did you like this?” as you pull down, as if fascinated, Patrick Swayze’s autobiography.

No doubt the creators of e-books will come up with an app for this: If you are a Twilight reader at a social gathering, your machine will sense the proximity of another Twilight novel in someone else’s reader and will light up with a big pulsing hot-chocolate icon. (If it’s set to Chuck Palahniuk, the beer icon lights up, and so on.) I know, technology can do all this. But it won’t be the same as good old clutter. When all our apartments are clean, I will miss the wooden skeletons from Mexico and the science-fiction from high school.

The Globe and the Mail | A Lament for the Bookshelf

I disagree with the author on some points. While it's true that uncluttered spaces are fashionable, I think having books along the walls of a space still work with that aesthetic.

when i'm walking through the city, i only think of myself

And, in the end, our curiosity got the better of us.

"The most interesting thing about the whole endeavor for me was the very fact that the U.S. had chosen to occupy Saddam’s palaces in the first place. If you’re trying to convince a population that you have liberated them from a terrible dictator, why would you then sit in his throne?"
Saddam's Palaces: An Interview With Richard Mosse

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." - Abraham Lincoln

Lucas Murgida at 667 Shotwell from Chris Sollars on Vimeo.

california, here we come!

A guard wearing a one-size-too-big military uniform salutes my driver through the gate at the grand entrance to Orange County. Suddenly we’re transported from China to, well, somewhere else. Where, exactly, is hard to say. It would be strange enough if Orange County, this gated community near the Beijing airport, were the straight-up replica of Southern California it claims to be. But it is stranger than that. The development, 45 minutes up the freeway from Beijing’s better-known Forbidden City, has the appearance of a Disney theme park where someone mixed up all the different sections—a smidgen of Epcot’s faux Paris intermingled with Main Street U.S.A.’s Americana. At Orange County, California-style ranch houses sit alongside English Tudors and a French-style formal garden complete with stately fountains (turned off for the winter). The street signs of weathered wood held together with rusty spikes conjure the Old West of Durango while the community clubhouse, called the Rive Gauche Town Center, has a mansard roof typical of a French country estate. The totem poles inside recall the Pacific Northwest and the fireplace mantlepiece is carved in the shape of English-language books, including Hamlet, Macbeth, and the erroneously titled Moby-Dock. So far from the West, the distinctions between France and America, let alone Colorado and California, get lost. (The Chinese would surely have a similar laugh at our expense for the popularity of “pan-Asian” restaurants Stateside.) I requested a Sunday tour, hoping that people would be enjoying the one-day Chinese weekend in their yards. But here in Orange County, China, just days after Christmas, it is not exactly rollerblading weather. The fake lake is frozen solid. A brave, bundled-up grandmother takes a baby carriage out for stroll. But for most, weekend fresh air is what you get when you walk from your home to your SUV. Though distinctly lacking in warm California sun, Orange County’s promotional brochures tout it as “flown over fresh to Beijing,” and even “pure American.” And there is at least some truth in advertising. The project, whose 143-unit first phase opened in 2001 at a ceremony including American diplomats and McDonald’s cheeseburgers, was designed by a trio of design firms from California’s Orange County, headed by Bassenian Lagoni Architects, a leading designer of McMansions that has been dubbed one of the most influential architects you’ve never heard of by The Wall Street Journal.

Welcome to the O.C.

wrapped up in books

In today's environment-conscious world, they also have another valuable function. "Books are the original insulator. A shelf of books along an outside wall works well to prevent heat escaping," says Joel Rickett. "If all the books were removed from the homes in Britain, our energy bills would rocket."

[Books as Insulation]

image: Dash Snow, "(Book Fort)," 2006

i would rather not go back to the old house

Felipe Assadi & Francisca Pulido's Casa Guthrie

Commissioned by a real estate company, this project's aim was to design a house that they could replicate easily on a hillside with an average slope of 25%. The costs had to remain within reach of the average young family and be no greater than 140 square meters.

the systems and the norms that are saying be bummed and be bored

nine intriguing doors 

title: barr

the future, wouldn't that be nice

"Globus Cassus is a utopian project for the transformation of Planet Earth into a much bigger, hollow, artificial world with an ecosphere on its inner surface. Sunlight would enter through two large windows, and gravity would be provided by centrifugal force. Humans would live on two vast regions that face each other and that are connected through the empty center.

Globus Cassus was proposed by architect and artist Christian Waldvogel and presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004."

{ more info on Wikipedia, Damn Interesting and Globus-cassus.org ...}

this is the place

olle lundberg's cabin

the perfect escape destination: 

wood, air, warmth, 

and reused materials.

i have built a treehouse, it's a you and me house

lukasz kos's 4treehouse is absolutely stunning.

Justin has probably already seen this, it was featured in dwell this month.

title: i'm from 

barcelona song