A Building Award

I found out yesterday that we received an AIA Merit Award for Historic Preservation this year for Little Building Cafe.
Thank You Mississippi AIA!

four things I loved in NYC....

We had a super short trip to NYC before heading back to Mississippi. Here are four things that made my heart soar......Janine Arnold's Palace Yurt at the Cooper Hewitt Fashioning Felt show. Picasso's constructions for the ballet Parade at the end of the MOMA's Stage Pictures: Drawing for Performance. Christina Kim's Dosa shop with a wall of tiny fabric hearts. And the installation by Roxy Paine on the top of the Met...finally someone used that space... Be back with regular posts this weekend....my head is clear-

Roadside buildings

A building of stars and a building with lopsided smile...........Time to pack up.

Building ideas

Its a very rainy vacation day when reading and cooking are all that one can really deal with. I did find that Mr. Phineas Quimby was a resident of Belfast in the early 1800's. He was a "mesmerist" and teacher of Mary Baker Eddy and founder of the New Thought movement. I like the idea that men of vision lived in this small Maine town.

Building objects

Some things we collected on our trip to Castine to see the Wilson Museum, a early 20th century didactic collection of a Harvard antropologist. We were inspired by Dr Wilson's vision.

Buildings words

This is another example of words on buildings. Giant Tin letterset.......

The Building Surface

Just briefly I have been looking at all the beautiful shingle details around town. Click on the picture and study them.

building history and boats

Yesterday was a rainy day so we did what every self respecting family does on a rainy day on vacation HIT the museum. The best in this area is the Penobscot Marine Museum. A small collection of 18th and 19th century buildings that reflect the history of the bay's seafaring past. The houses are house museums depicting the life of a few sea captains families and the active congregational church has been a hing pin for the community since the early 18th century. And there are boats, boats and more boats.....models, pictures, real and replicas.. I of course enjoyed the interiors with a killer pumpkin colored painted floor and two buildings that were tin throughout the interior-a material that is practical for low maintenance and thermal conductivity......

Building messages

Those of you that know Little Building Cafe know how I love a painted building. This building in Belfast, Maine was my inspiration. This was the towns fuel company but now (with a new tiny paint job ) is the information center for the town......


Please note post will be hit and miss-internet is a sometimes thing up here and so are my thoughts...

Building Place

I am revisiting this book while I am up here. The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard. Its about place and its impact on work that is done in the art world. I have always been taken with it because of its design or organization; very dense "art talk " text through the middle of the book and up at the very top in another type there is a running narrative about her summers in Maine. Isn't that the way life is - that tiny narrative at the top of the page.....

Building Salvage

We are traveling the countryside to find -well bargains....but we are going back and forth about whether to buy the second hand item and have the craftsman work endless hours getting the door or sink or faucet to work in the project.....But in the meantime its fun to see parts of the 19th and early 20th century scattered before us.

Book (hunting) Building

You know how all travel is a means to an end for the search for the perfect Book store. I might have found it (sorry Square Books in Oxford) Left Banks Books in Searsport, Maine is a small little room where the books seem to be curated. I picked up a copy of Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, and Seven Ages of Paris by historian Alistair Horne. And I did take a look at Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America by Brian Vanden Brink. A book where it seemed that half of the buildings were in Mississippi and the other half are in Maine.

Un Building

In general I am always on the look out for "un-kitchens" no "built in's", no locked quality....here is an nice example in a Dwell magazine project by Buenos Aires architect Alejandro Sticotti.
This is a nice room to aspire to while looking at Pearl Street

Simple Building

This is the little farm where we spend every summer. The barn was built by my brother in law and Caleb + many other hands. When we got married here 16 years ago my brother in law Jared meet Annaly Bennett an architecture school chum and they got married. The little house was built by Jared as present for his bride. The barn has a working shop and we stay up in the top floor, we cook in the little house and eat dinner in the front of the barn. There is lake down the road where we swim(and maybe this year take the canoe) and the guys get the sauna going some time in August. It's a beautiful place on earth.

Simple Building

This is the neighbors backyard at Pearl Street. Some nice inspiration for the project. Only simple posts for the next week......

Simple Building

We basically have to have all the building decisions done before we head back to Mississippi in two weeks. I hate working like this and feel like projects should grow. But I will really on 20 years of experience to push through. The only project I have ever envied was the Marfa home of Liz Lambert. I feel like it is what is type of space. The first images I saw of the space from House and garden were much stricter, so I am glad to see that the home part of her project has kicked in.

Building Beauty

My very dear friend Jean Glenn is showing work this summer at Tew Gallery in Atlanta. The opening is July 17th and the show is up until August 14th. Her work is very wonderful...please go take a look.

Building alittle thinking less.

I am having precious little design insight and creative progress..I am taking a lot of pictures of bottles while hunting for old sinks and doors along route 1.......

Building alot.....

Well we are in Belfast and this is the Pearl Street project. Adorable 1800 town house.....and then Caleb felt we should re-do the foundation. So its jacked up and the concrete has been poured, the foundation wall will get built in the next week or so and maybe floors before we leave.

Building Away.....

On to Maine.... I am going to take a "blogger break" while the military mission that is "get the family up to Maine" is in progress. Probably by next friday I will be working again. Stay tuned for a new project and all its trails..... Hope your holiday is good.

Building super craft

To further my point about Hyper-Craft...I spied these two pieces in an exhibition of work by students at the Beckman College of Design (found on the via Yatzer). The necklace chair is really interesting. Last winter in New Orleans I saw a amazing Victorian House that had a wooden garland much like this- draped on every porch bay. We all marveled at the detail and said that it must have been built by a 19th century shipbuilder because they would be the only one with such a skill. How did this student acquire this skill? Modern technology?

Building efficent

If you study the history of furniture, there is a reading of a piece that talks about the materiality and its consequence in culture. For example, the feather weight furniture of Versailles is mostly a result of royal courts moving from palace to palace....the furniture designer was looking out for the people who had to move the court. Recently, I have seen furniture that is very delicate in material but made in an almost hyper-craft mode. Is this the result of a new consciousness? A desire to respect the material,use less of it and revel in new technologies for the construction of the work.......This is a very respectful stool/hat rack by
La Maison de Marina.

Building hutong

I am really intrigued by these carpets by Instant Hutong the architecture practice of Marcella Campa and Stefano Avesani. These are more than carpets, made by the same technique that communist propaganda signage was made of,they are studies in the intricate density of the Beijing Hutong.

Building visions

I would like to say a word about the passing of modern choreographer Pina Bausch. I learned a very important lesson about how to make a total work. Bausch is a master at what I like to call 'world making". While watching a piece of hers many years ago I realized that all the women dancers(about 20) had the exact same lipstick color on. A small gesture but so important for the over all sensibility of the work. Strength, control and rigor...she will be missed.

Web building

Both of these chairs remind me of weaving pot holders when you were a ten year old girl...Only Giant! The sofa is from Imaginary Office and the chairs are available at Karkula.