Tweet This weekend I was in Milwaukee with my husband to visit his family. My brother-in-law had us over for tea and I helped him put up his Christmas tree. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor of an old mansion. That mansion, that was once built for a single wealthy family, was later converted into 4 apartments. My sister-in-law, who also lives in Milwaukee, recently bought a duplex that was also once an old mansion but was turned into a duplex later. Milwaukee is full of such buildings in its neighborhoods – single-family mansions turned into…
Archive for the ‘architecture’ Category
Tweet This is a design review of Bliss ReBar, the new restaurant on the corner of 4th Street and Roosevelt, but I can’t do a design review of this restaurant alone. I have to peal back a few layers of time and owners to really do a design review of this place. Remember when Bliss was Nine|05? And before that when Nine|05 was Fate? The Layers of History I remember going to Fate when it was fairly new about ten years ago with my friend Rocco Menaguale, who turns out is the architect with triArc Design and Architecture that did…
Tweet Eric Corey Freed, licensed architect, LEED ap practices a very special brand of architecture called organic architecture out of his firm organicarchitect in San Francisco. Early in his career, Eric studied under an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, gaining an appreciation for and adopting Wright’s philosophy of organic design. In his own practice, he has also become deeply involved in ecological and environmentally responsible architecture drawing from ancient design principles and new technological innovations. He has co-developed the Sustainability Programs at the Academy of Art University and the University of California Berkeley Extension. Eric is the author of four…
Tweet Have you been to Lola Coffee on Central? I usually go there for meetings because it’s quieter than a lot of other coffee shops. The design of the space has never struck me as very special because there is a certain intimacy that’s missing from it. But today, when I took a closer look, I discovered that there are some cool design elements in the coffee shop. Just as a clarification, there is a Lola in Downtown, on Roosevelt and 4th Ave. Now that Lola has achieved the intimacy and richness that Lola on Central is missing, but I…
Tweet A few months ago, when the rental unit at the Blooming Rock duplex 3 Palms became available, I got a call from a woman named Theresa who was very interested in the place. But she stipulated that she needed the lease to be on a month-to-month basis because she was moving here from Chicago and wanted to buy a house for the long term, instead of renting. Normally I wouldn’t entertain the idea of a month-to-month lease, but I was intrigued when she told me that she just got a tenured position at a university in a very interesting…
Tweet Continuing this special week of guest posts from a handful of the best writers and thinkers in Phoenix, today’s post is by Peter J. Wolf. Peter is a Lecturer in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, teaching courses in both industrial design and visual communication design. When he’s not teaching or taking on freelance writing projects, he blogs about feral cat issues at Vox Felina. I’ve heard it said from people involved with historic preservation that the greenest building is the one you don’t need to build (a message apparently lost on those…
Tweet While I’m traipsing through Brussels, Bruges, and Berlin this week, the Blooming Rock blog will be featuring guest posts from some of my favorites writers and thinkers in Phoenix. Today’s post is by Victoria Vargas. Victoria is a writer, historic preservationist, archaeologist, and lover of small dwellings. She blogs at Smaller Living about the adventure of living small in a (very) big city. “There is probably no action authorized by local governments more singularly fiscally irresponsible than the demolition of a historic building for a surface parking lot.” Donovan Rykema in The Economics of Historic Preservation (2008, revised edition)…
Tweet This Saturday the 25th is going to be the 2nd Annual Grand Avenue Festival hosted by the Grand Avenue Merchants Association (GAMA). Two women in particular have been the heavies behind putting this event together, Beatrice Moore and Kate Benjamin. Beatrice owns nine buildings on Grand and Kate has her studio, ModernCat Studio, in one of Beatrice’s buildings, the old Braggs Pie Factory. Both are active members of GAMA. I had the chance to sit and talk with Beatrice this Saturday at her Kooky Krafts Shop. I’ll let you in on a secret about her. Beatrice’s unwavering commitment to…
Tweet 1. The City used funds from the Downtown Phoenix Hotel Corporation to buy the Sahara building. Apparently part of this deal was the temporary use of the site as a parking lot for the Sheraton Hotel. This is the “done deal” City Manager David Cavazos was talking about. 2. When several community members suggested the lot become a park or a green space, Jeremy Legg, the City applicant for the parking use permit, mentioned the Civic Space Park is just a block away. Wait, so we can have TOO MANY green spaces, but never enough parking lots? 3. The…
Tweet According to the Arizona Republic article today by Emily Gersema, Ramada Inn in Downtown Phoenix Days from Demolition, the $700,000 demolition of the old Sahara Hotel, currently a defunct Ramada Inn, is scheduled to happen later this month. Before we go into why this building is important and why it’s worth saving, let’s first visit the reason why it’s being demolished: The City of Phoenix is planning a $700,000 demolition to make room for overflow parking for the Sheraton Downtown Hotel while there are loads of empty lots all around downtown that would work just as well, not to…