Archive for the ‘architecture’ Category

Tweet Two weeks ago I was at an event where I was completely inspired and utterly disappointed at the same time. Design Museum Portland screened Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture at the Hollywood Theater and by the end of it I felt like I could change the world. But I was deflated by the fact that the audience was overwhelmingly comprised of women and such few men attended. No doubt this movie is of interest to women architects, but what wasn’t obvious, apparently, is that it is of interest to, and maybe even more important for,…

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Tweet Philadelphia University has a blog aimed at prospective architecture students called Built@PhilaU. The authors recently interviewed me about the meaning of architecture and the role of sustainability in the profession. Below is the interview. You can find the original interview here. Taz Loomans of The Blooming Rock Blog loves everything about architecture, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some things that she would like to see change in her lifetime. Here, Loomans discusses some of what she loves the most about the field and what she hopes will change in the future. Architecture means a lot of things to…

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February 23, 2015

Architecture as if People and the Planet Mattered

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Last week I watched a Peruvian documentary on the lives of local musicians called I’m Still, screened as part of the Portland International Film Festival. It displayed stunning imagery of mountain-top villages in remote areas of the country where indigenous musicians played their violins, harps and guitars and sang folk songs. I was struck by the indigenous architecture of these villages, which comprised of hand-built stone masonry walls and clay tile roofs. They were beautiful buildings built by families generations ago, perfectly scaled to Peruvian human proportions and completely fitting of Puruvian native lifestyles. Moreover, they blended in with…

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February 15, 2015

The Future of the Library

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Thanks to Google, e-books, Amazon.com, and book store cafés among other factors, libraries are changing at a breakneck speed. Libraries used to be where you looked things up, and now you can look anything up practically at any time if your smartphone is within easy reach, which for many it is all the time. But what about the community development role of the library in society? By not using the library as a resource in the same way, are we losing a sense of community when so much information is at our fingertips without ever having to get up…

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January 26, 2015

What do Architects Do?

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Most people don’t really know what architects do on a day to day basis. Perhaps you have a vague notion that architects make napkin sketches sitting in sleek, low-lit bars playing jazz piano and a few months later fabulous buildings like the Guggenheim in Bilbao by Frank Gehry or the Bullet Building by Norman Foster manifest from that sketch. This is not entirely true, there are a number of people and processes missing from that scenario. A lot of things happen between the napkin sketch and when the doors of a building open and that stretch is where the…

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Tweet Today’s post is by guest contributor Bob Graham: 2015 has brought to downtown Phoenix new multifamily development projects that have awakened and alarmed local stakeholders. Any of these developments on their own would probably have ruffled a few feathers but then continued on to completion would be just one more minor erosion of urban fabric that we would adjust to. However when they all come up at once, the challenges of maintaining our progress towards a revitalized and sustainable downtown become all too stark. Current Events: Problem Projects The three projects that have caught the community’s attention are, from west…

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Tweet       *Join us for a tour of this amazing, one-of-a-kind cob structure on January 10, 2015 at 11am. See the end of the article for more information.* Artist Dan Reed Miller built a tiny house before tiny houses were all the rage. Inspired by Thoreau, Dan wanted to see if he could live simply in the city without the clutter and extra things that come with modern living but just aren’t necessary. In 2006, he got a chance to experiment with the idea. His friend Debbieanne had just bought a house in the quiet north Portland neighborhood…

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Tweet Modernism was king when I went to architecture school back in the late 90s and early 2000s. And the architect’s ego was carefully cultivated through very severe critiques of student work which quickly established who the stars of the class were and who the laggards were. Architecture was all about what we created and how we could impose our vision on the natural world. Professors blathered on with great delight about architects like Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer. These were architecture’s heroes. Nevermind that their urban planning proposals had little to do with the actual human experience and everything…

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Tweet In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs said that “Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.” But in an age of burgeoning urban populations and a pressing need to accommodate a more and more people into cities, does this still hold true? Shouldn’t we be replacing older smaller buildings with LEED Platinum high-rises? “Where do older, smaller buildings fit within cities that are seeking to maximize transit investments, increase density, and compete in the global economy” ask some urbanists.   A new report…

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Tweet Build it and they will come, right? For architects, all solutions to urban, suburban, and even rural problems lie in the built environment. Just look at Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City and even Paolo Soleri’s Arcology. These are all visions for cities that are supposed to be more egalitarian, more accessible and in Soleri’s case, more in harmony with nature. But what if the solution to the world’s problems isn’t to build something new? Or even to mess with what’s already there? Maybe the solution is to make room, not build something. Maybe the solution…

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