Earthbound Thoughts on Apple's "Spaceship"

Inside Bay Area is reporting on the City of Cupertino's approval of Norman Foster's design for a toroid shaped campus for Apple.

This building strikes me as incredibly insular (viewed in plan, it is literally a bubble) and not indicative of a company that values its ties to the larger community (Apple may have wonderful community initiatives for all I know, but this building is stating the opposite through its design). Add to this the fact that the City of Cupertino anticipates the new Apple campus increasing its already excessive vehicular traffic situation.  Consider the remark by resident Carol Baker (quoted in the Inside Bay Area piece) pointing out that essentially the city is so dependent on Apple economically that they cannot refuse permission to build.

Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group

Lastly, the piece reports that Apple's current campus will be demolished. I am truly bothered by waste on that scale. Why can it not be repurposed into high-density affordable housing?

Cincinatti's Demolished Public Library

Photo essay via Buzzfeed is amazing. Not only was the building gorgeous and dramatic, but the photos themselves are so interesting with hazy sunshine glow captured on the B/W film. This is why we need historic preservation laws.

Image: Public Library of Cincinatti and Hamilton County

Le Grand Continential

PICK ME! PICK ME! PICK ME!

I completely want to do this and cannot think of a more amazing way to celebrate (fingers, they remain crossed) my MA graduation.

previous incarnation

Oh, wait, rehearsals twice a week...hmm. That's a bit much during the semester. Sigh. NEXT TIME.

Open Office Alcoves and Breakout Spaces -- from Forbes

Forbes has a great piece on furniture solutions for quiet breakout spaces and collaboration spaces within the open office concept, along with a slideshow of some products from Vitra. I love the Bouroullec brothers' Alcove sofa!

Image: Forbes.com

Image: Forbes.com

Red Apple Apartment Building by Aedes Studio

I'm freaking out over this building on Arch Daily right now...the texture, the dynamic push/pull effect of the facade, done on a large scale with glass forms and on a smaller scale with the brick itself, the amazing lights-in-cages. I can't even handle it. More photos at the above link to Arch Daily.

Photo: Aedes Studio

US Embassy in Athens by Walter Gropius

Another reason why I'd die and die again to work at Ann Beha...they are shortlisted for a refurb of the US Embassy in Athens. My husband and I actually stayed very close to it when we went there in 2010. It's pretty cool...

Spaulding Rehab Hospital -- Perkins + Will

Great piece in the Globe about the careful attention paid to the new Spaulding Rehab Hospital by Perkins + Will.

Photo: Pat Greenhouse / Boston Globe

Updated Lecture Hall Rendering in Podium

I can't get directional lights to work in Podium...not sure if they are buggy, or what. I had to optical engineer some directional lights by making my own concave reflectors. Optics for the win!

I Clearly Need This Book

How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand.

And the BPL has it. Yes.

MIT's Building 20, the Plywood that Could

Here's a question: when designing facilities for research, what can we learn from a famous, "temporary" plywood building at MIT that wasn't really designed at all? Building 20's long and illustrious history of innovation contains much insight into how occupants and user culture shape space and vice versa.

Read about it here and here.

In Progress...NESAD Redesign for Contract II Studio

The four-hour rendering:

Reception Area -- hand rendering and Photoshop

In which I realize Ruth Bader Ginsberg is the Coolest Lady Alive...

The SCOTUS justice has this (or a variant thereof) hanging in her office:

Josef Albers "Homage to the Square"

Also there's that thing where she fought for equal protection for women under the law for most of her adult life and graduated first in her class from Columbia Law while raising small children. I don't think this woman could possibly be any more awesome. Leslie Knope and I are starting a fan club.