designing homes that fit your lifestyle!

this one has been a long time coming but my conversation with my sister just now makes it urgent. upon finding herself and family with a good chunk of wealth, she is now looking to buy lakeside land and build a new house. i am of course not to the point where i could detail out her dream home so she's taken up the task of browsing southern living floor plans and passing along "architects" names that i should advise her on. the latest is Gary Keith Jackson and hopefully he's not the last. at what point did the extruded street facade become architecture? does wrapping everything in marble make for fine living? what color would you like: golden desert wheat or beigy beige beige? i partially blame you, creator of MTV cribs.

and then of course the same people who live in these mansions fund the creation of cheap soul sucking strip centers that are meant to stand for about 20 years then they all fall down. i can't even name whatever material that is being caked on every new commercial building around. fake stucco? it lacks relation to anything real and tangible so they paint and cornice it to death until it slightly resembles some other type of material. it's architectural tofu.

what's got me most scared is how we rebuild after the hurricanes. first off do you? and secondly if you do, do you write a blank check to contractors and have them throw up placeless floor plans. southern louisiana and mississippi still held traces of thoughtful architecture. a lot of that may be gone because of things beyond our control, but do you just give up and forget all about the shotgun houses?

why do you think americans find europe so enchanting and name our mansions mediterranean? there's a fascination with places that stand the test of time. let's build some of those. if they get destroyed, then learn your lesson and build smarter (not just better). rant complete.

the timeless days of summer

oh how me and the neighborhood boys would play stick ball neath the power lines. we'd fetch tadpoles from the nearby creek. and nothing says summer like an afternoon escape to the local shake n' fries.

for those of us not on the public school seasonal schedule, summer ends this week. i ended up spending the end right where it started with my dad down along the gulf coast. in between i've tossed aside the aqua socks of summers past and donned a pair of wingtips. ok, i am allowed to wear flip flops at work, but i've been told i'm handling this adulthood thing really well either way. then again today i was likened to a 40 year old virgin, trapped between man and boyhood.

earlier on in july during a cliff diving excursion, i misplaced my watch and had been going tan line free ever since. it was borderline liberating for my buttoned down lifestyle. my dad urged me to retrieve the watch in order to be a man, or something, so lo and behold, thank you david for getting it back for me.

so cue the cicadas and fire up the conroe high school fighting tiger marching tiger band, as summer 2005 slowly rumbles to an end. i'm gonna stop short of quoting sappy green day lyrics. it's fall.

day 2

my dad and i tried relating what we'd seen in mississippi to jerry, the developer at st. joe i'm working with. how can you actually justify building an entire city along the gulf coast of florida when it could just as easily be gone in half a day? and building from scratch seams inane when there's so much that needs to be repaired elsewhere. building material costs rise. labor is impossible to come by. makes you think where priorities lie. jerry was in between shook and depressed.

i guess i don't have to wax on such complexities of architecture as i'm just an intern. for the rest of the day my dad and i were running around the deep south trying to make our way back to texas. tip: remember to set your watch to eastern time so you don't your overnight bus. i was slightly better off and had my discount flight that took me back through miami. shaq, will smith, and david caruso send their best.

journey complete.

day 1

my dad ended up jumping on for the trip east. and coming from the man who originally told me to stay far north of any of the hurricane damage, i found it surprising that we took a two hour detour south into mississippi. along the way we met a man who swept sand from the driveway of his house that was no longer there. we met fema workers and national guardsmen. we met a woman who'd stayed for 4 days in new orleans to care for her nursing home patients. we met another who'd watched people die in the convention center. most of these photos are from waveland, mississippi where cars were on top of cars and entire houses were missing save for the foundation and front steps.

amidst all of that, it was nice to see the gulfport applebee's back open and serving hot plates of whatever it is they serve at an applebee's.

$2.89

with things how they are, this might be the last great american road trip. in the next few days i'll drive by the astrodome, up to conroe, head out early monday morning along I-10 as far as that will get me into louisiana, through the backroads of mississippi and alabama and everything else katrina, and into tallahassee simply to deliver a model without risk of destruction. after that, it's a whirlwind flight tuesday down to miami and back up to houston/conroe for the night only to make it back here to work around lunchtime wednesday.

i wasn't kidding in my last post about the delta being hit hard. it wasn't until today though that it made the news. click on the video there too, if you feel like you haven't seen enough footage for the past week and a half.

on a lighter note, while sorting to find some donations i discovered a shirt i haven't actually worn since high school. it's somehow been following me around through all my college closets until now. it might have even made it to italy. anyway, i hope there's some new orleanian going through a big fat plaid phase.

worry some

next week i'll be in new orleans. or i was supposed to be. the thing is me and my model still have to make our way to tallahassee before september 15th, but that now requires a detour and a new pitstop city. either way i'm crossing the path of katrina and taking my camera.

as scary as things are in new orleans right now, i know everything i saw along the mississippi delta back at the beginning of summer is destroyed. the town at the end, ironically named venice, was nothing but mobil homes, shanty baptist churches, and oil refineries butting up against levees. seems like none of that is left.

some of our structural consulatants are headed over there before long to...well consult structure and see if they can save any of the surviving buildings. in our office we're raising money for the new orleans AIA. as stupid as that sounds, architecture is a big part of what makes new orleans new orleans and not just a third world war zone.

oh, and the saints will be playing football here in the alamodome this season. bored spurs fan nonchalantly rejoice.