cedar

West Coast cabin – Clayoquot Sound, B.C.

September 6, 2012

The cabin is probably the true vernacular architecture of British Columbia’s West Coast and other parts of the Pacific Northwest. Vancouver must once have had some of these buildings, thought rampant demolition and ugly development are doing their best to eradicate any trace of this architectural past.

Weekend Cabin by Mark Osburn of Osburn Clarke

November 15, 2011

Beautiful simple cabin by my architect friend Mark Osburn and his firm Osburn Clarke. Via Adventure Journal.

I heard another architect say lately that the cabin form is the vernacular architecture of British Columbia, and that is probably true.

Brown paper packages tied up with string

December 15, 2010

These are a few of my favourite things. Above, a white painted branch with Kraft-paper wrapped gifts is a minimalist advent calendar, by the inventive DIY Brigg from Norway via The Style Files.

Categories: design, DIY, green, interiors, landscaping, Uncategorised

“If I Had a Hammer? What Do You Mean If?”

April 19, 2010

Before I start, I’m asking on behalf of the owners of this house that nobody reposts or reproduces any of these images anywhere without my permission. Like a lot of people who have built their own houses in the woods, the owners, who are relatives of mine, appreciate their privacy and feel a bit negative about seeing their house all over the internet.

Categories: architecture, British Columbia, Canadian design, design, green, Uncategorised, video

House with gongs

April 9, 2010

How did the decision to hang the gongs in the window come about? “Without eyes, our house is just a faceless shed?” Cool 70s modern house near the river, North Vancouver.

Categories: architecture, British Columbia, Uncategorised, Vancouver

A-frame Maritime Museum by CBK Van Norman

April 2, 2010

I’ve always loved this building. It’s part of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and was built in 1966 to house the icebreaker St. Roch. You can just see the top of the mast through the upper window.

Categories: architecture, Canadian design, design, Uncategorised, Vancouver

Wood and paper lamps from Japan

September 11, 2009

“Our lighting is hand-built in Japan from natural materials, including the hand-made paper (washi) of Eriko Horiki, the bent Japanese cedar of Toshiyuki Tani’s Wappa series, the coiled beech wood of the Bunaco Lacquer Ware Company, and the todomatsu pine slats of Takumi Kohgei.

Categories: British Columbia, craft, design, interiors, Uncategorised, Vancouver

Charred Cedar House by Terunobu Fujimori

August 30, 2009

This house is called the Yakisugi or “charred cedar” house. Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori is using a traditional Japanese technique of charring as a way to finish and preserve wood. See another charcoal house by Fujimori here.

Categories: architect, architecture, craft, design, green, landscaping, Uncategorised

At the lake

August 6, 2009

Today we spent the afternoon diving down and ripping out water lily roots from the muddy lake bottom, because even though the lilies are beautiful, they’re an introduced species and they’re slowly filling the lake.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

Smith House by Arthur Erickson

May 22, 2009

One last Vancouver house by Arthur Erickson. The house was built for and is still owned by the painterGordon Smith and his partner Marion. They have carefully maintained it over the years, in keeping with Erickson’s original design and intention.

Categories: design, Uncategorised

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This blog is a long, somewhat messy photo essay on the history and politics of design. Design's socio-historical context—that is, the constraints and influences on the way we make objects, dwellings and cities—seems too often ignored. We no longer know where our styles, tastes or objects really come from, and this damages our creativity and sense of meaning. Historical knowledge is so fugitive in the New World, with everything so decontextualized in the rapid flow of commodities and images. Don't even get me started on tumblr and pinterest. As Fran Lebowitz said, "Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board." As for the sort of design I'm personally interested in, full disclaimer.....read more ____________________________________

To read about my book project on Vancouver's UN-Habitat Forum event of 1976 concerning just and sustainable urban settlements, click here. Few know that Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead, Mother Teresa, Paolo Soleri and Maggie & Pierre Trudeau, along with many thousands of others, came to Vancouver in 1976 to talk about better, safer, fairer and greener cities worldwide. In fact it was the founding conference of UN Habitat, an agency built around a foundational document called The Vancouver Declaration. My book is about what happened that year and is a snapshot not just of Vancouver but of how people around the world began to view cities and themselves differently in the wake of, among other things, the first oil crisis. ____________________________________

cedar

West Coast cabin – Clayoquot Sound, B.C.

Weekend Cabin by Mark Osburn of Osburn Clarke

Brown paper packages tied up with string

“If I Had a Hammer? What Do You Mean If?”

House with gongs

A-frame Maritime Museum by CBK Van Norman

Wood and paper lamps from Japan

Charred Cedar House by Terunobu Fujimori

At the lake

Smith House by Arthur Erickson

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