March 17, 2013
The largest clear-span wooden building in the world, constructed entirely without glue wood, was built as a U.S. military air station hangar. It is now the Tillamook Air Museum in Oregon.
September 18, 2012
Above: Farm house in Keldur, Iceland. These are “earth sheltered” houses, an ancient form of passive solar, sustainable architecture. It’s the practice of “packing earth against building walls for external thermal mass, to reduce heat loss and maintain steady indoor temperature.”
From Wikipedia: “A sod roof or turf roof is a traditional Scandinavian type of green roof covered with sod on top of several layers of birch bark on gently sloping wooden roof boards.
May 30, 2012
Perhaps I don’t understand the business side of design and furniture manufacturing, but I’m always confused by the fact that certain historic chairs get re-licensed and reproduced, while others fade away.
October 5, 2008
It’s strangely gratifying when a design or craft tradition thought to have arisen autochthonous in one place and from one people turns out to have a far more mongrel origin. In my experience, when looking at artisanal and other design, it seems that cultural borrowing and hybridity are overwhelmingly the rule rather than the exception and purity has nothing to do with it.
