Dinosaurs, Abe, Maya Kiva, Professorial, Classical, Emily Amy, Kai Lin

No dinosaurs were injured during our extended family outing to Fernbank on Sunday.


But some funny-bones were tickled.

What happened Monday? I don't remember. but Tuesday...


Architecture Tourist "The Next Generation" all play coed soccer on Tuesday nights at Silverback Park. Team Bottoms Up faced Team Tenacious D who had a real ringer: Abe.


The chicken played keeper. It wasn't pretty but it was funny.

Wednesday featured a double dip at the Georgia Tech College of Architecture. Georgia Tech offers many free lectures by international design talent sometimes on the very same day in the very same place at the very same time.


I encountered Maya Design unexpectedly. I was waiting for the professorial lecture and noticed students rushing upstairs to the Stubbins Design Studio. I followed and barged right in. I am, after all, looking a bit professorial these days.


The left goatee is Mickey McManus, president, the right goatee is founder Joe Bailey. They had a love-in, be-in, design-in, human factors-in in their own kiva.


Within minutes I had notes for a blog post on a subject I'd never considered. I offered to shine shows and clean toilets at Maya.


Then the professorial lecture: Georgia Tech had just named Dan Immergluck Professor of of City and Regional Planning and that is a big deal. For the occasion Professor Immergluck gave a lecture for all comers.


The lecture title came from Jean-Paul Sartre's grim play. What do academics have to say about housing trends? The room was full of students, practicing planners and developers who wanted to find out. They asked questions.

On Thursday something completely different:


The Southeast chapter of the Institute for Classical Architecture and Art (ICAA) met at the ADAC showroom of Ainsworth Noah.


It was mostly a party in a beautiful showroom. We met for a few minutes. July Talley deftly introduced the ICAA to newcomers. By the way: the Shutze Awards submission deadline is November 28, 2011.

Friday was for opening receptions at Emily Amy Gallery and Kai Lin Art.


Emily Amy showed new work by Cecil Touchon. He does collages, many from billboard waste. I like this one a lot.


The black and yellow too.


Emily dug through the file of Cecil's smaller work.


I love hovering over the flat file.

Then to Kai Lin Art for the opening of SNAP.


Kai Lin Art just moved from Midtown to Buckhead, almost next door to the Roxy.


This is Yu-Kai Lin himself. He remembers my name, bless his heart.


Karen Divine.


The Dorn Brothers, Travis and Nate.


Rob Simmons.


Greg Noblin on the left.


Patrick Heagney.


Rob, Nate, Patrick and Travis were in that "artist reception" mood if you know what I mean.


By Patrick Heagney.


Busy week.

Here Tuesday gone Thursday, Teardown on Amsterdam

This was Tuesday, October 25. This was a little house on Amsterdam, an "affordable" for this neighborhood.

There is no way to make this pretty.

It's got that bloodless condemned look.

They'd gotten the hazardous materials out, it's got gravel and the silt fence, the permit box and the signs.


There's no for sale sign. Maybe it's a custom house.


This block of Amsterdam is relatively busy, a cut though from Monroe and Piedmont Park. Quite a few homes have been redone over the years.

There are still many modest ones. They aren't what folks-who-are-able want these days.



Anyway, that was Tuesday.

Today, Wednesday, October 27 is another day.







I'm using my Trello Teardown Tracker to keep up with these.

It will take a while to see the finished product. I could use a little help. If you are interested let me know.

An interior designer by defense, interview with Bobby McAlpine

I had to good fortune to visit a Bobby McAlpine house (McAlpine Tankersley Architecture) at the Beacham & Company, Realtors party last week night. I wrote a post about it " After Bobby's Big, Big Door and More at the Beacham Party"



That wasn't enough so I re-listened to the Bobby McAlpine interview by the Skirted Roundtable from August 2010. The Home Within Us was just out. Mr. Alpine and the Joni, Linda, and Megan totally rocked!!! You should listen.

Here are some quotes to whet your appetite.

11:30
(Do new clients have want a house like you've already done or do they want something new)
They sense something, I think, from me I hope...that I might be the soothsayer for them...I would hope always that no one would want me to repeat a thing...I'm much more interested in listening and reading people."

13:10
(I like your interiors do you consider yourself an interior designer or architect?)
"I'd prefer to be known as an architect...I am an interior designer by defense because my interiors just get wasted. If you want be recognized as an architect you have to have good interiors...because up until now it's the only mechanism (interiors) for publication and furthering you...you can't afford misses and losses. So I took it by the horns."

17:20
(buying and building own houses in Nashville)
"I'm a mover...I bought a modern house to live in in the interim...it's kind of fabulous. The architecture is like nothing I'd have anything to do with but to be in it is incredible."

24:00 (when design looses it way)
"Everything that becomes mature and becomes heritable is subtle ... it takes a real strong and smart appetite to try to develop what's going to last."

25:54 (what is "American" style)
"American is a dream sewn up in cotton, it's not silk or wool or stone or anything else. It's sewn in a common material that is provincial and it's lovely because it's so pure of heart. Maybe a little lacking of resource, maybe a little lacking of background, or credential, or bloodline or whatever. But there is something lovely about it ... it's loveliest architecture shows up through the naivety of it's natives."

33:35 (speaking about expensive steel windows)
"It's ironic ... humble is always the most expensive thing you can do."

40:50 (Choose great space or great decor/furnishings?)
"As an architect I would chose the space first ... really really right ... gorgeous ... poetry ... something heart-full (heartfelt?) to it ..."

"If I can't(get the right space) ... I would certainly decorate the #@!!% out of something that wasn't right..."

42:54 (do you have a favorite room?)
"No ... I love sequence; I love for things to unfold..."

43:00 (what is really, deeply important to me)
"The minute you crack open the container (meaning the house) I want you to be destroyed ... disheveled by the level of intimacy, what's being offered you has got to bring you to your knees. It's not to impress you; it is to tell you how badly wanted you are and how long we've been waiting for you."

47:40 (after visiting the Lutyens house on which he modeled a home, the one of the book cover)
"Lutyens ... mine is so much better."

In the big room.

182.5

Pretty Good Week: Old Music, Bobby, Lions, Squirrels, Meadows, Parade, Now Painting, Demolition, Occupy Atlanta

After a Yeah Burger lunch with our old friend Jim Olson, JoAnn and I did some cruising to finish the week.

You have to look up to find the lions in bow ties at Trinity and Pryor. I don't think "bow tie" is the proper architectural term. Can you help me out on that?


We saw lions at The Westside Foundry too.


JoAnn loves the boulders in the Oakland Gate Meadow. The proposed "Capital Gateway Park" will run from here along Martin Luther King all the way to the capital. But we hope they don't tear down Daddy D'z BBQ in the process.


The meadow is right outside the gate.


The week started last Friday night with a eclectic Oktoberfest party at Melvin Gallery in the Virginia Cotton Docks. We met the awesome "Now Painter" Janssen Robinson who painted to the tune of our buds, the Muleskinner McQueen Trio. Little kids danced in person and cows danced on video. It was a fun for the whole family and a heck of a night in the Old 4th Ward.


I heard more old-time music on Saturday, I'm talking medieval French love songs from Asteria Musica at Agnes Scott College. I blogged it at "Asteria soundchecks Château de Germolles."


The new tenants moved into our rustic Morningside charmer.


We enjoyed some brick painting on Zimmer.


No week is complete for Architecture Tourists without some good old fashioned demolition. These are the remains of Building 6 at Emory's Briarcliff Campus. They tore down buildings 7 and 8 too. We could hear the crunching from our front porch. These will not be missed.


It was a particularly good Tuesday. Bloggers and many others celebrated at the Beacham & Company, Realtors® "Beacham Series” release party at a McAlpine-Tankersley house. Wahoo. I blogged it at "Bobby's Big, Big Door and More at the Beacham Party."


The recycling truck trashed our circle again. What are we going to do?


Gordon visited. This is one of his favorite houses in Atlanta. It's one of ours too. "It's ironic ... humble is always the most expensive thing you can do." - Bobby McAlpine


On Thrusday I visited Occupy Atlanta at Woodruff Park.


What do you know, the Georgia State Homecoming Parade came through. The band marched down right down Broad Street.

I love a parade.

Bobby's Big, Big Door and More at the Beacham Party

I mean the Bobby McAlpine door (McAlpine Tankersley Architecture) at the Beacham & Company, REALTORS^® "Beacham Series” release party Tuesday night.

The Architecture Tourist Lutyens Lovers SIG thought the party was just for us. This is exactly what we like to do on Tuesday night.



Kyle Studivent, builder and blogger at "The well Composed Home," and I walked outside to have a look. It was just one of the smile-generators in the house. Makes moving a grand piano easier I'm sure but I think it's the wit.

Here is the whole composition.


It's a beauty you won't see in a real estate ad. This is the view from the parking court. For Kyle and me it was a piece of heaven.

The parking court was so good, I had to photograph the electric meter, you gotta have one, even in a McAlpine house.


Mmm, mmm, mmm. Those zigs and zags, cornices and gutters, lentils and shutters. Just yummy. Remember, this the service side of the house where the basketball goal is, trashcans too but I didn't see them.

Here is the driveway.


Nice driveway no? The house is right up there.


This is the front porch. But compared to the porch on my little house, this needs a fancy French name. I didn't realize these were shutters until I got up close. The front door is behind me. The great room is though those French doors. You can see the porch from the inside in the video at the bottom.


The foyer is small and cozy. I'm looking down from the 2nd floor. I think the foyer has the highest charm/square-foot ratio I've ever experienced.

Many mansions whack you upside the head with their foyer. Know what I mean?

This foyer says, "We are not giants, we're just folks who want you to feel comfortable in our house."

But the foyer is not just a foyer.


It's in the middle of a long upstairs enfilade from the children's wing, through the great room, to the master. It's a box seat with a balcony for observing the flow of folks through the house.


James told me that a McAlpine signature is a mirror on a window. Here you go: this is looking into the master bath, the mirror hanging above the sink in the center window.


There was so much to look at. I'd turn the chairs so I could look at the detials.


By this time the crowd was shoulder to shoulder inside. Kyle showed me this detail.

Most of us the bloggers got there early. Kyle - Well Composed Home, James - Limestone and Boxwoods, Blayne - This Photographer's Life (Architecture + Interior Design), John - Clickscape John also does a heroic job at the Midtown Archive, Holly, our hero and heroine, was there from Things That Inspire, Niki from Single Bubble Pop. Rodolofo doesn't exactly blog but he tweets @CastroDesignATL and Facebooks and is a best architect friend to bloggers.


Kyle, James, and Blayne had a moment in the keeping room before the multitudes arrived.

I don't want to embarrass anyone but Helen, Capella, Ally, Claire, Angela, Travis: This will go your permanent record unless you bring an written excuse. Cristi is excused, she sent Billy and he did run the party and we heard that the baby is really, really cute.

Finally, a little video of the great room before the crowd arrived.



Thanks so much so much to Blayne, Glennis and all the folks at Beacham & Company, REALTORS^® and to Bobby and to Bruce and Lisa. Thanks to the bloggers who have been so nice to me, who've shown me so much.