





Stasi Prison, Berlin (with its original 1951 furnishings, eerily chipper)
Once you understand the nature of color, space and design, your prison will reflect good planning and radiate a personality only you can give it. Play smooth surfaces against rough. Reserve brilliance for accent pieces. If you keep it simple, serene, with a minimum of clutter, you’ll find it warm and friendly, and most easy to keep.
July 29th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

Malmo
July 29th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »
July 29th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

A strip mall near Mechanicsburg, PA
July 29th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »







We met each other on swings and mattresses in a big bright metal treehouse… At TED India I met Freeman Murray who gave a talk about his pallet rack building and invited us all to check it out in Bangalore. Using standard warehouse storage pallet racks, he and other creative locals built Jaaga, a three-story collaborative community space for art exhibits, dance performances, film showings, lectures, parties, and anything else you can think up. It’s super flexible and relatively low-cost ($15,000 for 3000 square feet). Coincidentally a few days earlier I was chatting about flexible spaces with Adam Greenfield in Helsinki and he put Cedric Price on my radar – a British architect who, in 1961, came up with the idea of the Fun Palace, a flexible community space of moveable and modular units whose only fixed element was a structural grid of steel columns and beams. It was never built, but when I saw Jaaga I thought ooh it is now!

July 28th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »


In Mexico Beach the waves crash into a Connie Francis song and one firework poofs in the sky.
July 27th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »





Aerial acrobatics over the Gulf of Mexico! The Blue Angels thunder across the sky while BP workers pile up trash bags of tar balls and girls lay out topless. It’s a whole lot of look at the Pensacola Beach Air Show. While jets circles overhead people talk about the famous sand, once “sugar white” and now stained yellow. A tan lady stares at the trash bags. “Why are they going so slow with toy shovels? It all makes me want to puke.” Another woman complains they’re only allowed to work fifteen minutes each hour. The workers show me what they’re scooping – soft dark pellets the size of cockroaches to coasters. He circles a tar ball in the sand and says they collected ones the size of plates earlier this morning. Then he looks around. “I’m not supposed to be talking to anyone.”
It’s hard to tell where vacation ends and hazard begins. 125 miles east, in Mexico Beach, the Gulf is full of kids. 125 miles west, in Biloxi, families are splashing in the waves. One mile west, an official sign from the county health department says the beach has been affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and avoid the water. Here on this beach, a handwritten chalk sign says stay out of the water, but only because of the high surf and currents. No one wants to cut the local tourism short if they don’t have to. People still walk along the shore and let the waves hit their feet. Six out of forty beach chairs are used. Men in neon vests walk slowly with shovels while girls in bright bikinis adjust their straps and waves leave brown outlines in the sand. “Is it safe to go in the water?” one lady asks me. “I let my grandson go in yesterday… Is that wrong?”



July 24th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »

Nashville, TN
July 24th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »


“At the edge of Brooklyn or the world sits a quiet tea room waiting for you.” – Justin L. on Ashbox Cafe
July 24th, 2010 | Posted in Notebook | No Comments »