Make your outdoor pool an indoor as well!
Live somewhere sunny enough for a pool, but windy enough for falling leaves? Hate having to put a tarp cover on? Want to lay by, or in, your pool even when it’s raining? If you answered yes to any of the following questions then you are in need of a Telescopic Pool. Designed by Inter Pool Cover Team, this design helps cover (pun intended) all-of-the-above.
This transparent, telescopic enclosure gives you the privacy you crave while adding a bit of style to your outdoor pool. It is especially useful if you live in great, but rainy, places like the Northwest and refuse to let mother nature keep you from your dream pool. When it does give you those few weeks of sunshine, just open and enjoy! Yet even when closed, you will still have the beautiful view you do when opened. You don’t even have to worry about the air flow once closed. Plus, the Telescopic Pool has an Air Fresh system that generates active ventilation.
Prices vary depending on the size and if you need one custom built. You can chose from their low enclosure, standard enclosure, half enclosure or bespoke enclosure design. Just email or call with your plans and ideas by finding them at the Telescopic Pool Enclosure website.
Technorati Tags: design, Inter Pool Cover Team, Pool Cover, Telescopic Pool
The Watsonville Area Water Resources Center in California
Earning a spot in the 2010 Top Ten Green Project is a great honor. One of the designs honored was The Watsonville Area Water Resources Center in Watsonville, California. This exceptionally designed piece of architecture has caught the eye of anyone and everyone who has visited the center.
Designed by WRNS Studio out of San Francisco, The Watsonville Area Water Resources Center is a informational, serviceable and visual presentation of the water recycling plant it assists. It combined three different city and county water departments into a work area designed to support collaboration on issues of water management, conservation, and quality in the Pajaro Valley. The building houses administrative offices, a regional command center, and a water quality lab. It didn’t take much for The American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment to name this one of their Top Ten Green Projects.
Water is the key ingredient of what makes this building Green friendly, relying mainly on recycled water. It is used to help heat and cool the building and the low-flow plumbing helps consolidate the use. Like with any structure going green, the company also uses high-efficiency lighting, natural ventilation, custom built rain screen and more.
This exceptionally designed piece of architecture has caught the eye of everyone who has visited.
The beauty of the building was created to blend in with it’s surroundings. Low to the ground with some sides containing close to floor-to-ceiling windows, you can’t help but stare in amazement at it’s structure. Not only is the beauty of The Watsonville Area Water Resources Center something to be in awe of, but what the Center stands behind is also. It supports the Water Recycling Project, a joint effort of the City of Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency. Together they provide recycled water to farmers throughout the coastal areas of South Santa Cruz and North Monterey counties.
Technorati Tags: Architecture, design, Top Ten Green Project, Watsonville Water Resources Center, WRNS Studio
Arcosanti
Paolo Soleri was born in 1919 in Turin, Italy. He received highest honors from the Politecnico di Torino in 1956 and came to the U.S. in 1947 to spend a year and a half at Taliesin West in Arizona and Taliesin in Wisconsin with Frank Lloyd Wright.
Soleri returned to Italy in 1950 where he was commissioned to build Ceramica Artistica Solimene, a large ceramics factory. Here he learned the concepts for his famous Arcosanti bells.
He settled in Arizona in 1956 and committed his life to Cosanti Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation teaching his philosophy and works under the influence of Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
The Foundation’s major project is Arcosanti which I have visited. It is a planned community under construction since 1970 and is 70 miles north of Phoenix, AZ. Based on the concept of Arcology, it marries architecture with ecology. It is a self-sustaining model of communal living.
Since 1970 over 6,000 visitors had participated in the construction project, it was only 3% complete as of 2005. The sale of the Arcosanti bells help to keep the Foundation alive, I have two of them and they are beautifully designed.
Soleri wind bells are made from either ceramic or bronze. You can watch them being made in the foundry on the premises, the red hot molten metal being cast to make each one by hand. I have had mine for many years; it is a treasure and a reminder of the dream of a man in the desert of Arizona.
Solari has received many awards for his work and written several books. He has three honorary doctorates and two fellowships from the Guggenheim in New York, NY.
Technorati Tags: architect, design, Paolo Soleri
Kennedy Libarary
Ieoh Ming Pei was born in Guangzhou, China in 1917 and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Better known as I.M. Pei he moved to the U.S. in 1935.
His mentors were Le Corbusier who he met while attending MIT in 1935 and Frank Lloyd Wright. While atending MIT and Harvard he befriended Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.
As a child he learned English from reading the Bible and Charles Dickens in the Protestant school run by missionaries that he attended. He loved Hollywood and especially Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Watching Bing Crosby movies inspired him to move to America to attend college.
His most controversial building is the glass and steel pyramid he designed for the Louvre museum in Paris in the early 1980’s. He has won many prizes in architecture most notibly the Pritzker Prize sometimes called the Nobel Prize of architecture.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis chose I.M. Pei to construct the memorial library dedicated to President John F. Kennedy after his assassination in 1963. She felt he was an architect full of promise like Kennedy was, and he was born the same year as the President. Pei considers this commission to be the most important of his life, filled with symbolism for optimism. It was dedicated on October 20, 1979.
His body of work is enormous, I. M. Pei still dazzles us with his vision and style. Modernistic with cubist themes he combines traditional elements of architecture with progressive design based on geometric patterns.
Technorati Tags: architect, design, I.M. Pei
Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan is best known as the architect who built the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California for Randolf William Hearst the newspaper magnate. Julia was born in San Francisco, CA in 1872 and raised in nearby Oakland just across the Bay.
She designed over 700 buildings in her career just in California. Throughout her career she built many buildings serving women and girls. Many Bay Area YWCA’s are her design.
Graduating from the University of California in Berkeley with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1894, she was urged by her friend and mentor Bernard Maybeck to go to Paris to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She was denied at first because they did not allow women. Upon her second try she deliberately failed to make a point and the third time she passed the architecture exams and placed 13th out of 376 applicants. She was the first woman to graduate.
She returned to Berkeley and worked on projects on campus, providing decorative elements on the Hearst Mining Building and designs for the Hearst Greek Theater. In 1904 she opened her own office.
Many commissions followed the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. She built many building in the Bay Area, The Julia Morgan School for Girls in Oakland pays homage to her. The school is the only middle school for girls in the East Bay occupying Alderwood Hall at Mills College, a 1924 design by Morgan.
She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame by Governor Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver on May 28, 2008 located at The California Museum of History, Women and the Arts. Her great-niece accepted the honor.
Technorati Tags: architect, design, Julia Morgan
Palace of Fine Arts
Born in New York City, Bernard Ralph Maybeck was the son of a German immigrant. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France and moved to Berkeley, California in 1892.
At the University of California, Berkeley he taught architecture to such famous students as Julia Morgan and William Wurster. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1951.
Maybeck was a pioneer in the Arts & Crafts movement but was equally comfortable working in the Gothic and Beaux-Arts Classicism styles. In 1910 he designed the First Church of Christ, Scientist which is a National Historic Landmark and considered one of his finest works. It is a mixture of Medieval Europe, Celtic, Japanese, Nordic and shingle style architecture – the effect is pure magic.
Maybeck designed the famous landmark The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, CA as part of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. This structure embodies how Roman architecture could fit within a Calfornia context. In this design he took advantage of negative space with the absence of a connecting roof to the rotunda and art gallery, there are no windows in the gallery and it is set against a backdrop of the bay and the local flora.
His homes and buildings can be seen dotting his beloved city of Berkeley and all around the BayArea, he is one of the most beloved architects of our time in this part of the world. It is because of his whimsical design that I grew to love and appreciate the architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Technorati Tags: Architecture, design, Maybeck
Nissan Cube
With all the boxy styled cars on the market why did the Nissan Cube win the 2010 Automobile Magazine Design of the Year Award, in a word charm. The Cube is organic in appearance; it imbues a sense of limitless space once inside.
Futuristic, yet retro the Cube appeals to all of the senses; it is not beautiful, it is not sexy but it will make you smile. Available in four models you can build the look that fits your lifestyle.
The first thing that caught my eye was the wrap around rear/side window; it is unique and allows for greater visibility for the driver. There is space for 5 people to comfortably enjoy the ride. With 6 air bags for safety and gas mileage of up to 31 mpg this car is a winner.
The windows are inset from the surface with an asymmetrical rear side-hinged door accessing the storage area. The interior is spacious, in fact it feels enormous. There is ample headroom, elbow room and legroom accommodating even the tallest of passengers; 58 cubic feet in fact. It feels like a limo at an economy price.
Shag Dash Topper
The dashboard design has a wave pattern with circles in the headliner and door speakers, there are no hard edges to be seen and it gives one a sense of flow. The buttons and switches are pleasing to the touch.
Based on its aerodynamic design the wind noise is at a minimum. It is filled with color options and whimsical features down to the shag circle dash topper. This car just makes you smile.
Add to this IIHS picked the Cube as a 2010 Top Safety Pick and KBB named it one of its 2009 Top 10 Coolest Cars under $18,000. If you are a recent grad Nissan will give you a $500.00 rebate for a limited time. Looking cool on a budget never felt so good starting at $13,990, check it out.
Technorati Tags: car, Cube, economy, Nissan
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