three of eight Space Chairs for Becoming Independent, ready for finishing I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with artists with developmental disabilities in the design of my Space Chairs for the new playroom at Becoming Independent (BI) in Santa Rosa. The eight chairs are made from locally-milled Monterey Cypress, and their backs frame panels lovingly painted by […]
Tag Archives: slow design
Comice Pear Harvest
our own freshly harvested Comice pears (Pyrus communis) After pressing the majority of our Bartlett pears into cider, some of which we combined with the juice of ripe Roma apples, we made a point of reserving our delicious Comice pears for eating raw. The large pear has the juiciest, creamiest fruit, and its flavors combine […]
The Week in Bloom
stacks of cedar dry in the warm September air I counted five Kestrel perched along barbed wire as I wound down Marshall-Petaluma Road towards Tomales Bay from Evan Shively’s mill. I had been inspecting the deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara) Evan milled for my latest interior design commission, and I was delighted to find the fragrant […]
In Praise of the Bead Plane
Around the autumn equinox is typically our hottest, driest time of year, with golden brown fields and chalk dry dust under the orchard trees, now barren after harvest. The tips of the redwood branches have turned an orange-y yellow, and happily soak up the sea fog of a rare night. I can feel the rains […]
Watershed Morphology Workshop
representations of water from across time and cultures How do we indicate water, let alone its increasing significance in maintaining the fabric of a healthy urban watershed? As we prepare a final design for the City of Oakland’s system of Watershed Markers, Ene and I will spend the weekend at farmer’s markets and major pedestrian […]
Furniture for Becoming Independent
concept sketch of the Space Chair for Becoming Independent I’ve been commissioned to design tables and chairs for the youth of Becoming Independent, most of whom have developmental disabilities of varying degree. The seating structures will be used in a new playroom that doubles as a space for observation and evaluation, so the tables and […]
The Quiet Mechanics of Country Life
Here the soils of daily washing stay on the land, conveyed by gravity through pipes to the leach fields to join the earth of the tree duff, filtering fresh rainfall to replenish the dwelling well. Meanwhile the ferrous field well spews rustily over the garden, adding a mineral edge to the lusty bite of a […]