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 […]
Tag Archives: vernacular architecture
Rigorous Fun
After a day of rides at the amusement park with my daughter and her friend, my last thought on the last day of her summer vacation before the first day of the first year of high school, goes something like, structural rigor is most robust when in the service of Fun.
Apricots and Ponderosa
Looking south over the gorge towards the Seven Devils and the Wallowa Mountains from the tinder dry, high prairie of northeastern Oregon, you’d hardly expect to find apricots and blackberries growing along the banks of the Imnaha as you descend over rocky terrain, past tall stands of Ponderosa pine. Dense pine forests still rim the […]
Roadtrip to Mildred’s Lane
seascape under a stormy sky off the coast of Brigantine Island, New Jersey The Delaware River drains about four percent of the nation’s rainwater into the Atlantic through Delaware Bay, about 20 miles South of the island of Brigantine, New Jersey, where I began my journey to Mildred’s Lane. Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I’ve […]
A Lovable Barn
Unconstrained by the rigors of domestic comportment, outbuildings often reveal the true character of a homeplace. Their practical requirements associated with daily life reflected in the interior workings- storage, work, repair- are kept in balance with their more poetic exterior. A lovable barn is where you can find shade on a hot day, rinse your […]
Frati Portico
Most Sunday mornings I cut wood with my friends Richard and Pierre on Richard’s homestead outside of Occidental. I call it chainsaw yoga and it is perhaps the only thing I do with such regularity. The routine is triply rewarding- we manage Richard’s woodlot by removing dead oak, supply ourselves with fuel to fire our […]
Humbly Inspiring
Respini’s Homestead Sometimes it takes generations to integrate a house with the converging forces of the landscape.