Dieter Klose is a designer-builder, sailor, skier, and mountain climber living in Alaska. We ran five pages on his building projects, van travel, and design philosophy in our book, Builders of the Pacific Coast in 2008. A month or so ago, Dieter sent us these photos of a recent project in his present hometown of Petersburg, Alaska, along with the letter below.
It made me reflect on how innovative and tuned-in are all the builders in this book; they just keep creating wonderful and witty structures.
Greetings Lloyd! I’m sending you these pics just because I thought you’ll enjoy the bridge. I offered the local park (my services) to design and oversee construction of a bridge over a 40 foot wide creek for free, and they let me have my freedom and got a grant for $10,000. I had an Eagle Scout get his big project by having him organize a big gang to move two 42′ logs and two 26′ logs — I did the rest and it was fun! The two wings don’t touch, I wanted th cantilevers to bounce a bit when you walked across and they do just right! My version of a glorified log crossing. There’s something for everyone — old ladies can make it to the troll booth to sit, or you can risk the no hand-rails bounce to get across — I’ve been getting lots of thanks which has been a blessing: it worked! Thought you’d enjoy it too.
–All the best, Dieter Klose
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
It made me reflect on how innovative and tuned-in are all the builders in this book; they just keep creating wonderful and witty structures.