Just can’t believe Mark’s photography…

Instagram for Mark Smith Photography

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

Last week we got an email from Maria Michaelson, who lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest on a piece of land on which there are numerous innovative buildings, sculptures, boats, a house bus, and a variety of imaginative constructions. It’s called the Alchemy Art Center.

These buildings are mostly built by my husband, Eben Shay, although we live in a community of 8, so we have all been involved in building them. Eben is a boat builder, so he is always making everything curved. We live in the Pacific Northwest, on San Juan Island. And when we bought our property 6 years ago (with some of the buildings there but needing new roofs and reconstruction) we were very inspired by your Shelter books. We have started a nonprofit art center on the property to host artists in residence and art classes.

Also on Instagram: instagram.com/alchemyartcenter

On Saturday Lesley and I were in Union Square in San Francisco and did a little sightseeing. We went into the Neiman-Marcus store, a new and architecturally disastrous building that replaced the beloved City of Paris building (yes, they preserved the atrium, but the sleek glass and metal skin around the rotunda, as architectural Paul Goldberg wrote in the NYT, is “…one of this city’s most conspicuous architectural mistakes.”)

MOREOVER, check out the prices ($790 for a pair of sneakers, $5300 for that pair of long black boots)!

Almost all the items (especially the purses and handbags) in there looked ugly to my unsophisticated country boy eyes. Well, wait a minute, here’s a nice shirt, but, ulp, $1650.

What kind of people buy krap at such outrageous prices?

Go to my Instagram post to see the 40-odd comments.

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

www.davieshughes.com

Hi Lloyd,

This photo shows the structure of St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in Wellington, New Zealand. The church is around 100 years old and is an early attempt at building in a Gothic style with concrete. The stained glass windows were imported by ship from Munich, Germany from a factory later destroyed in World War Two.

Kind regards,
Bill (Choquette)