Photo by Lawrence Anderson, a really good architectural photographer
Formosa 1140, a condominium building in Los Angeles designed by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, sits next to a public green space that was created out of part of its lot.
Article in New York Times on multi-family housing, May 5, 2023, by Julie Lasky
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
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)
The Red Rockers’ 60-foot dome in Colorado, built from math in Domebook One. Jack Fulton and I dropped in on them unannounced on a snowy Saturday night in 1972 when we were on a trip shooting photos for Shelter (published in 1973). We lucked into a venison dinner and then a rock-and-roll band in a small nearby town.
The Rockers had moved to Colorado from LA and built the communal dome.
But as time passed, couples wanted more privacy and began building little outlying sheds.
Attic in Kelmscott Manor (near Oxford, UK), home of William Morris, founder of The Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Photo by Frederic H. Evans.
From the chapter of my forthcoming book Live From California: Breaking Free in the ’60s titled “Studying the Art of Building,” which details my trip to England to study real building after giving up on domes.
A 1,400-square-foot modular cottage from Impresa Building Systems was part of an outdoor display of modestly sized homes. Credit…Mikayla Whitmore for The New York Times
Excerpted from article in NY Times February 10, 2023, by Julie Lasky
So for the first installment of a new column called “Living Small” — exploring the choices some people are making to live as simply, sustainably or compactly as possible, for ethical or aesthetic reasons, or both — we visited the association’s annual trade fair, the International Builders’ Show, to see how builders, manufacturers and architects are responding to this struggle.…
And who doesn’t love a little house? Visitors swarmed an outdoor area of the show where several factory-built examples had been erected. The most eye-catching was Casita, a 375-square-foot house that could be hauled to its site by a Tesla and unfolded like a flat-packed box. Manufactured by Boxabl, a Nevada-based company, Casita comes with plumbing, electricity and appliances, and costs $60,000. According to David Thompson, the company’s social media manager, 160,000 names are on the waiting list, and Elon Musk uses one as a guesthouse at his ranch in Boca Chica, Texas.
Next to Casita was a Boxabl sibling created from two vertically stacked modules joined by a spiral staircase. The cost-cutting finishes of the houses lent a disposable feeling, like Ikea furniture on an enormous scale, but it was hard to argue with the price and speed of assembly. (Unfolding a module takes about an hour, Mr. Thompson said.)…
From MauiSurfer
Lloyd Kahn (born 1935) is arguably the most influential pioneer of the DIY building movement that emerged in the counterculture of the 1960s. Besides being trained as a carpenter and having built many homes by hand, he also has a special talent for presenting information in an easy-to-understand form, a skill he puts to use as editor-in-chief of Shelter Publications, where he releases books on building and fitness.
His first contact with the craft of publishing was in 1968 when he became a key contributor to the creation of the Whole Earth Catalog, which led him to publish two books on dome building and then, in 1973, the book Shelter (which went on to sell over 300.000 copies).
The name Shelter is significant here, as it describes the essence of why we build. When we speak of architecture we think of monumental structures or at least buildings for an elite, and not of the homes built to meet our most human needs. This is what I find so empowering about Kahn’s emphasis on building traditions outside the architectural canon: The message that you can still create your own home, without being rich or a professional. Much of what is presented to us today under the label #cabinporn has little to do with this utopian spirit that encourages a forgotten self-efficacy beyond what money can buy.
Just received from our good friend and carpenter extraordinaire yogan in France.
yogan has just published the 2nd edition of Cabanophiles, his photos of extraordinary hand built and artistic cabins in different parts of the world.
yogan.over-blog.com
www.cabanophiles.com
He will soon publish a French translation of our book Home Work.
Photo of Lloyd’s “Leaf House” on Hornby Island by Jan Janzen. The roof shape was due to the curve of a piece of driftwood that Lloyd used for the ridge beam.
When I met the builder of my dreams 17 years ago, his name was Lloyd — House!
We became great friends and he was the main inspiration for my favorite of all our building books: Builders of the Pacific Coast.
Lloyd passed away about two weeks ago on Hornby Island, BC, Canada.
Michael McNamara (who first introduced me to Lloyd) sent this, which is posted at the Hornby Island Co-op. (A few of the phrases are borrowed from the Robert Louis Stevenson poem, “Requiem.”)
There’s a very complete list of his buildings, along with photos and interviews with him in the book: www.shelterpub.com/building/builders-of-the-pacific-coast
