architecture (573)

Tiny Beach Huts in England

November 25, 2009 at 7:13 pm

When I have time I’m going through my photos in Europe and will post them occasionally, not in any special order. Just shots that catch my eye. This is a little colony of LITTLE huts on the sea next to an old fishing village on the southeast coast of England. People rent the land and build 10 ‘x 10’ huts (none larger allowed) for day-trips to the beach. Barbecue, picnics, swimming, sailing. There are maybe 100 in this group, each unique. A way for non-millionaire families to have a seaside house. We spent two nights in one of these, it was great, sound of the sea, rain on the roof, eating and sleeping in a 100 sq. ft. house. How perfect, since I was going back home to do our next major building book on tiny houses (working on it now).

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Free-form Earth Structure in Colombia

November 24, 2009 at 8:46 pm

I ran across the book Building With Earth by Gernot Minke when I was in London last month. It’s just been published (Birkhäuser Publishers, Berlin) and is an informative, up-to-date handbook on earth architecture. I visited Minke some 20 years ago at his studio near Kassel, Germany, and saw a lot of his work with cob, strawbale, and living roofs — very advanced for the late ’80s. He’s kept at it, in addition to teaching at the University of Kassel, and this book is a culmination of all those years of work.

This photo, in the book, is of a building in a small town in Colombia by architect Octavio Mendoza Morales. More of Morales’ work can be seen at: https://www.casaterracota.com. When you get to the site, it’s in Spanish, so press: “Entrar,” then “Galeria,” then to see more photos, “siguiente.”

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10 Amazing Buildings Made of Dirt and Straw

November 22, 2009 at 9:45 pm

This from environmentalgraffiti.com, which is a great website. This photo, by Gerry Thomasen, caught my eye because it’s almost identical with a photo of mine of a cob/driftwood house in British Columbia that appeared in our Builders of the Pacific Coast. Two photographers with the same eye. A lot of eclectic interesting stuff on this website. Some great shots of earthen domiciles at:

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November 22, 2009 at 9:36 pm

A wood-stove cobworks kitchen pays homage to pioneer days, with a modern flare.

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Composting Toilet on Lasqueti Island

November 8, 2009 at 7:27 pm

Open-air composting toilet built by Birchbarkbobananda out of cedar in British Columbia, he calls it “crap-cedral.” This photo taken by his Estonian friends is at:

Birchbarkbobananda is a world traveler with bike and sleeping bag, last heard of sailing the Baltics with an Iranian adventurer, building a “free low tech hot tub…”. His postings at:

Photo sent us by Godfrey Stephens. Check out Godfrey’s amazing carvings and paintings at: https://www.godfreystephens.com

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Church of the Redeemer, Bad Homburg, Germany

November 4, 2009 at 5:27 pm

I stay in Bad Homburg each year when attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. It’s a beautiful and wealthy spa town. Each year I wander around, and usually look into the beautiful Church of the Redeemer, an Evangelical (Protestant) church built by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the early 1900s.”…the building is outwardly of a heavy, romanesque revival appearance, while its interior is…in a neo-Byzantine style, with rich marble wall decorations and gold mosaics covering the domed ceiling, leading to the church sometimes being called ‘Bad Homburg’s Hagia Sophia'” (Wikipedia)

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Veiko Lasting—Builder in Estonia

November 3, 2009 at 7:30 pm

We had a rather large network of builders, gardeners, and practitioners of the home arts in the ’70s after we published Shelter. We lost track of most of these people in subsequent years, partly because had a 20-year interlude publishing fitness books, partly because the Whole Earth network faded away. Now that we’re back in the home building field, we’re assembling a (now online) community of like-minded folks. We have a huge amount of stuff for another general book on building (HomeWork 2) somewhere down the line. Here’s an email we just got from Estonia; it’s great to be hearing from simpatico people all over the world.

Dear Mr. Lloyd Khan,

My name is Veiko Lasting and I’m from country Estonia. Some years ago I saw one book HomeWork – and now in this spring I ordered it also to myself and soon also Builders of the Pacific Coast and Shelter.

Your books are very inspiering. after my friend Indrek saw how John Welles (HomeWork pg.25) was moving the house solo he started to build sauna also solo 🙂 picture of it added.

I made myself nice cosy apartment, in the middle of Tallinn near old city, to the basement of one old wooden house…

Best regards

Veiko

some of my handworks:

https://www.aivel.ee/vldisain/index.htm

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