Quite a Legacy

I was close to crossing this off my list of things to do. After going I can't believe I almost missed it. Having seen many of the greatest cathedrals in the world, seeing Gaudi's interpretation and vision of a cathedral is amazing. He takes the plan and grandiose volume typical of a cathedral and makes it organic and a bit funky in his quirky art nouveau style.

This project started over 100 years ago. It's currently about 50% complete, it was about 25% complete at Gaudi's death. He knew other architects would continue his vision with their own interpretations which is amazing and has created much debate in Spain over whether the newer work is really staying true to Gaudi's. Personally I really like the newer work (passion facade)

it's a bit stripped down and abstracted in contrast to the more Gothic, busy and ornate original entry.(nativity facade)

Our New Addition

Were you expecting something else?

We have our annual lawn party this weekend and Joshua has a deadline to have this project completed. He's had months to do it but with the flood last month everything in construction that wasn't emergency related kind of came to a screeching halt. So this has come off the paper and into our backyard in about a week. My favorite part is being able to walk out our door and have a visual reminder of how talented my husband is.

His challenge was to build a creative and interesting shed for the same price that you can buy a pre finished one at Home Depot. He's going to come in just a little over the sticker price but he doesn't have to pay tax so I'd say that is success.

Turnabouts Fair Play

Check out this article I found via @mproctor on twitter. (I know that sentence makes no sense to about half the people that read this).

If we are going to have churches that meet in movie theaters this seems only fair.

http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2009/07/20/story2.html?b=1248062400%5E1860793&ana=e_bjtt

Honestly it is great from a sustainability standpoint and it is also great for preservation. Win, Win, plus its just cool!

Finally

I've waited five years for a client to NOT say:

"we're thinking very traditional, maybe colonial or french country style"

Hear me say I have a large appreciation for and am heavily influenced by architectural history and traditional "styles". However, what I really love about architecture is letting designs evolve out of a combination of the owner's desires, their personality, respect for the site and it's context, ideas of building responsibly (green building, site impact, building orientation/configuration), the function of our built surroundings as a motivator of form, etc., etc., etc.

Sorry for the architectural nerdery, but I love going into the design process with no pre-conceived ideas, so this project has really been a breath of fresh air.

Just Giddy!

So while I've been out on the road working I've also been coordinating the completion of our FYK Architecture (pllc) website. We have been working on it for a while because we all know you can't have things fast, cheap and good.

So we chose the latter. But people - this was worth the wait! Plus, I love it when I get to work with friends and so last night, with Joshua on the phone, Greg and I launched the page.

I want to introduce everyone to the FYK website. Enjoy!

Special thanks to Sam, Nathan and Michael for photo and text consulting/comments.