I was reading an article on a miniature, break-down house someone had constructed, in which they used styrafoam walls sculpted to look like stone. Someone here in the Barony of Tir Ysgithr has a "Kleine hause" which they transport in a truck and put up at war, which is constructed of sheets of plywood painted to resemble half-timbered construction.
It made me think of HDPE, which is lighter than plywood, water-tight, and comes in sheets as large as 4' x 8' (121cm x 243cm). The benefit of using HDPE is that it's moldable. Set up some paving stones, lay the sheet on top, and take a heat gun to it until it starts to droop down over the stones, and you've got a sheet that can be painted to look like a stone wall, or a brick one, or whatever makes you happy.
Not that it's cheap per se... a Viking a-frame tent made with the canvas tarps one finds at Home Depot is probably the best way to make a cheap period housing option, but the plastic house has its own brand of appeal.
- Music:Today: What is 'evil'? - BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today
My momster reminded me of vardos, which I had been enthusing about not that long ago. I remembered this one, and started thinking about it more seriously. As-is, it wouldn't be really suitable for SCA camping, at least, not without being regulated to RV parking, which is usually out on the edges instead of in with the other campers.
And a vardo is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than a pavilion, so it's more of a long-term project. But looking at the one that Kevin made, I'm finding myself thinking about building one on a trailer... say a a 16-foot, tandem-axle flatbed. A new one would be rather pricy, but I might be able to find a used one reasonably priced, particularly if I'm willing to replace the deck. (And I am... I'd want oak instead of pine underfoot, in addition to the changes that would need to be made to put up the walls).
Also, I think there are improvements that could be made to Kevin's design. It looks to me like he's got a seperate warming stove and cookstove, while I'd probably use a single unit like the Baker's Over Stove. And if I don't have the cab to put a loft over, that'd be great space for a wardrobe.
At any rate, I'm going to play with my scale ruler and my sketchbook, and think hard about it. And I'm going to join the email list my mom found, for SCA Vardo owners. And really, even if I get relegated to RV parking, that's not so bad, is it?
- Music:I Miss The Girl - Soul Coughing - El Oso
My laptop is down on the long-term scale. It turned out that it wasn't the power cord that was failing, but the power fitting in the laptop. I've had this repaired once before, but I don't really have the money to do it now, or access to a place like SimuTek, that can do it for me. So I don't have access to all the bookmarks I had on the web browsers on the laptop.
Tonight, I was looking for one of them via DogPile. It was a prefab housing manufacturer that made small homes. The problem is that, while I remember what the house looked like, I can't remember the name of the company.
Anyway, as I was flipping through links, I was thinking about steel shipping containers. The eight foot width is a little limiting, but there are a lot of interesting things one could do, particularly in Southern Arizona, with two, three, or four of them, and a deck. If you put four of them together in a rectangle, you could do something with a peristyle garden in the middle.
Of course, you'd have to have land to put 'em on. Someplace with very lax construction codes. The kind of place ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
meig would never live in a million years. And that's okay.
A while back, I waxed enthusiastic about the Vertical Farm concept. Today, while dropping off a video at Hastings, I noticed that the September '08 Popular Science had a cover blurb about it. I bought the issue, and the very brief article inside said that a couple of locations in the world are actually doing feasability studies to implement the idea. While still a long way from pouring concrete, it's a step forward, and I'll be watching for more news.
The main cover article, though, was about cool things that students are doing at engineering and design colleges around the country. There were some pretty nifty ideas, including some for lunar RVs, and it sort of touched on my feelings that my life has, in many ways, been largely wasted.
It also seems to me that we're balanced on a very fine point. Tip one way, and we destroy our species. Tip the other way, and we have a bright future ahead of us.
Long time readers of my journal will know that I ocassionally look at alternative housing in a whistful fashion. I'm something of a nomad at heart -- my parents are living the full-time nomadic lifestyle right now -- and the idea of housing that is mobile is attractive to me.
One group of people who moved a lot were the Romany, the Gypsies. After looking at a bunch of websites about their vans, I found Daphne's Caravans, where they hold, among other things, caravan school, to help you learn to build your own! Man, that sounds like fun!
Now I just have to figure out where I'd keep the horses....
ETA: Oh, look at this one! Swoon!
- Music:Frank Thomson, Dundee City Police Pipe Band, Fairview Cottage-The Dark Island-Pipes and Drums of The Black Watch
I'm cramming for Monday's test. Well... with about 75% of my attention, I'm cramming for Monday's test. With about 25% I'm watching "Architectures Volume 1," a documentary series NetFlix recommended to me, and which I tossed in my queue quite some time ago, and am just now getting to.
I love architecture. I once applied to architecture school at North Carolina State University, but was not accepted. When I lived in New York City, I often walked around, looking up, because the most interesting architecture was above street level.
While most of the show has been background for my studies, I found my attention grabbed by the segment on Jean-Baptiste André Godin's Le Familisère de Guise. This is precisely the kind of architecture which fires my imagination. It's meant for families, for their long-term occupation. In fact, it has been in use since the 1859, though building continued on parts of it for some thirteen years after completion of the central block.
It proves what I've long said about the kinds of communities that would lead to the sustainability of a Lunar city -- that it must be built in a fashion which people want to inhabit for centuries, in order to justify the cost of constructing it in the first place. It must be a place that people think of, not simply as a place where they live, but as their home. A place where neighbors can interact, and children can play.
P.S. -- Jean Nouvel rocks my small, self-centered world.
Long time readers may remember that from March, 1999 to March, 2000, I worked on the 18th floor of One World Trade Center, in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was in the North Tower, the taller -- by virtue of having a giant phallic symbol on top of it.
Well, actually, when you get right down to it, I guess the whole 'tower' thing is a giant phallac symbol, but in this instance, I'm talking about the big antena jobbie.
Anyway, when the attack came on September 11, 2001, I was safely Not There. In fact, I was in Tucson, watching the whole thing on television.
Now, the thing about television is this... things that happen on it aren't real, in a real, for real, gosh-darn-it, it's true kind of way. If you think that they are, ask yourself how tall King Kong was.
(Three feet. Check the records).
So, when
lapis_lazuli and I took the green line (like I used to) to the Fulton Street exit (like I used to) and walked up past the little Chinese place (like I used to) and looked around to get our bearings, the first thing I noticed was that I didn't know where I was.See, it used to be that I'd come up out of that subway exit, and look to my left, and there'd be this honkin' big white building right there. It was a no brainer... turn left, I'd be at work in moments.
Only, see, some assholes came along, and knocked down the honkin' big building.
So it took me a moment to figure out where I was, and which way to turn. When I did, we walked down, and looked at the big fence, and I babbled inanely for a few minutes, and then we took a walk over to Nassau Street, where we walked up the block.
The wierd thing... the thing that made me uneasy... wasn't so much that the WTC was gone, though, yes, thank you, now that you mention it, that was kind of wierd, too... the wierd thing, though was what hadn't changed.
The lunchtime crowd was still the same. If you stood with your back to the WTC site, you'd never notice anything was different.
For some reason, that was difficult for me to deal with. How fucked is that? That normalicy is harder for me to adjust to, than the idea that some jerk-off fundamentalist believed that God wanted him to fly a plane into a building and kill thousands of people who could give two shits in a barrel about him, his religeon, or, really, his entire section of the world?
Boy, that got to be an awkward sentance, didn't it? Sorry.
Anyway,
lapis_lazuli and I wandered around, and then got back on the subway. As we were going down the steps to get on the subway, there was a little old lady with a big bag. She'd step up one step, lug the bag up the step, step up again, lug the bag up, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nausium. Well, not actually ad infinitum, nor ad nausium, since I stopped her before she'd gone more than three steps, and offered to carry the bag up the rest of the way for her.You'd've think I'd discovered the cure for cancer, or stopped the AIDS crisis, or something.
In the words of Rodney King, can't we all just get along? Why is it a huge deal for someone young(ish) and strong(ish) to offer to carry a bag up some stairs for someone who isn't? It took me perhaps thirty seconds, but both the old lady and
lapis_lazuli seemed to think it unusual.]Okay, yes, sorry... there's that babbling thing again.
I was thinking today about the journal that I kept while I was living here in New York City; about the way that I would talk about things that I saw around me, recording the daily life of New York, and the things that struck me as memorable.
I realized that I don't really do that, anymore... you won't find any Odes to Tucson in my current journal, or really, very many entries about my physical surroundings at all. In part, I think that's because as much as I'm from anywhere specifically, I'm from Tucson. When I was living in New York, I was an outsider, and could see with an outsider's eyes. I could say, "Gosh, that's kind of interesting."
In Tucson, the things that might be kind of interesting to an outsider are just the way things are for me.
We adapt, human beings, and anything becomes routine. I used to have a journal friend who lived in Jerusulem, Israel. She would write about how people who lived a block away from the areas of most intense Jewish / Muslim conflict would think, "Oh, a couple of bullets going by a week isn't that unusual." And people who lived right there would think, "Oh, having to stay out of your front room to avoid bullets isn't that unusual."
As we were on the bus, coming back out of the City, I noticed a large banner hanging over the roadway. It read "We Will Never Forget," and oddly enough, rather than a picture of the WTC, had a picture of the head of the Statue of Liberty.
Uh... okay, well, I guess I won't be forgetting the Statue of Liberty, then....
All seriousness aside, I was struck by that word, "never."
Quick... what happened at Magdeburg in 1631?
Give up? During the Hundred Years War, there was an incredible masacre there... honestly, without consulting a history book, I'm only vaguely sure about the date. Or who was involved. What I can tell you is that there was a battle, and the victorious army sacked the city, killing, raping, and looting on a scale that makes Kosovo look like child's amusment time.
But who (aside from a few pedants such as myself) remembers?
We're getting to the point where many American kids can't even tell you why Pearl Harbor is more significant than any given battle of the Pelopenasian wars, for goodness sake.
So someone not only thinks we're going to never forget, they're willing to spend money on a banner, to assure the rest of us we're never going to forget?
Hell, I can't even remember where I was going with all this.
This is cool.
A little-known secret of my past is that, at one point, I actually applied to architecture school... and was turned down.
I went to college at NCSU, which has a world-renowned design school, including a school of architecture. In order to apply, I had to make up a portfolio of stuff, and go to an interview, and show my portfolio, and talk about why I wanted to be an architecht.
I spent a lot of time thinking about living spaces and the way that people relate to them. I spent a lot of time thinking about what a "pure" American style of architecture might look like, if meso-Americans hadn't been exposed to European influences before they developed concrete, steel and so on... modern building materials... on their own.
I went to the interview and showed my pictures of treehouses built with classical Japanese sensibility. I talked about the need for community, and my enthusiasm for the arcology idea. I talked about the need for people to want to go on living in houses for generation after generation, in order to pay off the cost of building them right in the first place.
I was thanked very kindly, and not offered a place in the school.
