Creative Process Sneak a Peak

September 7, 2008September 8, 2008 | mjneal

I was opening files and this Skype chat between MJ and I came up. We were in the same city, yes, but in different houses, late at night (noooo we didn’t have a fight… it’s a loooong story… to be told another time) We had a deadline on an article we had been asked to write for our good friends at the Good Life Magazine so we both got on skype…

You won’t see a post like this every day on this blog, no sir

Chat History with

Created on 2006-12-07 22:51:33.

mj:22:23:52: test
barcelonaloca:22:23:57: hello
mj:22:24:03: yes
mj:22:25:17: so we’re working remotely for this article. the beuty and the beast of technology
mj:22:25:36: how are we to maintain a physical community with this?
barcelonaloca:22:25:57: it would be a long story to explain why we are not doing this in person, but it IS related to housing
mj:22:26:09: or not
barcelonaloca:22:26:23: ok the absence of housing then
mj:22:27:00: well maybe it is also the absence of the ability for most to be “neighbors” these days or maybe that is a little to harsh
barcelonaloca:22:27:40: I liked your perception of the fence around our house, I’m going to paste it here
mj:22:27:58: it is a beautiful metophor
mj:22:28:11: a physical thing
mj:22:28:19: a real thing
barcelonaloca:22:28:21: Our current house has a low chain link fence around the back yard. You know the type, the one your parents put up to keep the family dog from getting into their friend’s–read neighbors–yard and digging up the tomatoes. The fence dad would lean on while talking to Mr. Jones. The fence where Mrs. Jones would trade mom some tomatoes for zucchini. Well this fence of ours, has gates in it to the neighbors’ yards. Imagine that. Openings to my neighbors’yards. A gesture to the sense of community right there in my own back yard.
But these gates are covered with vines and have been wired shut. When? Why? What a beautiful thing those gates are.
(this is a goo “last line)I wonder if my neighbors would like some Squash?
mj:22:28:24: tactile
mj:22:28:41: is that goo or good?
barcelonaloca:22:28:47: good
barcelonaloca:22:29:10: maybe we should skip the IM thing and go home and get in bed
barcelonaloca:22:29:13: together
barcelonaloca:22:29:19: I like the tactile part
mj:22:29:26: yeah..
barcelonaloca:22:29:38: ok back to the article
barcelonaloca:22:29:40: rats
mj:22:29:48: double arts
barcelonaloca:22:30:12: somehow I think that the point you make about community is also related to “truth”
mj:22:30:15: that should be double rats
barcelonaloca:22:30:29: or double star

Sunday Morsel 5

September 7, 2008 | mjneal

“Nostalgia means living permanently in a form of denial, and what is particularly sinister about it is that it is driving the left as much as the right, intellectuals as much as the general population.”

Rem Koolhaas

–
Rem Koolhaas
Hans Ulrich Obrist
The Conversation Series

One Step at a Time…

August 31, 2008September 17, 2008 | mjneal

The Wolfe Den stair progresses. The middle partition that ties into the rift cut white oak guardrail is in. And a preview of the Ipe treads. Kilean made it by with me today to check it out and generally reek havoc with everyone…

Vodpod videos no longer available.
more about “untitled”
Some nice progress! Here’s three weeks ago.

Sunday Morsel 4

August 31, 2008August 31, 2008 | mjneal

a poem by Lebbeus Woods

War and Architecture

Architecture and war are not incompatible.
Architecture is war. War is architecture.
I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority
that resides in fixed and frightened forms.
I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family,
no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end,
no “sacred and primordial site.”
I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories
that would chain me with my own falsness, my own pitiful fears.
I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments,
and forms that appear with infinite strength, then “melt into air.”
I am an architect, a constructor of worlds,
a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody,
a silhouette against the darkening sky.
I cannot know your name. Nor can you know mine.
Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.

WAR AND ARCHITECTURE
RAT I ARHITEKTURA
Lebbeus Woods
pamphlet architecture 15

Incredible! Get it, read it, then read it again!

Stoned! Casa Miquel

August 29, 2008January 22, 2015 | mjneal

stone, transitive verb

Inflected Form(s): stoned; ston·ing
13th century
1: to hurl stones at; especially : to kill by pelting with stones

stoned (slang) adjective
1952
1. Stupefied, excited, or muddled with alcoholic liquor
2. Stupefied, intoxicated, or otherwise influenced by the taking of drugs
3. (one I particulaly like) under the influence of drugs, under the influence of alcohol, drugged, ripped out, high, spaced out, tripping, turned on

These definitions sum up the week and what I’m going to do about it…

The post was going to start out, “So you want stone? Well here it is, all of you fake Tuscan-lovin’ sons of bitches…” But then, because of the week it’s been, the post has shifted to the fore mentioned theme.

Anyway, the house is for a small site in Barcelona that has a four story building close to one side of it and a two story retaining wall about a fourth of the way into the lot. Fortunately, a garden could be placed around the side and front on the lower floor of the house, to achieve privacy and give a sense of the exotic and intimate.

The house is simply organized around a pool/living area that opens onto a front garden. All interior spaces open onto the pool and are defined by rustic (rustico! Pepe) structural stone walls. The pool area has a wall of translucent and colored glass block. A traditional material that has been manufactured in Spain for, who could say, 80 years.

This wall allows a wonderful diffused light into all the interior spaces and controls the view of the multi story building. At the bottom of the glass block wall there is a low continuous ribbon of clear operable windows that look onto the small side garden allowing the eye to expand beyond the boundary of the wall. The problematic back yard, two stories in the air, was tied into the roof to make an extended garden and terrace. A green house on this upper level of land continues over the two story living/pool area to become a skylight.

Most of the sketches shown were done on the flight back from Barcelona.

It’s happy hour so see ya, what ever happened to those days of three for ones in Lubbock (that story will have to wait…).