Melody and I are at that phase of house building when the decisions need to come fast and often. We recently spent part of an afternoon at a place called General Plumbing selecting faucets and sinks and finish colors. For an hour and a half we dug deep to find opinions within us about […]
ArchiTalk: The house that started it all for me
The first act of building a house is to walk onto the empty property with a helper and a long piece of string. The two of you will pull the string taut to create a straight line and then carefully position it to mark the exact edge of the house to be built. The end […]
ArchiTalk: My house in 200 years
I’m in the process of building a house for myself alongside the edge of a cliff. The best view of the Carquinez bridge is had from there, so that’s where the house is going. A couple of people have expressed concern about building so near a cliff. Like I’m not going to do something about […]
Steve McKee: A night dive at Manta Heaven
We had been told to remove our snorkels when we scuba dove to meet the manta rays. You barely need a snorkel anyway when you’re in scuba mode, and it would make it safer for all if we didn’t have a snorkel sticking up when the giant creatures with their huge wingspan swooped in […]
ArchiTalk: 5 of the coolest places in Benicia that you’re not visiting
WHEN WE MOVED TO BENICIA ABOUT 25 YEARS AGO, Melody and I would go on walks around town and discover secluded features, like a perfectly good little park that nobody seemed to use much or a little trail leading to a piece of rocky shoreline. As the years have gone on, the rate of these […]
ArchiTalk: Cool random New York stuff
THIS NEW YORK TRIP WAS MORE LOW-KEY than the previous trips Melody and I have made. Because Gwenna had moved there after graduating college last year, we now had a reason to take trips to the City-of-Cities every now and then. This was our first outing that was less about seeing big sites and more […]
ArchiTalk: Wisdom, or something like it
Here is a column I wrote in a rush 10 years ago and then shelved. I found it recently while rooting around in my hard drive looking for something else. April 2005 MY WIFE AND SON WERE OUT OF TOWN for a couple of days to photograph some California mission for school, which left my […]
ArchiTalk: Finding the creative sweet spot
A method for staying in the zone IT IS SAID BY THOSE IN THE KNOW that creativity is a lot more work than everyone thinks. That it’s not so much the result of an inspired moment wherein some mysterious form of genius blossoms forth, but is instead mostly the result of reworking an idea over […]
ArchiTalk: Secret weapons of design
Things no session should be without OVER THE YEARS I’VE FOUND there are certain tools used in designing a house that are so useful and so powerful that they deserve to be in some sort of Hall of Fame. Barring that, I will at least list them here. I’m talking about the type of design […]
ArchiTalk: The rise and fall of Penn Station
ON MY LAST FULL DAY IN NEW YORK I decided to give my daughter a break from me while I went off on my own for a few hours to see some sights that only I would enjoy. I realized this was a good idea the previous day when Gwenna and I were walking around […]