THIS TIME, THE TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY was about helping Gwenna, now 22, move there to start a new life. She and I were flying there, so I suppose my greatest contribution was to let her use my two suitcases for more of her stuff, while I lived from a carry-on bag for my […]
ArchiTalk: What the Napa earthquake taught me
Editor’s note: Last of two parts. Read the first part by CLICKING HERE. A FEW WEEKS AFTER THE RECENT NAPA EARTHQUAKE, builder John Laverty told me he had seen several of the Napa projects we had done together and that they held up great in the shaking. That was good to hear. Year after year, we […]
ArchiTalk: Napa: Aftermath of the earthquake
ABOUT A WEEK AFTER THE NAPA EARTHQUAKE, I started receiving texts from my buddy Phil Joy, the house-lifter, that included photos of damaged houses and buildings. There were images of walls slanting and front porches with their posts all leaning at the same wrong angle. Phil was getting called by the owners of the worst-hit […]
ArchiTalk: Home design in earthquake country
Bay Area homeowners want houses that are like rigid wooden rocks Author’s note: This column originally appeared in The Herald on May 30, 2004. The Napa earthquake mentioned is the 2001 earthquake (more mild than the latest!) and the 12-year-old daughter has since grown up and graduated college. Otherwise the timeliness of the information is […]
ArchiTalk: The cottage within my home
Small comforts and perfect moments aren’t always planned I KNOW THERE IS A COTTAGE IN MY HOUSE. It’s there in all the ways my house lives like a smaller house. I’m really glad about that. I really like the way the bottom steps of our stairway double as seating when people are visiting in our […]
ArchiTalk: My eclectic house
Designing a house for myself is not always as dreamy as I thought PREVIOUSLY IN ARCHITALK: “Was I ever going to design a house for myself?” asked the student. “Oh sure,” I said. “Someday.” “What will it be like?” asked another. I then gave an answer that I didn’t even know was waiting within me. […]
ArchiTalk: The wind is rising. We must try to live
Ten years of column writing means I get to choose a poem for a title IT WAS 10 YEARS AGO LAST MONTH that I started writing this column. Thus begins decade number two. My first column was about how to turn a walk-in closet into a full-blown dressing room without too much trouble. Not bad, that […]
ArchiTalk: Back to Mexico
IT WAS MY FIRST TIME BACK IN PUERTO VALLARTA IN FOUR YEARS. Back then I’d gone on behalf of my mom, to sell her dream house to a land speculator after development forces beyond the control of law had built a big fancy marina right where we once had our own perfect bit of beach. […]
ArchiTalk: Mister Science
A FEW YEARS AGO MY UNCLE CALLED FROM OKLAHOMA to ask if it was a good idea if he set up his bathroom exhaust fan to empty into his attic, instead of running a duct all the way to the outside, as is usually done. He thought maybe the warmth added to the attic might […]