PAINTED METAL ROOFS

Are you considering designing or building a building with a painted metal roof? Please think again. Why? That's why? Use steel, green or red copper, aluminium, brass or some other metal that ages with a bit of grace.

Yeah, one more, just to remind you. I took these pictures outside my old high school last week.

SUMMER SO FAR

This is more or less what the summer holidays have been like so far for me. My sister is sitting in a 78 year old 'Gravenstein' apple tree that still carries fruit and blossoms in spring, and is half covered by a climbing hydrangea (the tree, that is, not my sister, whose face by the way is covered by an apple tree branch, without that really being my intention when I took the picture). Although she looks quite relaxed, she was a bit scared, and would rather have returned to the books laying on the lawn under the tree.

Behind my sister and the tree is the house my great grandfather built here in 1932, in a mixture of arts and crafts and early functionalism. The architect is unknown, but I'm trying to find the drawings. It was built as a duplex house, almost a sort of mini apartment building, where the apartments shared the cellar, attic and stairway, but it is now a single-family home. The stones on the ground are shale, whereas the foundation wall is clad with granite.

The garden was redesigned by my parents and myself in 2007, and rebuilt in 2008. The old apple tree is one of the few features remaining of the old garden. The pergola over the wooden terrace was by idea when I was around 13 years old, and designed in collaboration with a friend of my father, who also built it.

HAPPY

Don't you wish you were as happy as these guys? (I found this poster outside a bank not too far from where I live, but the artistic addition isn't mine.)

BACK

Do you know the feeling of coming back to something? You feel secure, reassured, in a place that is meant for you. This morning I travelled from Bergen in Western Norway, to eastern Norway, where I grew up and have spent all of my life until august last year. As soon as I stepped out of the aeroplane and saw the landscape around me, the feeling of being back seized me. 

Not a mountain in sight, only forests, fields, hills and lots and lots of sky, with a broad and slow river running through it all here and there, land in the sea in between rounded slopes of naked rock. This landscape is my landscape. I love Bergen and Western Norway, but this is where I'm from, and this is where I will once will be going back.

BE LONGING

Will he recall the prison
of field and shore,
a world that now is vanished,
that sings no more?

Will he renew the music
of virgin choirs,
the life of holy rapture
that never tires?

From the poem The Disguised God, by Hjalmar Gullberg, translation by John Michael Hearne. The poem was made into a lyrical suite by the composer Lars-Erik Larsson in 1940.

TOWNHOUSES PT. I/II (WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW)

 

What the world needs now,
Is townhouses,
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
What the world needs now,
Is townhouses,
No, not just for some but for all who want one.

Lord, we don't need another detached house,
There are garages, front lawns enough for now,
There are highways and playgrounds enough to cross,
Enough to last 'til the end of time.

What the world needs now,
Is townhouses,
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
What the world needs now,
Is townhouses,
No, not just for some but for all who want one.

Lord, we don't need another tower block,
There are parking lots, concrete and loneliness,
There is a social apartheid thanks to Le Corb,
Oh listen Lord, if you want to know...oh...

What the world needs now,
Is townhouses,
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.

What the world needs now,
Is townhouses,
No, not just for some oh but just for all who really want one.

What the world needs now,
Is townhouses.
What the world needs now,
Is townhouses.
What the world needs now,
Is townhouses.

 

(Apologies to B. Bacharach, H. David and J. DeShannon)

Picture from Wikipedia

LILACS!

Photo by Mathilde Rønning

Sometimes, Bergen can be just like this. The sun is shining, the lilacs are bursting into bloom and their exquisite smell complements the white painted old wooden houses while I look skinnier than I really am.

GREEN FUR

Came across this picture earlier today while I was surfing Wikipedia, looking for a two-syllable word meaning "single-family detached home" (more about that later, probably on Sunday). 

Anyway, I love how this house in Germany seems to have grown a green fur of sorts, which makes it look very peaceful and protected. Most of the original architecture is hidden and this is perhaps an extreme example, but it also shows the humanizing potential of climbing plants on façades.

IT'S THE SUN!

Yesterday was the first day of summer in the calendar, and a day filled with sun. I have some major design work to do this week, as the presentation of our final project for the first year is to be ready by Sunday evening, but after that, vacation starts.