Stitch Britch Fork House (upcoming)

This project will be realized for Art Sites in Riverhead Long Island, Where the north and South Fork Meets

Henry Hudson Mutiny Memeorial Drive-Thru Kiosk

2009 Byrdcliffe Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition
June 13 – October 12, 2009

16 Hudson Valley architects have designed and constructed “memorials” to Henry Hudson who never received a proper burial because his body was lost at sea after his crew mutinied. The outdoor installations are constructed at the historic Byrdcliffe Arts Colony on Upper Byrdcliffe Road, Woodstock.

http://www.woodstockguild.org/ahoy/

Crotch Rocket(of the trees)

Me and Christopher Robbins threw this one up the other day, awaiting the hammock and netting.

architectural Cribbage Synopsis

Exploring alternatives to the gallery system
Time Out NY April 16th, 2009

LINK

As many of our favorite glass-fronted white cubes scuttle their Chelsea operations, pressured by exorbitant rents and stagnant sales, it’s a great time to take a harder look at those individuals and institutions harnessing their ambitions to unconventional structures and spaces less affected by the slump, as these ways of “thinking outside the box” are proving to have staying power. Whether art spliced with sustainable city planning or a call for artists to build their own structures that operate as ad hoc museums, the below projects are related in their relative freedom from or flaunting of contemporary market concerns.

“Unbuilt Roads”
e-flux, 41 Essex St between Grand and Hester Sts (212-619-3356). Subway: F, V to Lower East Side–Second Ave. A gallery presentation of the 1997 book project by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guy Tortosa, this show offers the unrealized proposals of 107 artists (Louis Bourgeois, Robert Rauschenberg, Jenny Holzer, the Chapman Bros., etc.) in blueprint pages spanning the gallery interior. Though it’s installed in a conventional white-walled context (e-flux’s new LES space), experiencing the show means entering the speculative environs generated by some of art’s more ambitious thinkers—there is a wonderful freedom in the fact that these vaulting ambitions are completely unrestrained by material tethers.

“Vertical Gardens”
Exit Art Underground, 475 Tenth Ave between 36th and 37th Sts (212-966-7745). Subway: A, C, E to 34th St. Through May 23. The third in an Exit Art series, SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), this show brings architects and artists together to present existing vertical farms, urban gardens and green roof projects, as well as speculations on a future of more sustainable urban planning—visions with a deliciously sci-fi effect. Free lectures on April 21 and 22, and an indoor composting workshop, are detailed here.

Matt Bua, “Architectural Cribbage”
(bhomepark.blogspot.com). Ongoing. Matt Bua’s “Architectural Cribbage” amounts to a platform for empowering people to define their own architectural surroundings, free from the normalizing strictures of building code. Through an ongoing open call, Bua organized an clearinghouse of hundreds of visionary architectural drawings (soon available online, which serve as potential designs for 12-by-12-foot structures built at Bua’s woodsy Catskills site, “b-home”). Artists are encouraged to install their own personal collections of odds, ends and artworks inside their visionary structures—an upheaval of gallery and real-estate conventions alike.—Brian Zegeer

BLDG BLOG - crib notes

Geoff Manaugh's thoughts on Cribs to Cribbage

Infantospatialism, or: adventures in crib design

CRIBS by Matt Bua is a "Kidpspace exhibition" at this sprawling, industrial-warehouse-turned-modern-art-museum in northwestern Massachusetts.
While CRIBS itself features "an overloaded crib complete with hanging mobiles, recorded 'lullabies,' and the bars that keep the infant safe," the exhibition's second part, ...To CRIBBAGE, is a kind of spatial escape act: the crib has come alive and is climbing out a nearby window: "To escape the chaos of the cluttered future that encroaches on it, the crib must breech the gallery walls, pouring itself down on the museum's entrance below."
Child-sized visitors can, in turn, crawl inside it: "This piece of crib can be entered outside the museum to experience the collaborative 'building game' Bua calls Architectural Cribbage, a game in which he encourages others to start constructing their own small-scale visionary spaces."
The dinosaur spine-like spaces created by this apparently sentient crib-structure – it's Lebbeus Woods meets Lincoln Logs by way of vertebrate biology – would seem rather nightmarish from a child's perspective, I'd imagine, but there's also a spatial honesty to that. After all, one of the earliest architectural spaces that a modern human being experiences is a small, enclosed space, locked behind bars – so cribs aren't necessarily reassuringly womb-like environments.
In fact, I don't mean to show up 100 years late to the child-rearing game here, but surely there has been some architectural writing about the formative psychological influence that such cribs might have?
At the very least, this sounds like an amazing article for Volume magazine: Jeffrey Inaba and Benedict Clouette visit the world's largest crib designers and manufacturers – in Holland, the States, Canada, Japan – and, amidst on-the-spot New Yorker-style reportage direct from the factory floors (the milling machines, the workers, the design team and their tables full of Macs), they show multiple photographs of different crib spaces. Dimension, color, material choice, layout. It's the crib as primordial space research.
Pair this, then, with a series of short interviews with development psychologists – and even neurophysicians who have taken research into spatial perception and the infant brain into uncharted realms – and you're talking National Magazine Award, baby! Damn. I'd read that.
Matt Bua's CRIBS is on display at MASS MoCA till September 7, 2009.

sauna with face

the half free morel- found on the drive way

Jesse and Suzzane's Day and a half "house

cribs to cribbage(outdoor crib extension)

http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=463

interior and paint job and Chandelier:Jesse Bercowetz

Sauna in progress

Almost completed 3 story, Dug in Sauna.
Wood stove fired


Photo Credit: Stephen Hren

Form for the filling, design your piece here

Gravity Shower

The "Orange Wolf" of Rachel Lowther now resides at b-Home

For more about Rachel click here

Tool Shed

Sauna progress update

What Is Architectural Cribbage?

poster design: Drew Dudak

Catskill Museum

More Info about the Catamount Museum Here

Sing Sun Room at Free103point9's Wave Farm

Completed last year for free103point9's Sculpture Garden

Lower case a-frame

10 structure ideas

A Few b-Home Structures

1. “Lower case a frame house”: The almost spherical structure’s shape will emulated a lower case letter a, continuing the A-frame house tradition. Viewers observing the house from the other side, will encounter a lower case B for “b-Home”.

2. The “Well House”: Also called the Well, Well, Welles House, this structure will house the working hand pump that will supply b-home with potable water. The Well House’s main skeleton with be made of 3 oversized W’s. Inside the Well House will be a library focusing on three men: H.G. Wells, George Orwell, and Orson Welles.

3. The "T- house" -small house shaped like the letter T which would be used for
-Japanese tea ceremonies
-Final resting spot for your favorite old T-shirts
-Homage to the HQ of DC comics Teen Titans, which was shaped like a T
-In Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New world, a giant T building the messianic figure:Henry Ford’s Model T, and “Oh lord” in the book was exchanged with “Oh Ford”
-a tribute to other "T" buildings: El Lissitzy's, Marcos Acayaba's, and Simon Ungers and Thomas Kinslow's

4. The "Old News" House (also called the Junk Mail House). A conical styled dome structure that uses recycled bundles of newspapers, magazines, and junk mail as building material. The technique would emulate the Adobe brick style in which the exterior would be properly treated with plaster and lime to withstand the elements. This houses motto will be “old news is good news” or “read it and reap”.

5. “Tree Glove Story House” is a structure which takes discarded Christmas trees and uses the Native American Indian building structure, the Kick-a-poo Wigwam as a template. This structure would house a lost-and-found repository for gloves and a museum for all things Glove related. The outer skin of the house would be made of hundreds of gloves donated from the once largest manufacturing of gloves in the world in Upstate New York, Gloversville.

6. “The Crate House” - Various Art Crating Companies would sponsor the creation of Small Structures which would mainly use recycled art crates as their main building block. These heavy duty wooden boxes are made to transport priceless art safely around the world and then upon return ,broken up, thrown in dumpsters and sent off to the land fill. This Structure may come closest to the Le Corbusier ,modernist house.

7. Big Rock Candy Platforms - There are a few big rocks(10’x6’x8’) on a slope that lie on the b-Home grounds which will have level platforms with roofs installed on top of them.As the earth slowly moves the Boulder over the years due to frost heave, the level-ness of the platform will be closely documented.The large grape vines which at the present time grow on the rock will be trellised for extra shade and eventually used .

8.The Greene House- A working Green House which would pay tribute to the county in which b-Home is located along with giving homage and incorporating other Architects with the last name "Greene"...
-David Greene( from Archigram)
-Herb Greene
-Greene and Greene
A main feature of the Greene House will be insulated panels which consist of clear plastic ”trash”(2 liter bottles, packing and wrapping material etc.) sandwiched between 2 pieces of donated plexy-glass from picture framer’s cut offs.

9. Super Th atched-Skin-Creature House - partly an ode to the recently closed Catskill Game Farm and to LUCY the Margate N.J. elephant along with incorporating other "Roadside Animal Architecture" which lies along the Dusty roads of the American highways. These Zoomorphic architectural styles have long been influencing such contemporary architects such as Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Grimshaw

10. The Knot house(also called the Bonsai Mausoleum) Another Discarded building block are the knots and abnormalities from the locally milled trees. With these donated hunks of wood a small structure will be built that would house a collection of fail Bonsai tree’s.

(Still #2) East Coast Unit

Allison Wiese
(Still #2) East Coast Unit
Shed, hot water heater, plumbing fixtures, hoses
2003-Present

Tornado damage

The Chainsaw

Digging for the cordwood sauna has started

The newest structural additions to b-home.

Cabin photos

Here are a couple updated images of the cabin.

flying squirrel in residence

I started cutting some board in the ceiling and the saw made a squeeking noise against the wood and out came three baby squirrels, must not of like the sound.,
Mother said "no!" "come back here you"
and came down to retrieve them. She fell around the cabin alittle picking them up, and then decided to move out. Good decision since Kitty is moving in in a week.
Patrick Ohare, stopped by that day and saw the mother too.

Butch Anthony's Wasp Nest shaped sleeping pods

Butch's Museum of Wonder website

5 couch shelter

Sarah Margaret Halpern's single person solar theatre

Cribs to Cribbage Overview Sketch

12 more structure ideas

12 more-
1.House of Cards
2. Dresser House
3.The Field House
4.The Ice House
5.House of Saud
6.Habachi-Hirachi House
7.The Tape House
8.The Big House
9.Pagoda imploda
10. The O House
11 . House Of Commons
12.The Bow House

Tex and Tammy Lynn's Wedding Chapel+ Burger Hut

More about Motel Jesus Here

architectural cribbage rules

Architectural Cribbage is a pastime that provides social opportunities to display true craftsmanship and respect for the environment, without rancor, animosity, or overwhelming self-interest during competition.

In view of these goals, the following are considered to be some of the unacceptable practices and are grounds for suspension or expulsion from the game of architectural cribbage:

* Marking or deforming shelters for vanity sake or manipulative purposes
* Controlling the location of the materials in the pile before dividing them up equally

* Secreting materials for later retrieval, including surreptitiously dropping stuff off before official pick up begins

* Changing or altering another structure with out permission

* Intentionally building poorly for the purpose of enhancing the record of an opponent

* Actions or conversation unbecoming a member of architectural cribbage (drunkenness, abusive language, etc.)

* Initiating a violation of rules for the purpose of gaining an advantage, whether actually gained or not, even though the rules specify a penalty for the violation

* Actions detrimental to the objectives of architectural cribbage



By honoring all rules, a player will have guidelines for a good creation and fair play, resulting in an enjoyable experience for all participants.

***************************************************

the Only building LeCorbusier built himself a 12x12ftcabin

Le Corbusier’s Cabanon, Roquebrune-Cap Martin, Côte d’Azur, France



Written by Jonathan Duff, Twentieth Century Society Member living in Brussels

Images courtesy Emmanuelle Morgan




Down a quiet, leafy footpath in the Côte d’Azur hides perhaps the most modest piece of interesting architecture of any historical period and yet it was designed by one of the twentieth century’s most influential and least modest architects.

The Swiss born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, or Le Corbusier as he preferred to be called, was a frequent visitor to Eileen Gray’s and Jean Badovici’s nearby Villa E-1027 which Gray had designed over 30 years before. He fell out with her after he got up early one morning and painted an unwanted mural in her house. An ‘act of violation’ as she described it.

Le Corbusier had become friends with another neighbour, Thomas Rebutato, a former plumber who owned and ran a small café cum inn next door, L’Etoile de Mer. It was whilst the two were planning the redevelopment of the site, with the intention of building Unités de camping, that Corbu persuaded Rebutato to give him a sliver of adjoining land on which to build a cabanon or small hut. He built it as a model in minimal habitation and as a birthday present for his wife, Yvonne.

Designed in December 1951 in less than an hour, building work lasted only six months and it was completed in August 1952 using rough pine boards for the exterior and plywood and oak pieces for the interior, mostly prefabricated in Corsica. The initial idea was to have used aluminium cladding which would have had a completely different, if not incongruous effect.

The surface area is about 16m2. There is no kitchen: the couple took all their meals, including breakfast, at the café, to which a door in the small entrance corridor provides direct access. There is no door to the WC and the bidet abuts the headrest of one of the beds: Yvonne covered it with a cloth. "Not a square centimetre wasted! A little cell at human scale where all functions were considered" as Le Corbusier described his smallest ‘machine for living in’.

He devoted much thought to the interior detailing, using vivid red, green and blue panels on the ceiling to contrast with the yellow-painted floor and wooden warmth of the walls. The ceiling is low to allow for ample storage. He painted a colourful mural along the entrance passage. The little furniture there is is made of recycled materials: crates for stools; railway carriage reading lights; porte-abus for a lamp and so on.

At the time Le Corbusier had made two long trips to India and it is possible that he was influenced by Hinduism and Sannyasa, the notion of a life of renouncement and poverty. Certainly the cabanon expresses the simplicity, truth and freedom of the individual. He made precise plans of Punjabi houses and appeared as interested in their building techniques and way of housing as he was in their architectural forms. He used these plans to design the Peon houses, simple structures that were to have been sited behind the Governor’s palace in Chandigarh.

The layout is conceived more from the interior than with regard to connecting to its immediate surrounds and yet this makes perfect sense. There are only two windows, which are small, but the shutters fold back inside to reveal mirrors that reflect the turquoise sea and, framed by pine and palm trees, the other not-so-modest machines for living in across the bay in Monte Carlo.

Although the cabanon has virtually all one needs to pass a non self-catering holiday, Le Corbusier also built an even tinier hut a few metres away for an atelier to work in, the shade of a large Carob tree linking the two.

Thirteen years after completing it, he drowned off the coast, during a long swim. This may have been an act of suicide, his wife having died in 1957. "How nice it would be to die swimming towards the sun", he once remarked to a colleague. He also designed an austere but elegant and, of course functional, concrete tomb for Yvonne and himself and it sits in the Vieux Cimetière at the top of the old town.

Gary Panter- The Human Scale Bower Bird creation

Gary Panter suggested this one...

From Wiki-pedia:
The most notable characteristic of bowerbirds is the extraordinarily complex behaviour of males, which is to build a bower to attract mates. Depending on the species, the bower ranges from a circle of cleared earth with a small pile of twigs in the center to a complex and highly decorated structure of sticks and leaves — usually shaped like a walkway, a small hut or a maypole — into and around which the male places a variety of objects he has collected. These objects — usually strikingly blue in hue — may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items or pieces of glass. The bird spends hours carefully sorting and arranging his collection, with each object in a specific place; if an object is moved while the bowerbird is away he will put it back in its place. No two bowers are the same, and the collection of objects reflects the personal taste of each bird and its ability to procure unusual and rare items (going as far as stealing them from neighboring bowers). At mating time, the female will go from bower to bower, watching as the male owner conducts an often elaborate mating ritual and inspecting the quality of the bower. Many females end up selecting the same male, and many underperforming males are left without mates.

bucky energy

Manuelito Wheeler's Hogan in progress

Fritz Welch's Pool House

Starting point for the Pool House

31 Down's X-ray house

Light years beyond the Glass House...
More images to come


....Walter Benjamin spoke of living in a glass house as the revolutionary act par excellence. It also encompasses a terror of transparency.

The Geodisic Restaurant in Wood's Hole with it's completely transparent acrylic glass had to be darkened sudsequently, as few qguest could tolerate total transparency.
-Your Private Sky page 412

Cabin in the tar paper stage

On the ladder is cedar shingle specialist Christian Dautresme

the Bow House

the House is shaped like the bow of an ocean liner in which the roof is supported by larger than life bowing figures as columns. The Structure houses a collection of bow ties, archery bows, and musical bows and the complete discography of the band Bow Wow-Wow.

Although Fuller had already served in the US Navy by the time Le Corbusier wrote the following words in 1923, the question of their influence on him is perhaps open to speculation:

"A seriously-minded architect... will find in a steamship his freedom from an age-long but contemptible enslavement to the past.

"He will prefer respect for the forces of nature to a lazy respect for tradition; to the narrowness of commonplace conceptions he will prefer the majesty of solutions which spring from a problem that has been clearly stated.

"The house of the earth-man is the expression of a circumscribed world. The steamship is the first stage in the realization of a world organized according to the new spirit."
(Corbusier, 1923, p.97)

"Our daring and masterly constructors of steamships produce palaces in comparison with which cathedrals are tiny things, and they throw them onto the sea!"
(ibid., p.86)

crate house

6.The Crate House- Various Art Crating Companies would sponsor the creation of Small Structures which would mainly use recycled art crates as their main building block. These heavy duty wooden boxes are made to transport priceless art safely around the world and then upon return discarded in massive Dumpster to go to the land fill.

super thatched roof creature house

9. Super Thatched-Skin-Creature House - partly an ode to the recently closed Catskill Game Farm and to LUCY the Margate N.J. elephant along with incorporatingother "Roadside Animal Architecture "which lies along the Dusty roads of the American highways.

greene house

8.The Greene House- A working Green House which would pay tribute to the county in which b-Home is located along with giving homage and incorporating other Architects with the last name "Greene"...
-David Greene( from Archigram)
-Herb Greene
-Greene and Greene

well house

The Well House-(Also called the Well, Well, Welles House) the structure will house the working hand pump that will supply b-home with potable water. The Well House’s main skeleton with be made of 3 oversized W’s. The Interior will house a library which
will focus on 3 men will Well’s in their name: H.G. Wells, George Orwell, and Orson Welles

Bojo's Distressed Barn

This Barn is constructed with a structurally sound, intentionally caved in roof.
The interior on the other hand is shiny, metallic and technologically advanced.
Think- Fall Guy's house in the woods.

Andy Nye's Inside Out-House

The Inside Out House. The outside walls the inside wall turned outward so that, for example, the stove and kitchen sink are on the outside and above the kitchen sink is a window looking into the inside/center of the house. You could put a bed on the outside of one wall, a dinning room on one wall, etc.... The inside/center would be an outhouse. You could maybe have two toilets for couples who want to shit together. The entrance to the center/inside/toilets would be through the wardrobe of the bedroom. past the coats.

society for a subliminal state's upside down lighthouse HQ

,

http://www.subliminalstate.org/

Owl Shed

Composting Out-House

week 2 & a 1/2

Ward Shelley's Concept Sketch for the Sail House

Lisa Marie Ludwig's Lazy Susan Cottage

The Lazy Susan Cottage
Designed by Lisa Marie Ludwig

Building a dream home, for most is building with a view. Waking up in your bed to a spectacular horizon, cooking directly onto an outdoor dinning area, or having a vast perspective from a child's playroom, are just a few of the fantasies for a home with a view. How can one accomplish all of this? Made with lightweight materials, such as recycled bamboo flooring, the Lazy Susan Cottage is designed to move any room you like to face any direction you desire. With little effort the Lazy susan Cottage rotates for a view in every room.

A stationary deck adds to each room, allowing the indoors-out, and a stationary "anything" room with bathroom, gives all the rooms in the cottage that needed addition. When rotated the "anything" room connects to the kitchen, creating extra space for preparing preserves, or a continuation into an indoor dinning room. Also when rotated, the bedroom becomes a Master Suite, great for cold winter nights, giving way to a bedroom snug as a bug. The "anything" room has an attractable ceiling which when open creates a natural skylight.

With solar powered lights, cellphones, and laptop, the Lazy Susan Cottage can be a great retreat for work or business. The upstairs playroom can be used for sleeping additional guest, or be used for storing ski gear or seasonal items. A rain barrel supplies water to indoor sinks and indoor/outdoor showers. The compost toilet requires a small amount of maintenance, but adds to the beauty of your surroundings. A wood burning stove heats the house while creating an exceptional cooking stove for all your favorite meals.

The Lazy Susan Cottage total surface area is as little as 12 feet by 12 feet , and can easily be constructed almost anywhere. A home with a point of view. A home basically maintenance free. A home requiring no electricity, plumbing, or gas. A home you can feel good about.

floater

town of catskill

Here is the town of Catskill
as viewed from the Amtrak train to Hudson.

power lines

This is the view of B land from the entrance, it reaches to the top of the hill starting at the left of the power lines and crossing to the right of the power lines to the very top of the hill. At the top of the hill we have a great view of the Berkshire mountains and the Catskill mountains. Under those power lines are blue berries, black berries, raspberries, and wild flowers.

the top of b-Home is the peak of Vedder Mounain

www.vedderlibrary.org
Vedder Mountain Name History

Lineage: Annatie3, Johannes2, Harmanus Albertse1
VEDDER, c.1635-aft.1742
Related Families: Van Der Fort | Becker
Migration: Holland>N. Neth.>Albany, NY>Schenectady Co., NY


(1) Harmanus Albertse Vedder, born about 1635 in Holland, died about 1715 in Schenectady, New York; married twice but names are unknown. He emigrated to New Netherlands before 1657.
Harmen was one of the original settlers of Beverwyck, which later became Albany, New York. It is known that he lived there in 1657, and probably before that, because historical records indicate that in 1657 he sold his house and lot for 2,325 guilders to Rutger Jacobsen that year and returned to the Netherlands. He was at Coney Island in 1661 where he had a salt kettle. In 1663 he leased his farm at Schenectady to Symon Groot. In 1667 he was again living in Albany. Harmanus was named as a brother-in-law by Johannes Provoost on 9 April 1668 when he made over 830 guilders to Harmanus who was returning to Holland. Harmanus made the trip with other New York merchants to buy food.
Schenectady, New York was founded by a group of fifteen colonists from Beverwyck in 1662. In 1672 Harmanus bought a farm there and the next year he was one of the magistrates and appointed Schout. In The History of the First Dutch Reformed Church of Schenectady: 1680-1880, by Jonathan Pearson, the founders of Schenectady are listed as being:
Arent Van Curler
Philip Hendricks Brouwer
Marten Cornelise Van Esselstyn
Catalyntje De Vas (or De Vos), widow of Arent Andriese Bratt
Pieter Danielse Van Olinda
Jacques Cornelise Van Slyck
Symon Volkers Veeder
Sander Leendertse Gleen
Harmen Albertse Vedder
Teunis Cornelise Swart
William Teller
Pieter Jacobse Borsboone
Jan Barentse Wemp
Gerrit Bancker
Pieter Adriaense, alias Soegemakelyk
Many of the early Dutch owned slaves. Thomas Burke in his book Mohawk Frontier: The Dutch Community of Schenectady, NY 1661-1710 gives a list of slaveholders and numbers of slaves owned in 1690 and 1697; Harmanus Vedder is listed as owning one slave in 1697.
Children by first wife:
1 child, died 6 Dec 1662 in Albany, New York
2 child, died 22 April 1665 Albany, New York
3 Albert, born 10 May 1671, died 1 August 1753; married 17 November or December 1669 in Schenectady, New York, Maria Glen. He was taken prisoner during the massacre at Schenectady in 1690.
4 Harmanus, born about 1672, died before 13 August 1785; married first 10 December 1691 Albany, New York, Grietje Van Slyck Bratt; married second in Schenectady, New York, Ariantje Van der Volgen De Graff
Children by first or second wife:
1 Arent, born about 1674, died between 1746 and 1755 in Schenectady, New York; married Sara Groot
Children by second wife:
1 Angenietje, born about 1684, died April 1756; married 24 November 1700 in Schenectady, New York, Jan Van Antwerpen
2 Johannes, mentioned below
3 Corset, born about 1686, died between 1745 and 1748; married first on 3 March 1709 in Albany, New York, Margarita Berrit; married second on 11 March 1711 in Albany, New York, Neeltie Christianns




(2) Johannes Vedder/Veeder, born about 1685, died after 1749; married 8 July 1705 in Schenectady, New York, Maria Van Der Fort. He was one of those taken prisoner, along with his brother Albert, during the 9 February 1690 raid and massacre at Schenectady by Frenchmen, Sault, and Algonquin Indians from Montreal. A poem was written by one of the witnesses to the event.

Children:
1 Annatie, baptized 21 June 1713 at Albany Reformed Church; married on 24 November 1739 at Schoharie Reformed Church, Pieter Becker, born in Rensselaerswyck (near Albany), New York, baptized 26 September 1708 in Albany Reformed Church, widower of Sara Slingerland.

Claudia Newell's Meditation Shed

Prefab Meditation Shed for Catskill NY

Our environment is permeated by Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) in unprecedented amounts. These unseen and often unacknowledged forces contribute to stress and fatigue, and diminish our capacity for insight and reflection. Spending time in a rural environment like Catskill, we find immediate relief away from the grid of a large city, but given the proliferation of cell phone and satellite communications, we may wish to take extra steps. How will we address these modern challenges? Some techniques from the past are in order.

The ancient yogis intuitively recognized the benefits of meditating in caves; this orientation informed the massive stone edifices of Hindu and some Buddhist temples. Although they had no electronic communications, they recognized the massive electromagnetic impacts of the sun and earth, and created an insulating environment. Fast forward to the discovery of the Faraday cage, a chamber that could ward off charges. When we are in an elevator and lose cell phone service, we are essentially experiencing a Faraday cage; these structures are regularly used to protect equipment in industry. Similarly, Wilhelm Reich built Faraday-like Orgone Accumulators, where the body could concentrate life force (chi or prana).
Modern day scientific studies of subjects living underground show the profound changes when one is isolated from the usual earth-surface, geomagnetic influences. See a Faraday cage below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUWxYesR5Wo

There is an efficient way for you to construct your own meditation shed. Purchase an affordable steel 8 x 10 shed at a large home center, (or better yet, from someone who is selling a used structure. A metal shipping container would also be an extra durable solution). Inside, one can use standard framing skills to construct a wood floor inside the shed (floor kits are available for some of these sheds).

A stud wall is constructed – put the wooden sheathing of your choice on the inside, and copper sheeting or mesh on the outside. This will make it comfortable within and provide an extra layer of EMF insulation. For climate control, you will probably want to put some sort of non-conductive, insulating material between the two walls. Discarded insulation from building demolitions comes to mind, although dedicated and deep-pocketed builder s may want to follow Reich’s method of layers of foil and wool insulation.
http://www.orgonics.com/humorac.htm
http://www.orgone.org/articles/ax2001-grnfld-aa.htm

Consult the web for more information and inspiration on these topics.
There is a metal lic fabric bed canopy at http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
This could provide a fast Prefab solution for the inside of your shed instead of building the walls; of course, the usual inverse relationship between time and $$$ is a factor.

Use the same techniques to fashion a ceiling and complete the faraday cage within.
Your shed will have a door included – it’s up to you if you want to make a screen door to complete the small room-within-a-room. A small window to peer outside on the door does not make a huge difference in the effects.

Remember to use a ground stake on the metal walls to send charges, like those from a thunderstorm, to the earth.
http://www.lessemf.com/ground.html#291


Yogic tradition often recommends sitting on a wool rug or sheep skin. This provides natural, comfortable insulation between you and the earth.

If you need a light inside, run an extension cord from your local source, and use incandescent lights ONLY – fluorescents produce EMFs.

Happy Samadhi, and enjoy the sunshine and refreshed focus when you emerge!






More tales about people taking a few years off to live in caves and below the earths surface:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6047898.stm

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=950DE4D91F3CF937A15756C0A96F948260

http://www.brainsturbator.com/site/comments/maurizio_montalbini_we_salute_you1/

Secondary Camp (bug free zone)

How to make a White stove Black

Matt found this stove at a road side flea market. Some woman had it in her house as a
decoration. Scrubbing the white paint off to make it black once more will be a big project.

Owl Shed

This Owl Shed has is about 8'x9'.
Much of the wood came from our friend Val who is closing
down her lumber mill in Boiceville.
The Owl Shed
should be completed this week!

Base Camp

For now, this camper serves as the Base Camp of operations. It provides coffee, storage, and a table with padded seats to sit in when the down pours roll through.
The camper came with the land. It sits at the entrance to the land, and happily houses red squirrels and mice. We happily share, for now.

The Green of August

Here is the pond, the water source that runs through b-home Park. It eventually meets a swimming hole, and further down runs in to Catskill Creek which then spills out into the Hudson, passing through the center of the town of Catskill.

Composting Out-House

Stephen Hren's Cobvan home

Cobvan home.
A circular cob wall
supports an abandoned van. The van is entered from
the back and used as a sleeping loft. Underneath the
van and enclosed by the half-circle of cob is the
kitchen area, about six feet in height, with a rocket
stove (www.aprovecho.org), a home-built,
superefficient cooking stove used for heating and
cooking with minimal amounts of wood. The stovepipe
extends upward thru the van and out its roof, which
has been made a living roof with a brick rubble
substrate and planted with drought-tolerant sedums,
mosses, and prairie grasses. Extending outwards from
the cobvan, hopefully facing south, is a bamboo arched
living space, held together with hemp rope (or
recycled telephone or cable wire). The majority of
this bamboo arch living space is covered with beer can
tiles, made by cutting off their tops and opening up
the cylinder so as to lie flat.

driving directions

google map

Directions to b-Home


-Take I-87 to exit 21 (catskill)
-Pay toll
-Make a right at the light onto 23B. (home depot is in front of you)
-Go 2.1 miles west on 23b
-Make a left onto 5 mile woods rd.(Little dilapidated house on left)
-Go 3.3 miles( you will cross 23)
-5 mile woods rd hits cauterskill rd.at Wolf's Maple Resort
-Make Left on Cauterskill.
-Go about .8 miles(up and down big hill)
-Make left into driveway with mailbox # 483, (just past the fenced house on left)
-You'll see a little camper which is ours, park there, not by the Big camper, that's our Neighbors......

Or

Get off I-87 at exit 20 (Saugerties)
Make left at light(McDonald's) and look for route 32.
Make a quick right onto 32 north

Take 32 north 10.9 miles,(note at 5.9 miles, 32 north bears right at blinking light(big belly deli)
Make a right onto Cauterskill rd.(right after chicken farm) opposite the road that leads to round top, and pawling(hearts content rd)

Go 2.5 miles,
Come down big hill ,
Make left at driveway past house with mailbox # 483

You’re there

if you're coming west over the rip van winkle bridge, go about 4.1 miles after crossing the bridge on route 23,
make a left on "5 mile woods " rd which is after cauterskill rd(doesn't connect to our cauterskill) take 5 mile wood rd 3 miles to the end, at stop sign make left onto
cauterskill rd, go just under a mile,down big hill, make left into drive way with 483 on mailbox, right after house with white fence, park near first camper, or off the road

Big Rock Platforms- Like riding the giant Dune worms, very, very slowly....ride the Heave..

the 50$ and up underground home- inspired by Mike Oehler

the Knot- house(cut-off Knots from the mill which houses the failed Bonsai collection

The T-house(old t-shirts, Huxley's ode to Ford, tea ceremonies, and teen titans

Foundation Anchors- Quicker Ways to Throw Up Smaller Structures

Other b-Home Products- The Insect-free hoodee

Ianthe Jackson's Small Shelter Sketches

2 Sketches, 1 for relaxing over the stream, the other for shadow play.

Greywater Shower (in progress)

Here you can see Matt working on the greywater barrel rack and the leisure area underneath. The woven cocoon on the right is the shower area, see detail.

Shanty ZIne Detail

holes for the foundation posts

1.digging below the frost line
2. lining hole with landscaping cloth
3. filling hole with 6 inches of rubble
4. tamp
5. place treated post in hole
6. level
7. pack in more rubble and rock around post
8.fold cloth over as to not allow dirt to fill in hole
8. repeat for next post...

Thanks to Mr. Hren for Masterminding the beginnings of the Cabin

Driving Directions

-Take I-87 to exit 21 (catskill)
-Pay toll
-Make a right at the light onto 23B. (home depot is in front of you)
-Go 2.1 miles west on 23b
-Make a left onto 5 mile woods rd.(Little dilapidated house on left)
-Go 3.3 miles( you will cross 23)
-5 mile woods rd hits cauterskill rd.at Wolf's Maple Resort
-Make Left on Cauterskill.
-Go about .8 miles(up and down big hill)
-Make left into driveway with mailbox # 483, (just past the fenced house on left)
-You are there

Or

Get off at exit 20 (Saugerties)
Make left at light(McDonald's) and look for route 32.
Make a quick right onto 32 north
It gets vague here.
Take 32 north 7 or so miles
Cross 23 A, there’s a light, and a fruit stand called Story Farms
Go a couple more miles (look for a small power station on right and farm
Make a right on to cauterskill rd. drive by big chicken farm
Go 2.5 miles,
Come down big hill ,
Make left at driveway past house with mailbox # 483