b-Home Studio

Invented Architectures

2012-01-25T11:16:00.001-08:00

a few new structure as winter approaches

2011-11-12T16:21:00.001-08:00

Stephen Hren's "Tales From the Sustainable Underground" now available

2011-11-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

Activists striving for any type of social change often find themselves operating on the fringes of legal and social norms. Many experience difficulties when their innovative ideas run afoul of antiquated laws and regulations that favor a big business, energy- and material-intensive approach.Tales from the Sustainable underground is packed with the stories ofjust some of these pioneers – who care more for the planet than the rules – whether they’re engaged in natural building, permaculture, community development, or ecologically based art. Ride along and meet courageous and inspiring individuals such as:

Solar guru Ed Eaton
Radical urban permaculturalists Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew
Artist, eco-architect and intuitive builder Matt Bua.

Equally entertaining and informative, the profiles in this highly original book provide a unique lens through which to view deeper questions about the societal structures that are preventing us from attaining a more sustainableworld. By examining such issues as the nature of property rights and the function of art in society, the author raises profound questions about how our social attitudes and mores have contributed to our current destructive paradigm.

Tales from the Sustainable Underground is a must-read for sustainability activists in any field, or for anyone who wants to learn about more radical forms of sustainability activities in an entertaining way.

http://www.newsociety.com/Books/T/Tales-from-the-Sustainable-Underground

Occu-Pod Building workshops Dec 26th-27th-and 28th at the New York Hall of Science

2011-11-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Occu-pods – Learn how to put your waste to work. Construct domes or wigwam frames and insulate them with lost and found clothing to create a comfortable outdoor dwelling.

Occu-Pod Building workshops Dec 26th-27th-and 28th 2-5 pm
http://www.nysci.org/visit/events/event/remake

Cara Turret's Museum in Progress

2011-11-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

This will be the first "museum" built at b-home.

Opening summer 2012

Lisa Marie Ludwig's earth bag bunker/green house phase 2

2011-11-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

Cave-Out Zine

2011-10-31T09:13:00.000-07:00

I had to like open the cave-out and let some of the cave-light come out and show them...

Woodstock Times b-home article by Violet Snow

2011-10-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

Next time you need a toolshed, sauna, shower house, sugar shack, chicken coop, or other small building, you might construct it from recycled materials. You would save money, protect the environment, and exercise your creativity. You might even end up making a split-level cabin, as artist and builder Matt Bua has done at bHome, the wooded property in Greene County that is part art studio, part construction laboratory.
Since he started moving up his cache of foraged building materials from his Brooklyn studio in 2007, Bua has built an assortment of unorthodox structures, made mostly from discarded materials and natural substances.
We're standing in front of the “slab shed”, cobbled together from aluminum sheets from a letterpress shop, wood off-cuts and rounds that a sawmill would otherwise burn or grind into sawdust, and the front door that formerly graced a friend's house.
“I think of some of these as permanent bug-free tents,” confides Bua, who often collaborates on structures. “I like to put the roof on, then someone will finish it and sleep in it. This building was a toolshed until an intern from Tennessee came and wanted to study with me. I gave him a staplegun and mosquito netting, and he stayed in it for three months.”
Rolls of screening to protect from mosquitoes are among the few items Bua purchases for his projects.
His friend Lisa-Marie Ludwig is working on an earthbag bunker. She has stacked poly bags filled with dirt to form the walls. The plan is create a low corridor leading to a circular chamber with a domed roof, so the building will ultimately resemble an igloo.
One elegant little structure features a wall of pine off-cuts and another wall of shingles made from scraps of medium-density overlay, the substance used to build art crates. The door is made with narrow sticks from old-fashioned lathe-and-plaster construction, thrown out when buildings are renovated.

Bua describes his genesis as a builder: “When I was a kid, I dragged a dresser into the woods and put a piece of plywood on top. Then it rained, and I realized a roof is a great thing. Then you make it into a warm place, and then you figure out--how can you warm it with the least amount of wood?”
He honed his skills by working for seven years with installation artist Jesse Bercowitz. They collaborated on large-scale installation projects at museum sites such as PS1, the Museum of Modern Art annex in New York City; Mass MoCa in North Adams, MA; and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA.
Restoration carpenter Stephen Hren of Durham, NC, also taught him a thing or two, including not to use drywall screws on external walls and the best way to install a post. Bua explains, “You dig a hole and line it with landscaping cloth, put in six inches of rubble for drainage, and tamp it down. It won't heave in the frost. Black locust, cedar, and pressure-treated wood are good for resisting rot.”
Hren and his wife, Rebekah, are authors of The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008), blending sustainable building with procedures for getting off the grid, from the easy to the complex.
Bua's style of building is ideal for making use of low-impact technology, such as the simple, two-story shower mechanism in the shower house. A slanted plexiglass roof collects water and spills it into a barrel. From there, a hose conveys the water to a shower head on the lower level.
There are two saunas on the property, illustrating Bua's willingness to learn through experimentation. One sauna is small and efficient, accommodating no more than four people. The other is more luxurious, with wood platforms on two levels and an elegant ceiling of cedar strips originally cut for an interlocking grid system and found in a dumpster. To make the cordwood walls, he embedded old fenceposts in mortar mixed with sawdust. Built partially below ground level for natural insulation, the sauna has a serious design flaw—the large rocks that jut out of the floor and suck up heat from the recycled woodstove.
“So when we're not using it as a sauna, it doubles as a root cellar,” says Bua philosophically, nodding at the side bench, which holds jars of elderberry jam and tomatoes that he and his partner, Laura Anderson, have canned. “Ironically, it stays nice and cool in here.”
The largest structure on the property is the cabin. The exterior is made largely of scrap wood, recycled windows, and strips of metal roofing. A cordwood foundation supports the upper level. Inside are several earth plaster walls that overlay straw bale insulation. Earth plaster, says Bua, is mixed from one part clay, three to four parts sand, and finely chopped straw—“enough straw till you're happy.”
One of the plaster walls is embedded with colored bottles in a design by Anderson. Aside from the beauty of the green and blue light they transmit, the bottles have their own insulating properties and are often combined with wood in cordwood walls.
In the office, Bua has employed books for insulation by building bookcases into the walls and enclosing them with glass-paneled doors.
Over the back door, a metal awning is lined with flashing created from Coors cans.

When starting a recycled building project, Bua suggests asking a few questions: “How much energy do you feel like putting into it? How many people do you have to help you? What is the terrain like? What kind of materials do you have on hand? The foundation is the most difficult thing. It's simplest to dig holes and put poles in to support a post-and-beam floor. But you couldn't do that if you're planning to built with heavy materials like cob,” an adobe-like mixture of clay, sand, straw, water, and earth.
The environment may furnish materials. Perhaps your soil has a high clay content, or you live near a horse farm with straw readily available, or you have lots of rocks. Such factors will influence your decisions, observes Bua. For sources of castoff manmade materials, cultivate a relationship with employees at town dumps, sawmills, construction sites, local contractors.
“With this style of intuitive building,” he says, “a lot depends on what you want it to function as and how long you hope it's going to stay.”

Violet Snow Fall 2011

The Daily Mail > Archives > News > Catamount artist makes plan for new project

2011-09-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Daily Mail > Archives > News > Catamount artist makes plan for new project

The Young People's Museum Set to Open... In Need Of Eyes

2011-09-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Little Big Cat

bhome-a-ramas by Douglas Paulson

2011-08-15T16:34:00.001-07:00

Douglas has many piles stashed here awaiting his return for the assembly of...?

found some Lucy- The Margate Elephant- Pictures

2011-08-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

Went to visit the giant Elephant years back.
Found these photos I took in the book : The Well Built Elephant and other Roadside Attractions...
A Tribute to American Eccentricity by JJC Andrews published by Congdon and Weed 1984

-nice rear end and interior shot from the old trusted LOMO

Little Big Cat Young Person's Museum

2011-08-11T19:10:00.001-07:00

This collaboration between Myself, Laura Anderson and the youth of Catskill is set to open October 1st once the thatching is complete and the zines are done.

Upper Case A frame Library

2011-08-11T18:56:00.001-07:00

A structure built for Mary Walling Blackburn's "Library for (the land of fuck)"

as part of the show Double Sessions curated by Natasha Marie Llorens at the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies
Please visit the site below for all the Library details:

http://doublesession.net/indexhibitv070e/index.php?/participants/

photo's by Mary Walling Blackburn

tea house/Y-house 3 day building workshop

2011-08-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

During the days of July 25th, 26th, and 27th 5 builders got together and put together this structure. On the 3rd day we had Tea.
Special thanks to the workshop participants:
Quinn, Ida, Leo, Nick, and Marsden

summer 2011 open house events- No July 2nd

2011-01-29T07:52:00.001-08:00

Note: Due to the Music festival and Parade down at Catskill Point we will not be having the July 2nd Open house.

Join the Parade line up at 11 am on Church and Main Streets headed down Main Street to the Catskill Point. Live concert 12-5 pm featuring Bing Bang Boing artist/musicians on handmade, experimental instruments, belly dancing, instrument making, yummy food and kids activities. Ending with an all inclusive drum circle at 5 PM. Co-hosted by WGXC 90.7-FM. Performers include: Harry and Josh Matthews, Matt Bua, Ken Butler, Ed Podokar and friends, Peter Head, Brian and Leon Dewan, Bradford Reed and the Wild Rose Belly Dancing Troupe.

Catskill Point Warehouse
South end of Main Street
Catskill, New York

mailing address and contact

2011-01-29T07:38:00.000-08:00

New Mailing address

For Brooklyn:

b-home
338 berry st #4sw
brooklyn ny 11211

For Catskill:

b-home
po box 581
catskill ny 12414

email
bhomebhome@gmail.com

phone 917 291 7404

Special Thanks To Valerie Fanarjian for her wood donation

2010-12-17T14:03:00.000-08:00

More about here movie projects here
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2351101/

winter cabin,not quite closed in yet

2010-12-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

rocket tub install

2010-12-09T19:47:00.001-08:00

Stephen Hren returns to the North Country and helps jump start the warm winter baths

time-out... Architectural Cribbage

2010-11-13T11:16:00.000-08:00

Exploring alternatives to the gallery system
Posted in Own This City by T.J. Carlin on Apr 16, 2009

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 along with Max Goldfarb organized an clearinghouse of hundreds of visionary architectural drawings (www.drawingbuilding.org, 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

The Skiles Test China Museum

2010-10-16T20:03:00.001-07:00

Some shot's from the Test Fest, where participants were to build structures only out of materials found in the Skiles Test Nature Park in Indianapolis Indiana

Cheryl Odore demonstrating the Museum Guard Post/ tree Hammock

Some details of unearthed china once belonging to Indianapolis Millionaire Skiles Test. Note the name change of the restaurant from White Cafeteria to just " Whites"

The existing corn crib foundation and the mighty Jimson Weed, a plant that I remember ,many folks in high school messing around with and going "loco". What is the yellow flower?

THE FRIENDLY TEST FEST CHINA MUSEUM GUIDE

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quick b-home reference

2010-10-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

cribbage oath taken and notarized

2010-10-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

Here's the official doc, and oath taken on 14th street at Carrie Dashow's Yesiree Public Notary Project

for thiis one , she had us role 2 die to determine which of the 12 oaths we would have to doctor up to make our own. I roled a 9 and got the Olympic Oath

Finally- Architectural Cribbage Rules in 5 easy steps!

2010-10-09T21:10:00.001-07:00

adventure courtyard at Alfred University visit

2010-10-09T10:21:00.001-07:00

I was invited out to Alfred University in Western NY to give a talk and add something to a project Jonas Linberg(creator of the barbed wire teddy bear at b-home)is doing with his liberal arts class...
I thought, with all these skate ramps and rocking/swinging armadillo house structures, maybe a massage table would be helpful.
Here below you see Jenny Hillenbrand-(aka:Vesna) putting the table to good use for fellow mohawkians: Laura Zelda Smith and Scott Kreider

Here's an in progress overhead shot

Further reading:Finite and Infinite Games:a vision of Life and Play and Possibility by James P Carse
and
An Architecture of Play: A Survey of London's Adventure Playgrounds by Nils Norman

"the opposite of consumption is not thrift, It's generosity"- Raj Patel

Catamount People's Museum 2 Events

2010-08-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

For immediate release

The Catamount People’s Museum
21 West Bridge st
Catskill NY 12414

www.bobcathouse.blogspot.com

A handmade People's Museum has been constructed in Catskill, NY in the form of a lounging bobcat using discarded tree branches and cut offs from local mills. The interior of this over-sized Lynx Rufus houses a collection of materials and displays celebrating the people, stories and history of the Catskill Mountains. Content for displays are collected from both historical organizations and the surrounding community. The museum has a unique focus of seamlessly blending the stories, visions and personal collections of residents with the voices of historians. The folk legends, urban myths and favorite, almost forgotten tide bits on display make this new public space a place to soak in what this area is really all about.

Do you have a favorite story your grandfather told you? An old photo of the area that you really like? A memory of a building that once stood? A little known gem from the present people should know about? A reason this area is special to you? A vision for the future? Bring It! Tell It!

Material Collection Day: Saturday, August 14th 2010, noon to 3pm
Come get a sneak peak of the town's newest museum. Bring your stories, ideas, books, xeroxed notes of interest, photos and artifacts to add to the museums growing collection

Opening Celebration: Saturday, September 4th 2010, noon to 6 pm

Sponsors and Support: The project is sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts(NYFA) and made possible with a grant from the Harpo Foundation. Special Thanks to the Village of Catskill, Catskill Valley Pools, Dimensions North LTD, Tony Fallon's Hardware Store (Cairo) Skip Kelly's Lumber(Cairo), West Side Villa Pizzeria, Box Art Inc, MBZ framing, WGXC Community Radio

For mail in Submissions:
Catamount People’s Museum
Po box 581
Catskill ny 12414

Contact: mattbua@gmail.com

Lisa-Marie Ludwig's Green House in Progress

2010-08-05T10:30:00.001-07:00

Soon to be de-constructed

Paul Howe's first sculpture finds a resting spot at b-home

2010-08-05T10:27:00.001-07:00

Catamount Museum in Progress

2010-06-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

Finally found a lot near the corner of West Main on West Bridge Street in Catskill NY 12414.

Step 1 : build a sturdy post N beam structure and see how many "High Plains Drifter"
comments you can get

Well, Well, Welles House

2010-06-10T05:52:00.000-07:00

This homage to Orson Welles, HG Wells, and George Orwell now resides at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota

Using the seats: paul, robin, mary jane, (bottom) peter and melissa

Upcoming: the Tibetan "a" frame

2010-05-27T06:21:00.001-07:00

Library after the tree hit it

2010-05-27T05:20:00.000-07:00

outdoor kitchen under way

2010-05-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

a trench, a pile of rocks, and a new roof for the cob oven(in collaboration with Laura Nancy Anderson)

Rebekah Hren's stream/rock/waterfall design

2010-05-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

A fine place to take a dip, now with transplanted cattails and MN wildrice

The OvenHouse with Rocket Stove

2010-05-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

Stephen Hren returned to snake the pipe through the soon to be warmest spot at b-home

Pruitt-Igoe...what's there now, weeds, trees and...

2010-05-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

The Pruitt-Igoe housing project was one of the first demolitions of modernist architecture and its destruction was claimed by postmodern architectural historian Charles Jencks to mark "the day Modern architecture died."

The lone half-free morel of the spring

2010-05-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

It popped up right in front of the cabin once Stephen and Rebekah departed, shriveled and disappeared just as quick

The Ford: the last Dymaxion

2010-05-03T19:10:00.001-07:00

Henry Ford: a great collector(weed sandwiches anyone?)

the other side of the lower case "a" frame

2010-01-25T16:58:00.000-08:00

Tar-House

2010-01-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

A structure to celebrate "all things tar"
commission by the Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington NC
The Tar House site

Barbed Wire Bear Gets a Roof

2010-01-25T16:21:00.000-08:00

Jonas Lindberg returned in December after dropping off his homeless weaved barbed wire bear. With a little Sisal twine(2500 ft) and the sticks lying around we gave it the beginning of its roof

Food Dryer

2009-12-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

Human Scale Sun Oven House with Rocket Stove

2009-12-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

This little in progress structure is a collaboration with Stephan Hren
More about the Rocket Stove Building process HERE

Wood working Studio

2009-12-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

New structure built with Kalwalls given to me by Aaron Davidson and Melissa Dubbin, salvaged from the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The Chair in picture was built for the Show : Out of Order

Arctic Talk in Beacon NY Saturday December 12th

2009-12-06T15:05:00.000-08:00

city made of waste

2009-11-21T13:54:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVlOWZfaat0&feature=player_embedded

Carrie Dashow's Archive of Lost Thought

2009-10-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

An ongoing project regarding the creation of archive space for lost and buried thoughts.

many more pictures of the new structure here:

and of the process here

Neighbor Ted's Shed

2009-08-30T07:20:00.001-07:00

the new bridge(on the back of an old maple)

2009-07-26T08:39:00.001-07:00

Stitch Britch Fork House Museum

2009-06-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

A new museum is now open in Riverhead Long Island down the street from the Flanders Giant Duck
Ready for the residence of the 2 forks to fill with their forked goodness.
Note Andrea Cote, the curator of the Found Show's
Equalateral Triangle Rock Collection.

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

Henry Hudson Mutiny Memeorial Drive-Thru Kiosk

2009-06-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-06-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

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

architectural Cribbage Synopsis

2009-05-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

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”
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 along with Max Goldfarb organized a clearinghouse of hundreds of visionary architectural drawings ( available online at www.drawingbuilding.org, 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

2009-05-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-24T18:57:00.001-07:00

the half free morel- found on the drive way

2009-05-24T18:54:00.000-07:00

Jesse and Suzzane's Day and a half "house

2009-05-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

cribs to cribbage(outdoor crib extension)

2009-05-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

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

interior and paint job and Chandelier:Jesse Bercowetz

2008-12-18T16:02:00.001-08:00

Sauna in progress

2008-11-22T14:34:00.000-08:00

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

Photo Credit: Stephen Hren

Form for the filling, design your piece here

2008-08-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Gravity Shower

2008-08-10T22:25:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

For more about Rachel click here

Tool Shed

2008-08-07T15:36:00.001-07:00

Sauna progress update

2008-08-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

What Is Architectural Cribbage?

2008-07-23T05:39:00.001-07:00

poster design: Drew Dudak

Catskill Museum

2008-07-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

More Info about the Catamount Museum Here

Sing Sun Room at Free103point9's Wave Farm

2008-07-04T20:40:00.001-07:00

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Completed last year for free103point9's Sculpture Garden

Lower case a-frame

2008-07-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

10 structure ideas

2008-06-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

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

Tornado damage

2008-06-12T23:07:00.000-07:00

The Chainsaw

2008-06-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

2008-06-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

Digging for the cordwood sauna has started

2008-05-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

The newest structural additions to b-home.

Cabin photos

2008-05-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple updated images of the cabin.

flying squirrel in residence

2008-04-29T06:15:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

Butch's Museum of Wonder website

5 couch shelter

2008-04-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Sarah Margaret Halpern's single person solar theatre

2008-04-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

Cribs to Cribbage Overview Sketch

2008-03-31T07:22:00.001-07:00

12 more structure ideas

2008-03-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-17T15:34:00.001-07:00

More about Motel Jesus Here

architectural cribbage rules

2008-03-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-01T18:35:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-01T17:29:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-27T14:57:00.000-08:00

Manuelito Wheeler's Hogan in progress

2008-02-25T06:32:00.000-08:00

Fritz Welch's Pool House

2008-02-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

Starting point for the Pool House

31 Down's X-ray house

2008-02-14T15:47:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-10T10:15:00.001-08:00

On the ladder is cedar shingle specialist Christian Dautresme

the Bow House

2008-02-10T10:10:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-10T09:45:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-10T09:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-30T16:11:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-30T13:51:00.001-08:00

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

2008-01-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

,

http://www.subliminalstate.org/