share the LOVE!

ABOVE: Doesn’t this tray of food look scrumptious next to a lasercut card by Ali.The.Architect?!?! Send my postcard in the mail, tuck it into a bouquet of roses or place it on a tray of (acorn**) pancakes-in-bed on February 14th.

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With inches of snow to shovel daily, it’s hard to feel joyous during this post-holiday, frigid slump. Well, friends, cheer up because February is right around the corner  – temperatures are on the rise and so are mushy-gushy feelings – good for melting snow and hearts!

Please share the love by joining my and Etsy.com’s “Special Delivery” campaign.

We hope to provide every NYC ‘Meals-on-Wheels’ recipient with a handmade card delivered alongside their Valentine’s Day meal.

How do I participate? When you purchase 1 or 2 cards from me, I match that purchase by donating 1 or 2 cards to Etsy’s program. In my package, I will include a list of names (including yours!) that made the donation possible.

This is my second time participating – last year with my local Craft+Wine club and as an individual lasercutting fiend. The response to my “for purchase’” cards was overwhelmingly positive, which was thrilling and stressful at the same time because each card was so labor intensive and unique. (check out last year’s batch here.) I loved providing cards for my wonderful buyers and for these lovely NYC strangers, but needed a way to make a profit and still go to bed at a decent hour! This year,

I’m selling 4” x 5” lasercut postcards for $3.50 / 1    or    $6.00 / 2 (incld. postage)*.

DESCRIPTON: Each card features a “birds in love” design drawn by me on Adobe Illustrator and cut on my Silhouette. Some cards feature purple or pink glitter embossed cardstock. If you’d prefer one over the other- or no glitter, please specify. The backs are blank, and easily writable. The cards are sturdy, made of two layers of premium cardstock.

I have a growing pile of cards cut, assembled and ready to ship. I turn around orders (<6 pcs) in one day!

IMPORTANT!: Etsy is requiring all cards to be delivered to their offices by Monday, February 4th.

Thus, I will need all orders in by Thursday, January 31st.

TO ORDER: email ali (dot) alithearchitect (at) gmail (dot) com.

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THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING SUPPORTING MY SMALL BUSINESS AND A WONDERFUL CHARITABLE OPPURTUNITY!

Check out Etsy to see how you can be involved in the crafting, too!

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*If you live in CLE, we can make plans to eliminate the need for USPS!

**Stephen made this yummy breakfast-in-bed dish of hand-harvested acorn pancakes and candied apples for me this year’s Sweetest Day. Awwwww.

Yes, please.

I have some pretty eccentric  aspirational models, notwithstanding Andy Warhol’s favorite Muse, Edie Sedgwick and Mick Jagger’s splashy ex, Marianne Faithfull. And it looks as though I have found my newest all-Female role models, Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph, above, licensed architects working in Los Angeles, CA.

It may not seem obvious how 1960’s socialites and current day working women play into my vision of all I hope to grow up to be, so hear me out.

First, while these women have all the skills necessary to practice traditionally, their process and products are anything but. Their self-proclaimed awesomeness is evident by their “about” statement:

We aim to inspire across disciplinary lines and engage the habitable world through our appropriations and innovations. We value the poignant & the ridiculous… Architecture should be able to be assembled by the user at times- be inspired by high technology but accomplished by low-tech craft. It should be affordable, and remain crafty utilizing a range of skilled and unskilled labor. Design, Bitches accept responsibility for our environment and our relationship to society, we strive for the biodegradable.

I am absolutely in love with the gals’ firm, aptly titled “Design Bitches”. Their work spans from storefront displays to books, and happily proves women don’t have to forgo our innate love of glitter and cupcakes to make it in this coke-bottle rimmed glasses, manly industry. (All women love glitter and cupcakes, right? I mean, they should.)

Check out their firm online and if you live in LA, seek them out at the next gallery opening.

I’m sure Cat and Becs would be a hoot in a handbasket

 

Above: Something everyone can appreciate (sigh, nostalgia): the cootie-catcher exhibition at WUHO Gallery, Hollywood.

BTW, If I had seen this project in elementary, I would have decided then to become an architect instead of waiting until 9th grade to determine my destiny. Sheesh, late bloomer.

Above+Below: the Coolhaus Store. Facade graphics and interior design for Coolhaus Ice Cream’s first brick and mortar location in Culver City.

I do believe in spooks!

“I’ll get you my pretty, and your little mangy dog, too!”

Margaret Hamilton would have been out of a job had Zaha Hadid been around during the  ‘The Wizard of Oz” casting call!

Perhaps they’ll give her (and the excellent Photoshoppers over at Building Satire a call for the remake!)

I came across this website a while back and love their humor, especially after  a stressful week of studying, taking another ARE exam and working towards looming project deadlines (both at studioTECHNE and outside of work, in my other realms of creativity!) !!!

Hopefully you and I will both have time to work on Halloween costumes this weekend (fingers crossed my mermaid tail comes out somewhat close to the glorious, shimmering vision in my head!) and I hope these architects dressed up in their finest spooks gives you some inspiration. Or at least something to laugh over!

I love Jean Nouvel’s get-up, although I swore at first it was a Photoshopping of Howie Mandel! And BIG’s head honcho looks dashing as always, even as Frankenstein!

referential preservation

Rotterdam would not have been the first city I looked to for ideas of transforming vacant housing blocks; alas they’ve devised the perfect solution.

Living in Cleveland, where more vacant properties appear on the “to be demolished” register weekly and where the cost to maintain abandoned properties far outweighs the benefit of keeping these structures standing, it’s hard to be imaginative and devise creative solutions while the wrecking ball looms.

However, in Rotterdam, they’ve risen to the vacant land challenge and instead of asking residents fill the huge housing blocks left behind in disadvantaged neighborhoods, apartments are being carved out of single family homes and condos to better serve the demand. Eventually, when the neighborhood reestablishes, the apartments may convert back into houses. Until then, more people can move into space that is custom tailored (sized!) to their needs. Oh yeah, and looks fantastic!

How cool are these new windows, carved into the front of the row home as if in total disregard for the existing? While some might demand we preserve the old (and if Rotterdam is anything like Cleveland, preservationists are coming out of the woodwork trying to save history to make up for the mistakes of previous city administrations), it’s clear to see that the renovated apartments are referential of the existing.

These buildings could have been torn down; instead the great potential of the future is revealed by combining contemporary conveniences with warm textural materials, reminding the down-and-out neighborhood that its past was just as bright and it’s future can be.

We cannot be afraid of our existing housing stock or view current uses as the only or “correct” use of a space. Just as industrial factories have been converted to urban lofts with great success, single family homes of the past can be re-purposed in a a way that better reflects the way we want to live today.

Something like this could positively work in Cleveland. So many of the houses that are abandoned contain three or more bedrooms and are just too much for any one person or small family to adopt. However, apartments are in high demand, especially so if said apartments looked like this!

For the full article, visit http://www.dezeen.com/2011/12/19/black-pearl-by-studio-rolf-fr-with-zecc-architecten/

4 New Brand Prototypes

My friend and and fellow archie, Ray, is fantastic at providing valuable insight into the profession, design ideas and providing a plethora of reading material - including architectural and non-architectural digest.

He is also hilarious.

Read his most recent post, inspired by the fast food chain Wendy’s new “architect’s” series of store prototypes (also see my post on the matter from earlier this year). 

You’ll laugh, you’ll repost. Promise! Enjoy!

4 New Brand Prototypes.

Every rose was a thorn

One of the fantastic things about the internet is how it leads me to articles, photographs and tidbits of information that I never would have thought to search on my own. It makes me wonder what my IQ or trivial pursuit-type knowledge would be if I clicked on every link under the “you might also enjoy this tab”. For every article, on every page, ever.

I’d be a genius, no doubt. 

Today, on the Atlantic’s (also my) homepage, there was an article about the 15th anniversary of the concert U2 played in Bosnia just two years after the 44 month long war ended in 1995. I’m not the biggest fan of U2 or Bono’s belief that he is the key to solving all the world’s issues (so why haven’t you solved poverty and AIDs yet, almighty?), but I am deeply into the history of the lands east of Western Europe, most especially the events that took place in my lifetime. (My obsession with the Czech Republic, Poland and Budapest make sense now, right?)

After reading about halfway down the first page (which I suppose is as far as most articles get read these days with our micro-attention spans), I saw the phrase “Sarajevo Roses” and clicked on the link. (Another favorite internet feature, is the ability to quickly link or search terms that I am unfamiliar with – decidedly easier than pulling out the encyclopedia like I would do in grade school. )

It turns out the Sarajevo Rose is a stunning reminder of the physical damage, human loss and overall devastation caused by the war . Almost like blood spatter, the Rose’s form takes the shape of a concrete scar left from a mortar shell explosion, filled with red resin. The fragmentation pattern, akin to petals falling from a flower, results upon impact. What strikes me as particularly moving, is that instead of the government paving over the broken ground, they’ve allowed the Roses, developed my guerilla artists shortly after peace was regained, to remain.

After the article, I am no bigger a fan of U2 but I am so thrilled to have stumbled upon this piece of art and history. What have you found online today!?

the Market and ‘placemaking’

With the 100th anniversary of the West Side Market fully underway as the Project for Public Spaces’ (PPS) conference kicked off this weekend, suddenly Cleveland has been trust into the spotlight.

Thanks to chefs like Michael Simon and a multitude of programs on the Food Network, Cleveland’s been earning attention for our culinary prowess since the late 2000’s; however, only recently has the discussion of fresh, local food and public access been discussed in the context of rebuilding and revitalizing streetscapes.

Earlier this week I attended an event at IdeaStream in Downtown Cleveland called “Cleveland Connects”. This discussion, opened by David K. O’Neil (Senior Director of Markets for PPS) featuring panelists including Great Lakes Brewing Co. founder Patrick Conway and entrepreneur turned farmer Randell McShepard, focused on the lost marketplace. I was astounded to learn that Cleveland once played host to a market in nearly every neighborhood. These now destroyed markets  were the lifeblood of the town’s activities before American society’s post-WWII’s move towards mass production (think Folgers and Wonderbread). Also, according to Conway in the 1880’s there were 3000 breweries in the United States and only 300 by 1980. The re-emergence of craft brews, chocolates, coffee et al is also a fine source of re-establishing faltering districts.

PPS calls places like Cleveland “Market Cities”, where public food sources “act as hubs for the region and function as great multi-use destinations, with many activities clustering nearby…Market Cities are, in essence, places where food is one of the fundamental building blocks of urban life–not just fuel that you use to get through the day.” (Smithsonian Magazine.)

As I learn more and more about Cleveland’s storied past from the people trying to reinvigorate it,  pure luck or misfortune determined whether or not great institutions were honored or destroyed. Unfortunately, Cleveland’s leadership made poor decisions as early as the 1950’s in an effort to “re-urbanize” - building highways that cut off views and access to Lake Erie and destroying building stock in favor of public housing.

While the discussion on Thursday began with the statement “food matters”, the dialogue evolved into the position that “place matters”.

‘Placemaking’ has interested me from the day I learned the term in an urban studies course. It relies on combining public access and assets with amenities that people need or otherwise cannot find anywhere else. Placemaking is about crafting an experience, through streetscape and architecture.

And so while there is debate as to whether non-local fruits should be sold inside the West Side Market and while the public spaces conference this weekend was decidedly exclusive of the general public, with paid entry fees and gala tickets costing upwards of $300, it is obvious that the re-investment in the surrounding corridors has led to greater success at the Market and in turn, the Market lends it’s visitors to neighboring restaurants, bars, shops and parklets. The West Side Market does year round for Ohio City what Saturday Farmer’s Markets do for their surroundings for a fleeting period of time.

Particularly, the newly renovated park directly across the street from the Market, aptly called Market Square Park. The only unbuilt upon chunk of land along the booming W. 25th + Lorain corridor wasn’t always an asset, but recently made Freshwater’s Top Five list of public spaces in the city. Because of the collaborative feel of he neighborhood, surely local businesses will find themselves programming the park so that it becomes one with the streetscape.

But what can these success stories – a 100 year old market, new, thriving restaurants that focus on local food sources and parks do for cities like Cleveland, which loses population yearly and has a sickeningly high poverty rate and enormous stock of segregated, public housing? 

How does an $8.50 orange juice, a bicyclists’ bar and farm raised tilapia at upscale dinning establishments influence single moms who find it easier and cheaper to feed their kids McDonalds over quinoa and zucchini? How does creating a marketplace that sells prints of 1920’s Cleveland for $100 impact a poor family’s decision to come and enjoy the space? How do make a public space seemingly available to everyone, without regard for age, race or economics?

I believe good food can be transformative, for an individual’s health as well as the for the vibrancy of a district. I look forward to the dialogue and decisions that arise from the PPS conference and related events as we search for ways to improve our access to food, our knowledge of growing local and our ability to provide equal opportunity for all neighborhoods’ growth.