design : : one of mine

20 December 2007


This a restaurant design I've been working on for the last week- Sullivans in Farragut. I had a good meeting with the client today and I'm excited about the potential for this project. He wants a "warm" modern look to it- something I'm very happy to design for him.
Yesterday I went up to site for the Cowen Dining hall and it's looking good! It's about 45% complete. I'll post some pictures of it on here soon.

design : : in democracy

17 December 2007

Last night I spent a few hours designing the campaign poster for my step-dad's election (left). Election related graphic art is an interesting phenomenon. It really tells a lot about the candidate. It may not matter to most people, but it's and important indicator: how a candidate conducts their campaign gives you a preview of how they'll conduct themselves in office. This goes for their graphics as well. Most of the stuff put out there is crap. Bad campaign graphics say: "I don't really care about the details and I just want to put out the bare minimum to get what I want. Well-designed campaigns show that the candidate cares about all aspects of his/her campaign and pays attention to quality- if they don't know anything about good design, they will find a good designer to help them. This attitude will carry on long after the election is over.




Two old infamous campaign stickers and Obama's attempt to graphically indicate a "new dawn" in politics...








Hopefully my efforts will help Drew win his election. I tried to me modern but not too edgy, conservative but not boring, and above all else- tasteful and proportionate. For your consideration, my dear readers...

sister winter

12 December 2007

This is just a short post, but I just wanted to put down for the record that I'm currently obsessed (i.e. ipod on repeat for hours) with the song "Sister Winter" on S.S.'s Christmas album. It communicates a lot of what I've been feeling this year-
(1) having so much to be thankful for and knowing it
(2) yet not feeling happy and content much of the time
(3) then feeling guilty and apologetic for (2)
Maybe we're not meant to be completely content in this world... I don't know. But I do know I am glad Christmas is coming, maybe more so than I have in a long time.

i hit a lull

11 December 2007

Well, blogging took a back seat this week- it's been busy at work and Greg has had my camera. The image to the left has been the view of most of my life lately. The good ol' office. I'll get a real post here in the next day or two. Hopefully something with some personal stuff over the holidays.









In case you can't read it- it says "ARCHITECTS ARE BETTER BY DESIGN"
An old guy who used to work with me left this ridiculous mug behind at the office.

design : : you too can own a badonkadonk!

02 December 2007

The JL421 Badonkadonk a real thing being sold on Amazon. It has 6 hp of power an a certain Mad Max feel to it. The customer reviews are hilarious, but this one takes the cake.
Apparently this "battle tank" has problems with speed bumps. I love the thought of this thing going on a rampage through a trailer park.

Posted by ck at 2:36 PM 3 comments  

La Blogotheque

29 November 2007




Some of my favorite musicians, all filmed by the unique La Blogotheque. I'm really impressed by the intimacy of these videos. It's worth the investment of twenty minutes of your time to watch these. The best, in my opinion, is the last. Sufjan is almost better by himself than with his whole ensemble.

Posted by ck at 6:02 PM 1 comments  

bus jumpin'!


Many of you who know me know my affinity for the vw "box on wheels." I never jumped like this with Greta, but I did ford two rivers one time. I'll be selling her on ebay this month- I finally found the title last night. It marks the end of an era.

bird

If you guys haven't listened to this guy yet, you seriously should. He's good. This song has become a favorite to listen to while driving.

Posted by ck at 1:32 AM 0 comments  

you could be a part time model...

26 November 2007

thanksgiving

21 November 2007

Alice and I were going to head up to Franklin tonight, but the rain and all the yahoos on the roads made us reconsider. We'll head up early in the morning and just chill tonight. The freakshow was all out tonight in our beloved supermarket, known as "Kroghetto" and "Fellini Kroger." Nothing brings out the characters like a national holiday. I think literally every socioeconomic level in our society was represented in my checkout line. And people were passing line! I narrowly missed seeing a rumble between a lady with a mustache and a black family who had slid up in front of us.
For anyone worried about globalization should go for a stroll down the aisle of any urban grocery. The funky, weird, and smelly Americans are out there buying food. They're one of a kind and there's alot of them.

design : : or lack thereof

19 November 2007

Sometimes it's not easy to see if something is well designed or performs well, especially if we are familiar with it. The human body is one of these things. The culminating masterpiece of the most skilled designer of all time, we take our bodies' amazing design for granted. Nothing brings this into relief more than when the design breaks down, sometimes horrifically. We live in a failing, diseased world. The design is falling into entropy and will continue until it utterly fails. I think this video shows one aspect of that.

Thankfully, this man is being helped by western doctors and may be able to live a relatively normal life. But what they've found is that it was the man's genetics that allowed this. The fundamental blueprint of his body broke down.
Not all conditions are this dramatic. But whether it's growing tree branches on your skin or a cancer that eats you from the inside out, one can see entropy in our own bodies- evidence of a failing world in spite of it's original design.

Posted by ck at 6:12 PM 0 comments  

design : : arcspace.com

15 November 2007

This is a great site I found that features a lot of exemplary architecture that doesn't make it into the regular magazines: www.arcspace.com
There's good analysis here and it's always good for one to see where the cutting edge of the profession is. I'm looking around at projects this morning trying to get inspired for a restaurant I'm designing. It may be the coolest project that I design this year- I want to make sure I push it as far as I can and get out of my comfort zone. I need to avoid becoming formulaic at this point in my career. I want to stretch myself and try new techniques and methods, while honing the things I know I'm good at.
It doesn't hurt to know the other guys are doing. I know I'm not as talented as many of them, but I want to be the best I can be where I am at, at this point in my life. I should never be content to stop reexamining things and improving them. I hope that I keep learning new things until the day I die.

Posted by ck at 9:20 AM 0 comments  

design : : long live sans serif

13 November 2007


Microsoft has finally entered the 20th century and adopted a sans serif font as the Office 07 default: Calibri. The old Times New Roman font, the font I saw so many papers written with in college, has been dethroned.
Why is this important, you ask? Granted, most people won't notice the change or care about it. But that's exactly the point- New Times Roman was the font of people who don't care, the people who just start typing with the default and don't even know there is a font list on Word. These people litter the world with notices, posters, emails, resumes, and bad birthday cards. They drive those of us who do care crazy.
Fonts are becoming a obsession of mine. It's subtle art, full of implication. I love sans serif fonts, particularly the "Swiss Style" which gave us Helvetica and Arial. There is a great article on Wikipedia that gives a good overview. I hadn't known that there were four subgroups of sans serif. The more you read about fonts, the more you realize how you've responded to various fonts in the past, particularly in advertising. Many of these fonts have been around for fifty years or longer. They were controversial at first- they were too "modern." Sound familiar?
In 2007, it seems we've finally and completely embraced sans serif fonts.

Posted by ck at 6:21 PM 3 comments  

design : : a tale of two stadiums

12 November 2007


The Colts and the Cowboys are both in the process of building new stadiums this year. As you can see, they use two very different aesthetic philosophies. Both have retractable booths, huge openings at the end zones, and are laid out so that nearly everyone in the stadium has a good sight line of the field. Is one better architecturally than the other?
For the above mentioned reasons these buildings are "modern" in design- gone are the 1980s hermetically sealed domes that multi-tasked sports and never really satisfied anyone in them- e.g. Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium. These new stadiums place a premium on the user experience, with wider concourses and built in amenities like full sized restaurants.
But stylistically one takes a stride into the 21st century while the other seems to hark back to the 19th. Indianapolis has gone the historicist route with brick, pilasters, and a pitched roof. The Cowboys have updated the venerable football dome with openings at each end of the field that combine the best of playing outside with the versatility of a covered field. The exterior has a cool high tech idea- a jumbotron that serves the inside and also shows anyone outside what's happening in the game. It's silver, shiny and elegant- everything us architects are trained to love. Most of us would look at the first stadium and mutter "McStadium" under our breath.
But is one better than the other? I for one don't think so. Each responds to a different place and culture, and does so with intelligence and sensitivity. That is the hallmark of true Modern (with a capital 'M') design- not an aesthetic style, but a design methodology utilized focused on the quality of the experience of the people who will use it, as well as the harmoniously addressing the unique problems of context- place, people, and culture. While I'm sure that those who love on stadium will dislike the other, I'm glad to see two skillful executions of 21st century design.

Posted by ck at 11:12 PM 0 comments  

armchair apocrypha


For those of you who haven't had a chance yet, you should check out the latest album by Andrew Bird, "Armchair Apocrypha." I've been listening to it all day and love it. I'll be posting a track from it on the audio part of our website shortly- click on "audio" to left and look at the latest podcast.
I'm sure Bird is old news to many of you Indie-savvy readers, but I thought I'd share this beautiful music with the rest of you. I haven't been this excited about finding out about a musician since I got into Sufjan Stevens. If I could write and play music, this is what I hope I'd be able to make.

Posted by ck at 6:28 PM 0 comments  

chillout weekend

11 November 2007

Alice, Greg and I went hiking up at Frozen Head State Park yesterday. We went up a trail called the "Chimney Tops Trail" but failed to find any chimney-like rock formations. We had already crossed one mountain and it looked like we'd have to go up another one, and the sun was going down fast. The days are getting short! We'll have to make another attempt to find the chimneys some other time. The trees were beautiful, though, and the weather was great for being outside.
Today we rested up and watched some football. The Steelers pulled it off and that's put me in a good mood this evening. Alice's Titans weren't so lucky. We're going up to Redeemer here in a while for the evening worship. In some ways I like it better than the morning service- there's less people and it's more intimate. Who says you have to worship in the morning?! Plus, it gives us an option when we're out of town for the weekend. We can get back and still be able to go to church at home, something we weren't able to a lot this year visiting both families.
Smee+Busby had a three year celebration on Thursday- so I'd like to say congratulations here. It's been an up-and-down ride, and I've learned so much from the ups and downs. It's shown me how truly hard it is to start a company and keep it going. I pray for their long term success, no matter whether that includes me or not. They're good guys and deserve it. I hope and can help in my won way.
Alice's semester is heating up and so is her stress. It's a pretty ridiculous program. They basically have to hold down a full time internship and maintain graduate level courses in the evenings. I know she'll do well but she's not feeling so sure right now. I'll be glad when the semester wraps and we can relax for the holidays.
It's been a good weekend. This is a no-frills post, just letting you guys know see a little of the normal life we live.

wingsuits

09 November 2007


These guys have taken BASE jumping to a whole new level, which I didn't think was possible. It's as close to flying as humans will ever get in this world.

design : : anywhere but NY

08 November 2007


Starting the design series of posts...
This is a cool architecture firm that made the unlikely decision to move to a "secondary market" aka anywhere but New York. They practice in Louisville, not exactly the hub of cutting edge architecture. I really like the tectonic nature of their designs- they seem very comfortable weaving parts together into a complex yet clear whole. Not complexity for its own sake, but a complexity of the parts that that enhances their holistic, simple concepts. They have a good slideshow of their work on arch record 2. Aside from their design, I think they make the important point: you need to make good design WHERE YOU ARE. If you need a pretentious scene like NY to feel cutting edge, you're a PARASITE.
A lot of people I went to school couldn't wait to get to New York and distance themselves from their provincial roots. "I'll go work for so-and-so!" They never looked around and saw the opportunities in these "secondary cities."
It was Mockbee that made me first realize that you have to try to do good work wherever you are. He did it in Hale County, Alabama with the poorest clients. It would have been easy to take a Habitat for Humanity attitude and just come up with a generic solution and call it a day- Mockbee saw a chance to do some good AND create architecture that New York architects travel to the Deep South to see.
You have to create your own scene. Look for opportunities where you are. Don't let your location determine the quality of your design. There's no such thing as a "secondary city" for architecture. Every place deserves the best we can give it.

Posted by ck at 11:25 AM 1 comments  

updates

07 November 2007

I've decided to try to have a design theme on this blog- I see alot of cool stuff everyday from designers all across the world as I'm look for inspiration, so I thought I'd try to share it with you here. I'll still have normal personal stuff posts, but I'll try to have at least one design post a week. Some of you guys who read this are architects, so let's share good ideas. I think this format might be a good way.
There are a few new things posted up on the rest of the website- some new youtube videos (including the "best of" from this blog, and a new audio podcast from The Conet Project. I'll be loading up the pictures from my site visit to the Cowen dining hall on Monday for those of you who know and love Camp Cowen. I'll be back up there in five weeks- the roof should be up by then! Just click on the "photos" tab to the left. It should be up by tomorrow.
Thanks to Jason for finding the cool playlist widgit. Now you guys can listen to what I'm listening to (Cameron, you have no excuse now). The current list is a lot of alltime favorites. I'll update it with new playlists as I find good new stuff to listen to.
cheers!

magnolia ave.


After a scintillating (look it up, Will) lunch with Jason at P. Sullivan's, I went and finally took the photos for a little photo essay on what I feel is one of the coolest blocks in downtown. Magnolia Ave. and I-40 collide on the northern edge of downtown, and now that the interstate has been widened again it has taken on a Chicago "L" feel. The bike hanging in the foreground is the where the best bike shop in Knoxville is. Click on "links" and go to the Wigshop blog to see the whole "essay."

just words

02 November 2007

Well, another hectic week is over. It's been a "hurry up then stop" kind of time at work- projects slide, clients can't make up their minds, and then suddenly they need the project finished yesterday. And then suddenly things go back on hold again. It can be very jarring, especially to someone like me that likes to focus and power through.
Welcome Mandii to this blog! I'm glad you found us. I spent a few minutes getting caught up on your life. I like the dogs! We like to dress up our pooches too in the cold weather- Bob has a smashing red argyle sweater he likes to wear. Alice hasn't started sewing them clothes yet, but I think it's only a matter of time.
I think that's why I like blogs. It's a good way to (passively) stay connected. I really don't have time to conduct all the telephone conversations I should be, but I can post stuff on here and everybody can keep updated on us. And when the occasional old friend pops up, it's easy to catch up with them too.
I'm looking forward to just chilling this weekend. I'm going to make headway through "The Sound and the Fury" but it's a slow beginning. The characters are getting interesting, though.
So to all you readers out there, thanks for showing enough interest to want to keep up to date with Alice and me (and leave comments!). It really means a lot to us that you care.

hiking

30 October 2007





Alice and I went hiking up at House Mountain on Sunday afternoon. It was beautiful day to be outside. I love this time of year! I feel like I'm really awake for the first time in months.
Mr. P made it all the way to the top on his own. We had some tired dogs when we got home.
Click on "photos" to the left to see all the pictures.

friends, family, and bicycles

28 October 2007



I got to see some old friends from architecture school yesterday. They all came up to Knoxville for the Vol game last night and did the whole tailgating shindig all afternoon. I hadn't seen Courtney or Adam since graduation. It's funny- we're all gearing up to take our ARE (Architect Registration Exam) and comparing notes, just like we did in school. It felt good to know I'm not the only one sweating it out and wondering how I'll do.



Last night my family threw a birthday party for my brother Cameron back in Clarksburg. I really wish I could have been there. I got to talk with him on the phone a little last night and heard that he got a new bike to get around Morgantown. Bike communting rocks! It really does make sense for most of the little trips people make, usually in cars. So kudos to him for making the step. (Cameron, your present from us is on it's way! We hope you like it!)

I've been trying to bike commute more days of the week than I use the car. It takes a little more planning, but I really like it. Riding through morning traffic gets my adrenaline running and I don't need as much coffee when I get to the office. You just feel better from a little 15 minute workout at the start of the day. If more people rode their bikes to get around, more businesses would start locating in town instead of at strip malls, traffic would be reduced, there'd be less pollution, and there'd be less overweight people. I don't think our culture of "one car for every person over 16" will be sustainable with the growing global competition. People will always need cars for many things, but I think it will be more like our grandparents' generation- one car per household. Meanwhile the rest of us still need to get to work and run errands- so go get a bike.

probably not

26 October 2007

Posted by ck at 4:07 PM 0 comments  

mr. patinkins

Alice got back home from a long visit in Franklin yesterday, brought her Gramma's dog back with her. We call him Mr. Patinkins.



For those of you who aren't up to date, Alice's Gramma fell and broke her arm and leg and is in a nursing home doing physical therapy right now. She'll be home in a few weeks, but until then we'll be taking care of her dog. As you can see, out pointy-ear dog obsession continues.

Beginning a food theme for the blog: today's lunch-



Harby's Pizza, voted best in Knoxville. It's only a block up from our place! This is the bacon cheeseburger pizza. Mmmm MMMM!

Just got the soundtrack to "Into the Wild" by Eddie Vedder. It looks like it's going to be a great movie, I read a big article about it in Outside magazine. Vedder seems to be having a little rennaissance. He had a great song on Jack Johnson's Brokedown Melody this year and now this. He's picking up the banjo and mandolin these days, which I think is a good thing. I can't wait to see how the movie stands up to the book.
I also got Radiohead's new album "In Rainbows." Seems like they're going back al little to OK Computer and Kid A, which is fine by me. Hail to the Thief was cool, but I don't actually end up listening to it that much.

I finished East of Eden last night. I think it's one of the best books I've ever read. I'll write more later, I'm still thinking it through right now.

knoxville blog

25 October 2007

I've been working on another blog the last week, a group blog that Jason started- "the sunsphere is not a wig shop." It aims to document Knoxville life, inspired in part by Will's thorough documentation of life in Korea. Knoxville is a cool place with its own quirks. It's the kind of town that might seem boring if you were just passing through, but once you live here for a while and peel back the layers, it reveals alot of interesting things.
check it out: http://alittleknoxvillian.blogspot.com
I'm not sure if we're going to stay here for the rest of our lives, but I want enjoy Knoxville while we're here.

the start of a new blog

24 October 2007








I decided to externalize the blog part of my site to blogger so that it can be more connected to everyone else's blogs. As much as I like iweb, it doesn't have very good networking. I'll still keep the rest of the site running, so all your old links don't need to change- just keep going to my front page and click "blog."
To give the new blog a classy start, we'll revisit an old favorite: