X House

Site Plan

It's funny how architects like to name their house designs with the alphabet.  I've encountered many such names in design publications, while I've done three myself--"L", "E", and now "X".  It's not difficult to see why.  The letters of the alphabet are easily identifiable shapes, and buildings, when seen from above, like those on Google Earth, tend to resemble blocks of various alphabets.  There is a certain pitfall, though, in naming your designs by some abstract shape--the shape itself can be a guiding concept for the design but it can also become a limiting or skewing factor, to the extent that one loses sight of the fact that one is designing a building for human dwelling, and not just to fit some preconceived abstract fancy or principle.

My X house is inspired by a house featured on the ArchDaily website which I saw in the spring.  I was intrigued by its shape, the way spaces flow from one to another, and the incorporation of an isolated tower rising out of the sprawling ranch style building.  It also recalls to me several of my favorite design principles from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, too many to list here but especially in regards to the various forms of family dwellings, No. 75 to 79. 

I started the design in April and worked on it from time to time at a snail's pace, putting in details, fixing design issues, and trying to overcome the challenges thrown at me by the Revit software.  As is usually the case with me, my designs tend to run on the big side for simple dwellings.  This is something I hope to pare down in my future designs.

There are certain advantages in siting a house at an angle to the street, i.e., not strictly following the Cartesian coordinate system of the predominant street grid, if the width of the lot permits it.  For one thing, you can orient the entry and garage at an oblique angle to the street and thus gain more privacy.  Secondly it can open up rooms with more light and views.  

My design is composed of two bars which form an approximate "X" shape, anchored with a vertical volume at where they cross each other.  The X-shape is reflected inside through the unobstructed circulation routes, both ambulatorily and visually, at one side of each bar.  The effect is achieved by the use of (frosted) glazed pocket doors which separate the more private spaces--the guest bedroom and the office/music room in the E-W block, and the master bedroom in the N-S one--at the farther end of the bars from the more public areas.  The vertical volume contains the circulation hub and another office, an "Ivory Tower" for the most discriminating intellectual pursuits.

In addition, there are a couple of features which I'd like to point out - 

1. The generous use of wall-height sliding glass doors.  I use them on the south facing walls of the kitchen-dining area, the office, the guest room, and the master bedroom, which all open out to terraces, on the ground floor.  I also use them between the living room and kitchen/dining area to screen off the after-dinner mess, and in the office upstairs on two sides, which give access to the entire roof deck.

2. An exterior circular stair gives separate access to the roof deck, which provides ample space for an array of solar panels and for various entertaining options.

What follows are the plans, elevations, sections, and some renderings of the interior spaces, which are meant to give you some idea of what the design looks like.  Enjoy!

Ground Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Basement Floor Plan

NW Elevation

NE Elevation

SE Elevation

SW Elevation

NS Section facing East

NS Section facing West

Section through stairs

EW Section facing North

EW Section facing South

Entry Drive

Entry

West Perspective

South Perspective

NE Perspective

Vestibule

Living Room.1

Living Room.2

Kitchen-Dining

Her Office

Guest Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

2nd Floor Landing

2nd Floor Kitchenette

His Office

Roof Deck

Laundry Room

Garage

Alltag

der Alltag eben
teenager edition

It seems to me that my life, since I stopped getting a regular paycheck (which coincided with the start of the recent recession and our moving to Bloomington), has been a series of experiments--a continual attempt at refining the art of Everyday Life, of finding the most productive ways to spend the time of my life.  Of course, you're probably saying to yourself, only a "lucky" few, with time on their hands, have the luxury to ponder questions like this.  The majority of people, instead, are so caught up in their daily grind that it may appear to them that even to raise this as a central question is an expression of unconscious arrogance. Well, maybe.  Or maybe it is just that it would be better if more people were in a position to raise it.  In any case, I will attempt to describe what everyday life means to me.

To begin with, the concept of life is bound up with the passage of time.  To help better visualize it, we humans conveniently carve it up into units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on.  Our life is made up of repetitive daily routines, which we go through mostly on autopilot.  We spend a large chunk (about a third) of the 24-hour daily cycle in sleep, during which time we are mainly unconscious.  Another third we devote to making money in order to sustain our lifestyle in the society we live in.  The time we spend in this pursuit is usually not at our own command.  The last third we devote to various of life's maintenance tasks, such as shopping, cooking, eating, bathing, maintaining relationships, leisure activities, and so on.  Our daily routines are so well structured and deeply ingrained in us through habit that we can easily lose sight of the fact that it is our life that we are "spending", those hours and days, which never return.

The expression of "spending" time is curious, though I think rather apt.  (German, with its tendency for precision, has a different word for spending money, ausgeben, than for spending time, verbringen.)  We all have, as it were, a limited amount of the "stuff" deposited into our own metaphysical checking account on the day of our birth.  The amount in the bank has, alas, only one direction to go, down--and it is drawn down with each day's passing.  When the account is depleted, one ceases to be alive.  There is a website, called the Death Clock, which will project the date of your death given information you input, with a countdown clock displaying the number of seconds remaining--a friendly reminder, as the website says, that life is slipping away, second by second.  There is no more graphic a reminder of our impending death as being confronted by The Ticktock of the Death Clock. (The prediction provided is based on a very simple calculation and is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so take it with a big pinch of salt.  All the same, we each have an accurate death clock, even if we don't know the date.)

As I am unemployed, my concern is with how to conduct myself during the approximate 8 hours of "work" time each day.  Again, German makes a distinction between "to work" (arbeiten) as at a job and "to occupy oneself with or to be engaged in something" (sich mit etwas beschäftigen).  What one occupies oneself with varies at different stages of one's life--prior to the first 2-3 decades, in acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the life ahead, while in midlife, in establishing oneself in the societal structures one finds oneself in, or in bringing up the next generation as the case may be.  Then there comes a time when one begins to wonder whether there is anything else that one would like to do, apart from what one has been doing for the past 20-40 years, while there is still time.  For me, it is not about seeking novel experiences, which frequently populate people's so-called Bucket Lists, but about learning something new and acquiring new skills, not necessarily with the aim of returning to the work force, but instead expanding one's mind.  My choice about how to spend my time is to spend it in study.  There are always certain interests, which I'm pursuing, which engage my time and intellect and mildly challenge my dispositions and physical ability.  Thanks to Kirk, I've been able to pursue a studious life, relatively worry-free, these past four years.  This is not to say that things won't change in the future.  But until then I'll try to make the best of the time I have, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

„Arbeiten, um zu leben, und lebe nicht für die Arbeit.”

Searle at IU

John Searle gave two terrific public lectures at IU; they can be viewed at the links below:

The Logical Structure of Human Civilization, 09.11.2014

Consciousness as a Problem in Philosophy and Neurobiology, 09.09.2014 

Enjoy!

Best running season

Bryan Park 09.27.14

For recreational runners, now is the best time of the year to get outside to run.  The crunchy sound of the dry, freshly fallen leaves beneath your shoes and the slight nip in the air seem to lend you impetus to pick up the pace a little.

A Life's Morning

This is to let you all know that I've plowed through, not single-handedly, another Audiobook recording; it's titled "A Life's Morning" by George Gissing, published in 1888.  It can be downloaded here for free from Librivox.  I joined in the group recording effort in May 2013 and recorded 18 of its 33 sections.  It was hard-going at times, but boy I'm glad it's finally done.

I did not know of this late 19th century British author before I started recording for this project.  Though priding myself on having read a lot of the English literary classics from 18th century to early modern era, I've been finding out, to my amazement, the names of so many writers whom I've never heard of, simply by randomly browsing the free (no longer copyrighted) titles available on Project Gutenberg.  Like so many men and women of letters in various time and various quarters of the globe who have been overshadowed by their greater contemporaries, Gissing in his brief existence left a considerable literary production.  Whether his novels have any significant worth in the opinion of literary critics, they provide a window onto the life and preoccupations of the people of his time, which though very unlike our own, we can still thoroughly enter into on the basis of our shared human experience.   

die Fußballweltmeisterschaft

Like a Dream

Like millions of people worldwide, I've caught the soccer fever, which has gripped me for the past four weeks or so and has just ended in Germany's being crowned the Weltmeister!  Wow! Such a run -- from the unbelievable header by John Brooks (that's him on the image here) of the USA team, to intricate footwork, dives, injuries intended or unintended, bizarre refereeing, near misses, jubilation, and heartbreaks on a colossal collective scale.  I so wanted Argentina and Messi to win (the Pope should have intervened), though I believed the Germany team well earned the title by patiently grinding the game out without ever losing their concentration.  

After this world cup, I hope the sport soccer or "football" in every other country in the world will gain more of a following in American society, alongside the NBA, NFL, MLB, and other team sports and eventually produce some world-class athletes. 

Phares Whitted Quartet

Otherwise, it has been a laid back summer, an extended stay-cation, you might say. Though a lot of students have left town, the university has kept up with non-stop summer arts, film, and music programs, workshops, and recitals, most of them with free admission.  We've gone to the Jazz in July outdoor concerts a couple of times at the IU Art Museum, which is something new for us this year, and despite the heat and occasional searing loud trumpet, we've enjoyed the performances. Who would have known that Indiana has been the hot bed of Jazz since its early days, with the likes of Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael, a Bloomington native, both hailing from Hoosier country, and that many other renowned Jazz musicians have graduated from the IU Jazz Studies program since the 60s?

   

Slow Movement

At the beginning of this century (it's kind of special that our lives straddle two centuries), there arose a movement towards "consciously" slowing down the frantic pace of life that carries us along whether we want it to or not.  And that was in the pre-iPhone era, mind you.  The movement started more or less simultaneously in various aspects of our modern life - there is a Slow Food Movement, a book called In Praise of Slowness, a blog called Slow Love Life, albeit that came later, and so on.  

Even in architecture, it was becoming cool, when I was studying architecture from 2001 to 2005, to draw, design, and fabricate by "hand"- molding beautiful architectural adornments painstakingly from raw material to finished products.  The design philosophy of architects of the likes of Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, and Tom Kundig were given as examples in class.  I remembered going on a field trip to see the now-no-longer-existing American Folk Art Museum on W. 53rd Street, New York, designed by the Tsien-Williams team, completed in 2001, and being awe-struck by its fractured façade, consisting of 63 individually cast, copper-bronze panels (which incidentally have been saved from demolition).  The building was torn down recently to make way for an expansion of the Museum of Modern Art.  There was a huge outcry regarding MOMA's controversial decision to demolish this unique, jewel-box-like museum (itself a work of art), whose brief, barely a decade old life span was almost unheard of in the annals of building construction. 

What has got me thinking about slowness, though it is not really relevant to the slowness movement described above, was my recent discovery of a German learning blog called Slow German, posted by someone who periodically reads in a slightly slower pace a short essay in German on various topics to aid people who are interested in learning German.  (It is amazing how many helpful and free resources one can find on-line about almost anything.) I have been frustrated by not being able to break through the barrier between understanding the grammar and vocabulary of German and speaking it spontaneously.  I'm convinced that there is a mysterious threshold which one crosses in learning a new language as an adult, when, quite unbeknownst to you, one day you become able to speak in consecutive sentences about certain subjects in that new language, like the time you came to be able to ride a bicycle.  This of course is just fuzzy thinking on my part; I know full well that nothing will happen unless I put in the time to practice and practice and practice.(But, I'll keep you posted on the day it happens for me, if it does happen at all.)

What follows is a TED talk by the author of In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore, if you're interested -

Stand up for Health

Writing while standing

Kirk's first DIY project for this summer and the sabbatical following were two hardwood stands which we used to turn our current desks into standing desks. I think he was more excited by the opportunity to build something by hand than the possible health benefits (BBC, NYT) associated with standing more vs. sitting all the time.  From my casual mentioning of shopping for a standing desk and our chance discovery of a lumber store in town, it took Kirk less than four days to put together two stands, meticulously finished and made to fit our respective desks and heights.   

My petite stand

The beginning of the summer break is always the impetus for getting us to give tired resolutions a fresh start.  Today, having doggedly stood for about eight hours in front of our computers, we officially kick-started our summer resolution to get more fit.  Surprisingly it was not as uncomfortable as we anticipated it would be.  I think I'm going to be addicted to it soon and to regard sitting as rather ungainly.  As for Kirk, he would like to reserve his opinion until tomorrow morning, I think.      




26. 06 2014 Update:

Compression socks and
anti-fatigue mat
to the rescue

Actually we are completely accustomed to working standing now.  There is no turning back...

Spring Delayed

March 26, 2014

We have been shrouded by a lingering chill that just won't lift since the arrival of spring was officially declared by the calendar on March 20th.  Now that spring break is over, I am beginning to feel as if we were cheated of some promised relief from the cold, as the temperature is still hovering in the 30s to low 40s.  I looked up some of my old posts to get a sense of what it was like at this time of the year in Bloomington in the past few years and they seem to confirm that spring, or the manifestation of it, has been notably delayed for this year.  There is not a stitch of color in sight to relieve the monotonous gray.  My gig with CMA ended a couple of weeks ago and I am now back on my own resources and to my old routines.  There is some prospect for more work in the summer when some of the new projects of the firm kick into gear.  

Happy Chinese New Year!

From Google Image

May your life take off this year to new heights like the prancing horse in the picture!  May it carry you to where you wish to go!  For my part, I think I'm due for some distant travel this year; not sure what life has in store for me.  I'm hoping Kirk might be invited out to give a paper somewhere in Europe, say, Germany, for example, so that I can tag along and put my German to practice.  This semester, instead of going to classes, I've been meeting with a German Ph.D student once a week to practice German.  It's been working out very well so far; we meet at a coffee house across from where I've been working. Hope our friends in the south have not been too adversely affected by this new cold blast from the North Pole.  It no longer bothers us when the temperature is in the teens.  We've definitely grown accustomed to the cold, especially, now that we're well insulated by the inimitable "Canada Goose" parkas!

Why do I continue to watch Downton Abbey?

Downton Abbey Cast Season 4

Dynasty Cast Season 6

Maybe the question to myself should be posed in another way, by appending, "And nothing else?"  The New York Times today tried to treat the American fascination with Downton Abbey as a pop cultural phenomenon, a veiled look at the life of contemporary America through the lens of a period British romance spun out of the mind of Julian Fellowes - the writer and creator of the series.  It suddenly occurs to me that this BBC Masterpiece series is not much different from Dynasty, the # 1 American soap opera of the 90s.  That TV series ran for 9 seasons with 220 episodes from 1981 to 1989, while Downton Abbey with its fourth season debuting in the U.S. this Sunday, may be, for all we know, geared to catch up in its longevity and popularity with the vintage American TV drama.

I'm not at all sure, as I write, where this query is going to lead to or what my answer will be at the end of this post.  My take on this is strictly personal; I'm certainly not qualified to speak about contemporary American pop culture, though my life is unavoidably immersed in it, nor to discuss the social significance embedded in D.A.  What especially disqualifies me to speak like a social or cultural critic is the fact that I do not watch, aside from Downton Abbey, any TV dramas--the large array of hip dramatized stories of modern life on TV that supposedly reflect the American Zeitgeist and are often discussed on Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  The cause of this aversion is complicated, visceral rather than rational, like avoiding looking at blood.  I also don't read popular fiction, those appearing on the Time's Best Sellers list or Oprah Winfrey's Book Club reading list or what have you.  In fact the fictions I read are mostly from the late 18th to early 20th century, by authors such as Jane Austen, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and the like.  Somehow I feel more at home in those bygone eras.  But why the anachronism?  What is it about those times which speaks to me more than the here and now?  Perhaps I'm an Anglophile; that will explain why Downton Abbey is my cup of tea!  However, with the exception of having the tendency to a stiff upper lip, I can't say that I feel especially akin to the Anglo-Saxon race.

Nor can I say that I'm hooked by the plot lines in the ever-developing saga.  They are more potboilers than great literature, written in a haphazard fashion, dictated by contingencies sometimes (such as Mathew Crawley's untimely death) than the internal logic of the storyline.  What about the characters?  Are they more special than the general human lot?  It is probably fair to say that these people are no better nor worse than the average Joe, then or now, though somewhat glamorized, both those living upstairs and downstairs.

Maybe--here is the anti-climax--what attracts me most is the depiction of the tenor of life in the late 19th, and early 20th century, in both the novels from that period and the period dramas which BBC excels at.  There is a certain quality to it, like strolling in a green field, of taking in life in a calm and orderly way, a certain nicety of speech or manner, which seems to be missing in our lives.  At any rate, life seen at a distance seems to me more palatable than seen in close-up.