So ... its been a while since I did anything online. I've been a bit overwhelmed with things to do in the analogue world. But just so its clear I haven't been twiddling my thumbs here are the jpg images of my final presentation boards. My presentation was Thursday the 24th at 9:00 AM and it went really well with interested questions and some genuine discussion with my critics. And ... I've been nominated for a thesis award. So that's a lovely pat on the back. In any case ... here it all is.

Posted by dihansmann at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Continuing quest to figure out how to do it right in Biloxi ... Last week I gathered these images of elevated housing in other parts of the world. A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words but hopefully these will also be as rich in ideas.

Traditional Thai Elevated Housing

Vernacular Elevated Housing (mostly south east asia)

Typical Elevated Beach / Resort Housing

Biloxi Elevated Single Family Housing (since the storm)

Posted by dihansmann at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week I tossed together a visual run down of the FEMA flood insurance program requirements for elevated housing on the gulf coast. Its a fun read - nothing like government documents for a little lighthearted entertainment. Just thought I'd share with the class.

Posted by dihansmann at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Knocking together some little elevation studies for my site I was interested and a bit appalled to note how Corbusian the elevated floor plate looks next to the existing vernacular of Biloxi. Deep breath. I need to remind myself that I don't hate modernism. So ... here's a little visual tribute to Eileen Gray again. I love her stuff. I can deal with this design condition without doing sterile white boxes or cutsie cottages on stilts.

Gray was a furniture designer before she was an architect and she kept designing all types of household items her whole life. Not only did she draw these pieces up but many of them she manufactured herself in her Paris workshop.

Mindfull of the lessons of de Stijl, she often drew folded out elevations of each room to really get a sense of the interior space rather than just focusing on facades and floor plans to create form. Like Loos, she was interested in the experience of being inside a space and really focused on materiality to produce her desired effects.

Posted by dihansmann at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... the minute I did, I was overcome with the compulsion to do it. Also I'm worried I mixed up a couple of names and faces. If I've got you wrong please let me know. See you next week.

Please note: Alyssa and Angie should be switched. Thanks Alyssa.

Posted by dihansmann at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”

Stephen Crane
1899

Posted by dihansmann at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally I have a real site. Its in East Biloxi as I always intended it to be. The image above shows its southern end - a block and a half of real estate empty of houses that can be realistically developed together. The back story on the land is that it was purchased by a high end developer shortly after the storm on the assumption that Biloxi would be developed entirely into New Urbanist condos in support of the casino strip after the storm (they didn't make that idea up - it was pretty clearly laid out in the Living Cities plan published for the city about a year after the storm). Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for East Biloxi that isn't going to happen. So now they are stuck with this land, for which they grossly overpaid, and are trying to get rid of it. The EBCRC is trying to buy it from them and in default of that the GCCDS is coming up with alternative development plans for the the property to prevent them from trying to implement their own (which was to divide it up into the smallest lots imaginable and sell really high). The studio suggested rezoning it and plating out duplexes and singles with accessory dwelling units. I will simply suggest a multi family alternative. It probably won't be chosen but ... at least I can throw it in the hat. And I'm doing what I wanted to do since settling on Biloxi - a realistic project on a real site that might be useful for the future. Whether or not they build anything on this site, Biloxi will need a new model for elevated multi unit development. And I'll be able to turn this over to the GCCDS for their records. SO GREAT! Oh, and here, the GCCDS plan just for the record. Download file

Posted by dihansmann at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is with me hoarding great books on my desk and only discovering the content when I have to return them? Ah well. With this book, My Mississippi, by Willie Morris, my excuse is that I had it mixed up with another book that I had already read and didn't think much of. But actually, its fantastic. Packed with fun facts. And a poetically good read for its own sake. However, this is the result of me ruthlessly mining it for pertinent facts. I'm going to have to get again for pleasure reading, and to learn more about parts of Mississippi that I haven't been to. Here are some nuggets:

Medgar Evers once said “I love Mississippi. I choose not to live anywhere else. I don’t know if I’m going to heaven or hell, but I’m going from Jackson.”

Mississippi a state in 1817, the 20th in the union.

BlackPop:
of 82 counties, 22 are more than 50% black. In 1940 the whole state was more than 50% black but the “decline in black population since then is testimony to the out-migration that lasted until the 1970’s.”

“To comprehend Mississippi, the outlander and native alike must recognize that it is still an emphatically white/black society, and that its white people and black people are deeply bound together – and, together, to the land.”

So Much More. Including the cold hard facts on why Biloxi is such a gambling centre, and why my disapproval is going to do absolutely nothing in the world to change that. Its good for me to read, anyway.

Continue reading "Miss'sippi Fun Facts" »

Posted by dihansmann at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's some cool snippets from Candace M. Volz, in her article, "the Modern Look of the Early Twentieth-Century House" (in American Home Life: 1880-1930 which I am returning to the library today). This should find its way into the housing history section.

Due to the prevalence of communication by train, mail, telephone and telegraph during the _________, not to mention the pervasive influence of plan books, house styles began to be universal across the country and less subject to regional variations. Even the Georgian influence had been most notable on the East Coast and common in other parts of the country only in homes of the upper class. Victorian styles, on the other hand, were relatively uniform throughout the US.

The second half of the nineteenth century had seen upper and middle class households engaging in, “a complex lifestyle that involved rooms for special uses, large flatware and china services with many specialized pieces, and numerous furnishings designed for special needs.” Although this had been de rigueur among the wealthy, in the early Victorian period a combination of affordable goods, produced with Industrial Revolution technology, and immigrant labor as domestic help made the formal lifestyle available to most of society from the lower middle class up.

It was not uncommon for a middle class home to boast any or all of the following specialty rooms: “music rooms, reception rooms, conservatories, sitting rooms and butler’s pantries”, as well as one or two small bedrooms for live in servants.

Oh, don't worry ... it continues. On, to find out more about the death of porch living and "earth closets" keep on keepin' on!

Continue reading "Fun with the Victorians" »

Posted by dihansmann at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here it is: my extremely holey pre-christmas draft. Lots has been done, lots is yet to be done but I'm now putting it on pause for a few weeks to attend to the rest of the fun in my life.

Download file

Posted by dihansmann at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Panic! I've got to present my current work to my thesis committee today. Why did I volunteer to do this? Well, the answer to that is easy - I thought it was required and only found out after inviting them to a meeting that it was only a recommendation. AUGH! However, a lovely 24 work session, only 36 hours after my final review, has produced this - a nice little summary of where I am / would like to be. Now all I have to do is muster enough coherence to present it to them using complete sentences and listen actively to their feedback. Then ... I get a nap!

Here's the fun: Download file

Posted by dihansmann at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;--

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Posted by dihansmann at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... this is the part of the semester where more time gets spent on studio than on thesis. Sad but true. And after all the people I've counciled otherwise in the last two years, too. Ah well. Here's a nice winter thought to tide you over:

Snowflakes

Not slowly wrought, nor treasured for their form,
In heaven, but by the blind self of the storm --
Spun off, each driven individual,
Perfected in the moment of its fall...

-- Howard Nemerov

Posted by dihansmann at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Download file

Here's what I've been working on lately. I've added lot of material (and organization) to the development of housing section, pretended to add a lot to program and put in a fair amount of site material (to which I intend to add more soon). Also I organized the whole thing into a new format which meets both university guidelines and my approval. Its cosmetic but it makes me feel more like I've got something real to work with here. So ... read it, love it, ttyl.

Posted by dihansmann at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fairbanks House in Dedham, Massachusetts is one of the oldest extant houses in America. Built only 17 years after the landing at Plymouth, it is also typical, “the modern average middle class home of its time.” The building has been added onto at several times in the past but the original structure was a common double height two room English cottage. It had a hall and parlor on the ground floor, on either side of an axis which contained main entrance, large double fireplace chimney, and access to the upper floor. The hall would be kitchen, work room and family gathering place, while the adjacent parlor served the more outwardly societal functions of receiving room, as well as principal bedroom at night. Upstairs, the two other chambers might both have been bedrooms or possibly bedroom and storage chamber as there was a fireplace in only one of them. As a home for a family of eight, its comforts seem limited from a contemporary point of view, in its own time, however it was equipped with all of the modern necessities. The house used the standard half timbering construction method common in England at the time and was further protected from the more harsh New England elements by a second skin of unpainted clapboard. It was arranged around a central fireplace, which had only become common in vernacular housing during the second half of the 16th century. It would have had at, or shortly after, construction glass windows rather than the oiled paper or the empty openings with wooden shutters which had sufficed in England. Additionally it boasted a cellar/workroom and a nearby privy (sited away from the house for sanitary reasons).

Posted by dihansmann at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)