text:
Two of the three inmates who reportedly escaped from the Lansing Correctional Facility Friday were brought into custody that evening after being cornered in a home in Platte County, Mo.
Two of the three inmates who reportedly escaped from the Lansing Correctional Facility Friday were brought into custody that evening after being cornered in a home in Clinton County, Mo.
Jeremy Barclay, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections, said at about 12:45 p.m. that Allen Hurst and Scott Gilbert were believed to be the two individuals surrounded in a Clinton County, Mo., home following a chase Friday morning initiated by the Platte County Sheriff's Department.
"There was some gunfire exchanged during that chase," Barclay told the Times.
Late Friday afternoon, the inmates were said to be in negotiations with law enforcement officials, according to Platte County Sheriff's Office spokesman Capt. Erik Holland.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Barclay said he received early reports from authorities close to the investigation that Hurst and Gilbert had been taken into custody following those negotiations.
Contrary to earlier reports, Barclay said the third inmate who escaped from the minimum security wing of the Lansing Correctional Facility Friday, Randy Ridens, was not in custody at that time, but he was not reportedly in the home, either.
Leavenworth County Sheriff Andy Dedeke said Friday afternoon that his deputies were working with officials from the U.S. Marhsals in a Leavenworth County search for the third individual.
"We have acted information on one of the three," he said. "Thus far, we've come up empty-handed."
Dedeke said that third escapee originates from southeastern Leavenworth County, so the search was centered in that area with the thought that he might have made contact with relatives or friends there.
Barclay said shortly after 5 p.m. that the search for Ridens was still centered the Basehor-Linwood area.
Many local schools were on external lockdown as a result of the escape, meaning that activity inside the buildings proceeded as normal but outdoor activities were restricted. Jake Potter, a spokesman for the Leavenworth School District, said additional law enforcement officers were also on hand as those schools were dismissed Friday afternoon. Lansing School Superintendent Randy Bagby said he had buses transporting students at the time he was informed of the situation.
"I contacted them on the road and said 'keep your ears and eyes open,'" he said.
Holland said in a Friday afternoon news conference that officials had closed off Highway Z in Clinton County near the house where the two suspected escapees were said to be.
"We have made sure that nobody's in the houses immediately around the area and we have confirmed that the homeowners in this particular house are not at home and they are talking with officers at a different location," he said during the news conference.
The three men were believed to have escaped LCF's minimum security wing at about 7 a.m. Friday morning, with LCF officials ringing an alarm at 7:40 a.m. Hurst and Gilbert were convicted in 2010 in Sedgwick County on multiple counts of burglary and theft, with Ridens serving time for burglary and theft counts in Shawnee and Douglas County.
Because LCF minimum security unit has no razor wire or perimeter, Barclay characterized the escape as an unauthorized absence.
Barclay confirmed there was a disturbance at the prison's maximum security unit Thursday evening but said this was unrelated to the escape of the minimum custody inmates.
He said Thursday's disturbance, which quelled pretty quickly, was the result of inmates being upset about water pressure at the prison.
All three are considered armed and dangerous, according to information from KDOC. Those with information pertaining to the whereabouts of the three inmates are encouraged to call 911, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-572-7463 or Lansing Correctional Facility at 913-727-3235.


text:
Recover deleted, lost and damaged files quickly and easily!
Recover Files From: Laptops, Removable Drives, Memory Cards, Flash Drives, Cameras
FileRestorePlus | File Recovery Software. Retrieve accidentally deleted files.
FileRestorePlus™ Features
Now includes Photo SmartScan for enhanced photo recovery.
Lost a photo? Photo SmartScan will find it!
- Easily recover documents, photos, video, music and email.
- Quickly recover files - even those emptied from the Recycle Bin.
- File recovery after accidental format - even if you have reinstalled Windows.
- Recover files from Hard Drives, USB Thumb Drives, Camera Media Cards, Floppy Disks and other storage devices.
Benefits of FileRestorePlus™
- Quick and easy recovery of deleted files.
- Great tech support- our staff is always there to help.
- Advanced technology ensures the best possible file recovery.
- Fast scan engine allows to scan a hard drive within minutes.
- Supports FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems.
- Supports all modern types of hard drives.
A quick, easy and effective way to recover deleted
files and photos.
A quick, easy and effective way to recover deleted
files and photos.
FileRestorePlus™ can recover files even after you empty the Recycle Bin, Shift-deleted files and files deleted using the Command Prompt.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Currency Displayed in
This is the scratch and dent version of the Ronin Elite level Chinese Wind Steel Jian.
Ronin's Scratch and Dent Guide:
This sword has been discounted due to dents, dings, chips, or rust. It is safe and usable for cutting.
This product hasn't received any reviews yet. Be the first to review this product!
All prices are in USD


text:
Allen Fugate, 86
Allen Fugate, 86, of Washington Township, died at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, at his home. He was born Oct. 8, 1926, in Jackson, Breathitt County, Kentucky a son of George and Karsan (Miller) Fugate. His formative years were spent in Kentucky where he completed his education.During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army. On April 6, 1947, he was united in marriage to Clara Ellen Hawn. They always made their home on the same farm in Washington Township. Mrs. Fugate died Jan. 28, 2010.A farmer, he also worked for D & C Construction for 33 years and operated back hoe from 1986 until 2009.He attended Sugar Creek Church of the Nazarene. Surviving relatives include a son and a daughter, LeRoy Allen (Donna) Fugate of South Whitley and Kathryn Louise (Jerry) Ray of Columbia City; eight grandchildren; 25 great-grandchildren; seven great-great- grandchildren; and special friend, Sally Snodgrass of Columbia City. In addition to his wife, he was preceded in death by three brothers, John Fugate, Alfred Fugate and Clay Fugate; and four sisters, Susie Fugate, Haney Kroft, Flenna Mae Miller and Amy Clemmons.The funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Smith & Sons Funeral Home, Columbia City. The burial will be in Nolt Cemetery. The visitation will be from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at the funeral home.Preferred memorials are to Sugar Creek Church of the Nazarene. Condolences may be sent to www.smithandsonsfuneralhome.com.


text:
The Source
Farewell Reception for Linda Meacham, Oct. 24
October 24, 2012
After nearly 22 years of combined service between two departments, Public Communications and Student and Departmental Account Services, Linda Meacham will be leaving the college to enjoy time at home with her family.
Linda's dedication to the college and kindness was a beam of light that will genuinely be missed by our department and the friends she made across campuses!
Please join us in wishing Linda a fond farewell Wednesday, October 24, 2012 in Armstrong Lounge from 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Refreshments will be served.
We Hope to see you there.
Please note that Student and Departmental Account Services will be closed at 3 p.m. that day to attend the celebration.
Thank you,
Student and Departmental Account Services


text:
Reviewed By Dudley H (Canandaigua, NY) Reviewed for a 2009 Pontiac Vibe —10/16/2008 8:20 PM
Fits my Vibe great. Easy to put in. Seems a little slippery but we lay a towel back there for the dog and she sticks good. Haven't slid off the seat yet. She enjoys sitting on it, rarely trying to get to the front seat. Like the waterproof part as we often swim and seems to be a good barrier. Great job.


text:
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
- About the Graduate Degrees
- Graduate Programs
- Guidelines for Admission Status
- Graduate Financial Support
- How to Apply
- Chem Grad Students Association
- Chemistry Department Scholarships
- Graduate Student Handbook and Forms
- Fellowships, Scholarships and Stipends
- Pre-Apply Here
- Regular Faculty A-Z
- Adjunct Faculty A-Z
- Emeriti Faculty A-Z
- Retired Faculty A-Z
- Directory
- Daniel W. Armstrong
- William A. Baker
- Edward Bellion
- Alejandro Bugarin
- Saiful Chowdhury
- Joshua Crowell
- Purnendu (Sandy) K. Dasgupta
- Rasika Dias
- Ronald L. Elsenbaumer
- Frank W. Foss
- Robert F. Francis
- Jongyun Heo
- Junha Jeon
- Kayunta Johnson-Winters
- Peter Kroll
- Carl J. Lovely
- Frederick MacDonnell
- Subhrangsu S. Mandal
- Dennis S. Marynick
- Kwangho Nam
- Brad S. Pierce
- Martin Pomerantz
- Laszlo Prokai
- Krishnan Rajeshwar
- Jimmy R. Rogers
- Zoltan A. Schelly
- Kevin A. Schug
- E. Thomas Strom
- Norma Tacconi
- Seiichiro Tanizaki
- Richard B. Timmons
- Robin Macaluso
- He Dong
- Research Interests Grid
- Analytical Chemistry
- Biochemistry
- Colloids/Surfaces
- Education
- Electrochemistry
- Environmental Chemistry
- Inorganic Chemistry
- Materials/Polymers
- Medicinal Chemistry
- Nanochemistry
- Organic Chemistry
- Organometallic Chemistry
- Physical Chemistry
- Separation
- Synthesis
- Theory/Computation
- Videos
- How to Succeed in Chemistry
- 1451
- 1465
- 1441
- Mass and Volume Measurement
- Separation of a Three Component Mixture
- Determining the Empirical Formula of a Copper Oxide
- Titration as an Analytical Method: Determining the Acid Content in Vinegar
- Qualitative Analysis: Identifying Simple Salts from their Properties and Reactions
- The Ideal Gas Law and Gas Constant
- Hess's Law and Calorimetry
- Synthesis of Tris-1,10-phen iron(II) chloride
- Spectrophotometric Determination of Purity and Concentration
- Atomic Emission Spectra of Gases: Evidence of Quantum Structure
- Chemiluminescence: Optimization of a Chemical Reaction
- Molecular Shapes By Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion (VSEPR) Theory
- Concepts
- 1442
- Freezing Point Depression in tert-Butyl Alcohol
- Re-crystallization of Acetaminophen from Tylenol
- Chemical Kinetics: Determining the Rate Law for a Chemical Reaction
- Synthesis of 'Green Crystals'
- Colorimetric Determination of the Equilibrium constant for the Formation of a Complex Ion
- Buffer Solution Behavior
- Behavior of Strong and Weak Acids Upon Titration
- Enthalpy and Entropy of a Reaction
- Redox Titration
- Construction of Simple Batteries and Measurement of Half-Cell Potentials
- Forensic Investigations with Chromatography
- Concepts
- Organic Chemistry 1
Saiful Chowdhury
Assistant Professor
Office: 352 CPB, Email: firstname.lastname@example.com, Phone: 817 272 5439, FAX: 817 272 3808
Protein-protein interactions and protein posttranslational modifications (PTMs) are the major events which regulate signaling cascades in the cells. In disease states, these interaction networks get altered, disrupting normal cellular processes. Understanding the overall network "interactome" or a particular receptor's interaction network, in diseased and normal states, will provide insight into the physiological and pathological processes of those diseases at a molecular level. Mass spectrometer is a major instrument for identifying and quantifying proteins, but deciphering these large-scale interaction networks in vivo is a major challenge in functional proteomics research. Due to current remarkable advancements in mass spectrometry instrumentations, there is a great opportunity to develop mass spectrometry-based quantitative and chemical proteomics strategies that can give us precise information about signaling complexes in vivo or in vitro. The 'proteomics and bio-analytical mass spectrometry' group at UT Arlington focuses on the development of cutting-edge mass spectrometry-supportive novel quantitative and chemical proteomics methods and tools, as well as the application of these methods for proteome-wide identification of protein expressions, protein-protein interactions and PTMs.
My laboratory focuses on mass spectrometry-based method development in the following specific areas of proteome research in order to study environmental diseases impacted by innate immunity.
1. Global and targeted discovery of protein-protein/protein-ligand interactions by antibody/affinity based enrichment methods in combination with novel mass spectrometry-supportive chemical cross-linking approaches.
2. Identification and quantitative characterization of protein posttranslational modifications (PTMs) by mass spectrometry- supportive chemical probes.
3. Elucidation of protein structures by mass spectrometry.
4. Quantitative proteomics studies for the discovery and validation of cellular protein targets (bio-signatures or bio-markers)
The focused biological application of my research is to understand the role of lipid rafts and Toll-like Receptors (TLRs) in inflammatory signaling pathways. We focus on studying several environmental diseases impacted by innate immunity, such as atherosclerosis, sepsis, asthma, etc. by mass spectrometry-based novel proteomics tools. In addition, the approaches we develop can be generally applied to any biological systems; hence we also welcome researchers to initiate collaborative research efforts with us.
Selected Publications:
Bhawal R.P.; Sadananda S.C.; Bugarin A., Laposa B.; Chowdhury S.M. "Mass spectrometry cleavable strategy for identification and differentiation of prenylated peptides" Anal Chem. 2015 Jan 23. [Epub ahead of print]
Chowdhury, S. M*.; Munske, G. R.; Yang, J.; Zhukova, D.; Nguyen, H.; Bruce, J. E.: Solid-phase N-terminal peptide enrichment study by optimizing trypsin proteolysis on homoarginine-modified proteins by mass spectrometry. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 2014, 28, 635-44.
Bian, Shenjie and Chowdhury Saiful M*- Profiling protein-protein interactions and protein structures using chemical cross-linking and mass spectrometry- Austin J Biomed Eng, 2014, 1 (4), 3
Du X, Chowdhury, S. M, Manes, M. Wu S, Cumblidge, UM, Adkins, J. N., Anderson, G. A., Smith, R. D. – Xlink-Identifier: An automated data analysis platforms for confident identification of chemically cross-linked peptides using tandem mass spectrometry –J Proteome Res. 2011 Mar 4;10(3):923-31.
Shi L, Chowdhury S. M., Smallwood H.S., Yoon H., Mottaz-Brewer H.M., Norbeck A.D., McDermott J.E., Clauss TR.W., Heffron F, Smith R.D., Adkins J.N. Proteomics investigation of the time course responses of RAW 264.7 macrophages to infection with salmonella enterica –– Infect Immun 2009, 77, (8), 3227-33.
Featured in Biological Science Division research highlights in PNNL. Link: http://www.pnl.gov/science/highlights/highlight.asp?id=656.
Chowdhury, S. M., Du. X, Tolić, N, Wu S, Moore, R. J., Mayer, M. U.,. Smith, R. D., Adkins, J. N. - Identification of cross-linked peptides containing a click-based enrichment group using sequential CID and ETD tandem mass spectrometry – Anal Chem 2009, 81, (13), 5524-32 – high-lighted in online news of Journal of Proteome Research. Link: http://pubs.acs.org/action/showStoryContent?doi=10.1021%2Fon.2009.06.29.395768.
Chowdhury, S. M., Shi, L, Yoon, H, Rommereim, L. M., Norbeck, A. D., Auberry K. J., Moore, R. J., Adkins J. N., Heffron, F. and Smith, R. D. - A method for investigating protein-protein interactions related to Salmonella Typhimurium pathogenesis"– J. Proteome Res., 2009, 8 (3), pp 1504–1514 – Ranked 15 in Top 20 most read articles in JPR for the March of 2009.
Rodland, K. D., Adkins, J. N., Ansong, C, Chowdhury, S, Manes, N. P., Shi, L., Yoon, H., Smith, R. D., Heffron, F. - Use of high-throughput mass spectrometry to elucidate host-pathogen interactions in Salmonella - Future Microbiology, 2008 3(6), 625-634. – Review
Chowdhury, S. M.; Munske, G. R.; Ronald, R. C.; Bruce, J. E., Evaluation of low energy CID and ECD fragmentation behavior of mono-oxidized thio-ether bonds in peptides. Journal of Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom 2007, 18(3):493-501.
Chowdhury SM: Chemical strategies for profiling protein-protein interactions and protein posttranslational modifications (Ph. D. thesis, Washington State University, USA) - 2006
Chowdhury, S. M.; Munske, G. R.; Tang, X; Bruce, J. E., Collisionally activated dissociation and electron capture dissociation of several mass spectrometry-identifiable chemical cross-linkers. Anal. Chem. 2006, 78 (24):8183 -8193.
Chowdhury, S. M.; Munske, G. R.; Siems, W. F.; Bruce, J. E., A new maleimide-bound acid-cleavable solid-support reagent for profiling phosphorylation. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 2005, 19(7):899-909
Wnuk, S. F.; Chowdhury, S. M.; Garcia, P. I., Jr.; Robins, M. J., Stereodefined synthesis of O3'-labeled uracil nucleosides. 3'-[(17)O]-2'-Azido-2'-deoxyuridine 5'-diphosphate as a probe for the mechanism of inactivation of ribonucleotide reductases. J Org Chem 2002, 67(6):1816-9.
B.Sc Honors (First Class) & M.Sc (First Class)
Applied Chemistry and Chemical Technology
University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
MS in Chemistry, 2001
Florida International University, Miami, FL
Advisor: Dr. Stanislaw F. Wnuk
PhD in Analytical Chemistry, 2006
Washington State University, Pullman, WA
Advisor: Dr. James E. Bruce, Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Aug. 2006- Dec. 2009)
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA
Advisor: Dr. Richard D. Smith
Research Fellow (Dec. 2009 - July 2012)
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS),
NIH Mentor/Co-Mentor: Michael B. Fessler, MD and Dr. Kenneth B. Tomer
Dr. Saiful M. Chowdhury will be joining the University of Texas at Arlington in August of 2012. He received his B.Sc (honors) and M.Sc degree (first class in both exams) in Applied Chemistry and Chemical Technology (currently, Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering) from University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh. After graduation, he served as a lecturer of Chemistry and also a lecturer of Chemical Engineering and Polymer Science at two public universities of Bangladesh. He completed another MS in bio-organic chemistry from Florida International University (FIU), Miami, Fl. in 2001. During his MS studies in FIU, he worked with Dr. Stanislaw F. Wnuk and synthesized an isotope-labeled nucleoside analogue which was used to reveal mechanism of inhibition of Ribonucleotide Di Phosphate Reductases (RDPR). In 2006, he earned his PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Washington State University, Pullman WA, under the supervision of Dr. James E. Bruce, who is currently a professor of the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. During his PhD studies, he developed several mass spectrometry-based bio-analytical methods for studying protein-protein interactions and protein posttranslational modifications (PTMs). After finishing his PhD, he joined as a postdoctoral fellow in the proteomics and mass spectrometry group of Dr. Richard D. Smith in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA. In his postdoctoral training in Dr. Richard D. Smith's group at PNNL, he developed several cutting-edge proteomics tools for global and targeted discovery of protein interactions utilizing tandem affinity tags, chemical cross-linking approaches and mass spectrometry. He worked with the systems biology team at PNNL, and applied these methodologies to investigate protein interactions related to Salmonella pathogenesis and also host-pathogen interactions. From Dec. 2009 - July 2012, he was employed as a research fellow in the laboratory of respiratory biology at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) at NIH and conducted research under the mentorship of Michael B. Fessler MD, head of the host-defense group. He was also co-mentored by Dr. Kenneth B. Tomer, head of the mass spectrometry group. At NIEHS, NIH, he studied lipid raft proteome and toll-like receptors (TLRs) signaling using mass spectrometry-based quantitative and chemical proteomics tools.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) postdoctoral fellowship, Aug. 2006 - Dec. 2009.
Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) grant award, PNNL (Co-principal Investigator, total 250,000 for two years), ranked 2nd out of 22 selected grant proposals.
Fellow Award for Research Excellence (FARE), 2011: National Institute of Health (NIH).


text:
Communal Dream
Les Fleurs du Mal
Luminus Spiritus
Tin Ly is an immigrant from Vietnam who has been working as a professional artist in South Florida for the past 25 years. He was honored with the coveted V isual & Media Artist Fellowship from the South Florida Cultural Consortium in 1990 & 1999; he also received the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Florida Arts Council in 1986 & 1984. In 2000, Ly was honored with the Moretti Award for Artistic Achievement from the Cultural Foundation of Broward.
Tin Ly maintains a working studio and gallery in the Third Avenue Art District, located in northeast Downtown, Fort Lauderdale. His work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Hong Kong, and is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, the Arts & Cultural Center of Hollywood, among others.
Artist Website: http://tinlyart.com/


text:
Ministry offers free goods to those in need
A group of women from the Harvest Family Christian Church who have a vision to help those in need were inspired to start the 'Harvest Free Gift Store' inside the country church in the Groveland area.
Lisha Lee, the group's ministry leader, said the store has been open since October and has already provided furniture, appliances, clothing and other household goods to many families in the community who really needed the items.
Lee, a mother of four who moved to Blackfoot from Utah one year ago, said, "We saw a need in the community. Many of us have been in need ourselves at some point in our lives and we thought this would be a great way for people to get rid of items they don't use anymore and help others get what they need."
Lee said that the store has been so well received by the community with people offering generous donations of used goods that church members are planning to expand the store to make room for more merchandise.
Lee praised church pastors Ken and Ronda Lackner and volunteers Jamie Melendez, Penny West, Jaimie Irwin, Molly Brower and Sheri Brower for volunteering their time to help keep the store stocked and organized, saying, "We couldn't do this without the help of the volunteers who sacrifice their time."
Those who may need items can call and make an appointment to come into the store. Appointments are usually scheduled for Thursday evenings. Lee said no proof of income and no explanation of anyone's life situation is required to get help. Lee also accepts referrals from Blackfoot's SEICAA (Southeast Idaho Community Action Agency).
Lee said that she also receives numerous phone calls from people looking for food and hopes to be able to provide food boxes for the hungry in the near future.
"It's our mission to help struggling families," she added. "There have been house fires in the area, incidents of domestic violence, etc...we are here to help those families out."
Lee welcomes volunteers, donations of gently used goods, or anyone who can help by providing food.
Anyone in need or able to help in any way can call Lee at 208-346-3221.


text:
U.S. News
Study: U.S. Felons Banned From Food Stamps at Higher Risk of HIV
April 9, 2013
Adapted from:
Researchers investigated whether convicted felons who are banned from accessing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and other public food assistance are more likely to participate in behaviors that put them at risk for HIV infection. A law passed in 1966 bans those convicted of drug felonies from such food assistance. The researchers chose people recently released from prison in Texas, California, and Connecticut because these three states interpret the law differently. In Connecticut, persons who comply with their court sentences are eligible for benefits; in California, the ban only applies to individuals who have not completed a drug treatment ban; and Texas has a full ban without exceptions.
Connecticut Post (Bridgeport)
04.06.2013; Amanda Cuda
This article was provided by CDC National Prevention Information Network. It is a part of the publication CDC HIV/Hepatitis/STD/TB Prevention News Update.
Add Your Comment:
(Please note: Your name and comment will be public, and may even show up in
Internet search results. Be careful when providing personal information! Before
adding your comment, please read TheBody.com's Comment Policy.)


text:
Let's begin with the big ones. From the left, this photo shows Frei Otto's Olympic Hall – one of the 1972 Olympic Park structures – Olympic Tower to the right, farther back on the right is Wolfgang Prix and Coop Himmelb(l)au's BMW Visitor Centre, immediately to the right are the BMW Museum and BMW Headquarters. That huge white shed is the first BMW factory, and that white shape far away on the horizon is Allianz Stadium.
Olympic Stadium, Gunter Behnisch and Partners (B+P) + Frei Otto, 1972
Munich Olympic Park, Munich
Nothing I'd read or seen about this told me how well this huge thing sits in the landscape that's the work of Behnisch and Partners (B+P). What I didn't know was that the landscape is completely artificial – a significant amount of earth has been shifted to make the stadium appear to nestle into the landscape and so avoid an opressive monumentality. The ground is piled up to the west so those higher tier entrances are at ground level.
The stadium seating is therefore asymmetrical east-west, with the larger and western half shaded from afternoon sun. To cover as much of that seating with a large tent is, as ever, the simplest way to shelter people from sun and light rain and this is probably what B+P were thinking when they asked Frei Otto to design something to do that.
The concept is simple and we can be certain all those forces are resolved and with generous safety factors. Herr Otto was displeased at having to use plexiglass sheets that added to the weight and subsequent cost but he did so with aplomb. For such an elegant structure it has a raw materiality that's difficult to imagine happening today as an understated stadium with an absence of "architectural" expression. In the future, I think I'll put quotation marks around the word architectural to draw attention to the fact not everybody agrees if it's even necessary. These days we expect all forces to resolve into curved surfaces with picturesque voids so it's something of a shock to see the heads of those cigar-shaped cable stays doing the important job of converting multiple tensile forces into a single compressive one. They're not trying to be beautiful and they're not trying to be ugly either. It's us, not them.
Olympic Hall Frei Otto, 1972
Munich Olympic Park, Munich
The roof of this is wonderful but there's more to a building than a canopy. Olympic Hall is a fully enclosed space with glass walls and an extra layer of roof. It's now a concert venue.
Everything inside, including the air conditioning ductwork, is part of an independent structure and it's not surprising it recalls Pompidou Centre because these were the ideas in the air at the time. Frei Otto's involvement with Olympic Park goes back to 1967. Construction of Piano & Roger's Pompidou Centre began 1971 and was completed 1977.
Olympic Tower
Olympic Park, Munich
It's called Olympic Tower but was constructed over 1965–68 well in advance. It's the usual combination of communications tower, restaurant and observation deck that can't help but be a landmark. At 291 metres, it used to be one of the world's bigger ones.
BMW Headquarters, BMW Museum Karl Schwanzer 1972
Petuelring 124-130, 80809 Munich
The exposed rooftop structure of the headquarters allows the floors to be held up by the four suspended "columns" – if that's the right word. Once the core and suspension structure was in place, the building was built from the top down.
Whether it's a good or necessary solution I don't know. With distance, the window detail is lost and the muscular rooftop structure and cylindrical shapes appear monumental on the horizon. Some say cylinders and some say pistons, perhaps because of that gap on the way up that either part could occupy.
BMW Welt Wolf D. Prix & Coop Himmelb(l)au 2007
Am Olympiapark 1, 80809 Munich
A sign misled me into thinking this was the BMW Museum and I went in so I could tell my father about it as at 88 he'd recently decided to get himself a BMW.
There's no reason for this building to exist apart from provide a place for purchasers to pick up their cars. The "waiting area" with its display turntables and exit ramp are thus the point of the design which takes every opportunity to lean in and swirl around it. There are few verticals and even the few columns are given a horizontal thrust by tapers on one side. Not unrelated to the primary function of the building is the bridge from where onlookers can watch new owners take possession and drive off. New BMW automobiles are on display downstairs (as well as those of Mini and Rolls Royce) where there's also three large shops and a café. Motorcycles are on the level of the bridge overlooking the handover area and that eventually leads to the 1972 Karl Schwanzer museum. On the upper levels are assorted business centres and reception rooms.
ASICS Laufschuh Frauen Gel-Cumulus 18 Laufschuh Aquarium/ Flash 19909 Flash Coral/ Blaues Juwel 4b891ea - postnatalanxiety.site
Putting cars and clouds inside buildings creates its own problems but also the opportunity to flaunt the elegance and expense with which they were solved. Making a huge roof appear to hover without visible means of support is one problem. Another is how to maintain air quality when vehicle exhaust is introduced into a space containing people? This I'm sure has been dealt with as nobody seemed to care. It would've been simpler to have an external handover area viewed from some glassy gallery but converting envious onlookers into proud purchasers is what it's all about and the fewer barriers the better.
Realizing a cloud-like building has been a preoccupation of the designers. In 1995 they stated "Clouds are symbols for rapidly changing states. They form and transform themselves through the complex interaction of changing conditions. Viewed in slow motion, the architecture of urban development could be compared with patches of clouds."
Whether or not the building is a successful symbolic cloud depends upon your expectations of symbolic clouds. Outside, the day I visited, a very real cloud covered all of Bavaria.
Waste Treatment Plant
Münchner Straße 22 85774 Unterföhring
The North Munich Waste Treatment Plant has a maximum treatment capacity of 2,640 tonnes/day and the very real purpose of treating all municipal solid waste for Munich (pop. approx. 1.5 mil.) and surrounding areas. Munich has no operational landfills. All recovered energy is returned to the city as heat and/or electricity. Impressive.
Karl47 Kuehn Malvezzi, 2014
Karlstrasse 17, 80333 Munich
This little building is an island building and, walking by it as I did most days, was struck by how well it works on all sides and corners. The curves aside, the only other low-key design feature is the curious geometry of the fourth floor. It's one simple idea that makes each side of this building slightly and differently strange.
The outer layer of glazing is a rainscreen and acoustic baffle for a deep cavity the inner windows open into. [The KPMG building (next up) has a similar treatment at ground level where this outer layer also functions as a security screen.] It only occurred to me later how few buildings in Munich have curved corners, and how welcome these are. It's worth it because curved glazing isn't cheap. The cavity space also has operable louvred blinds, and those on the curved windows have
curved conical slats. Respect.
KPMG Building, Ganghoferstr 29, Munich
Olafur Eliaason's name is cropping up a lot lately. Last week I mentioned his 2003 Tate Gallery installation The Weather Project in the ART IN SPACE! post. I mentioned his building for the LEGO brothers in The Right Stuff post last month, and I'm about to mention his installation for a particularly gloomy corner of Gehry's Louis Vuitton Foundation in an upcoming post. He seems to be moving towards the same design pastures as Thomas Heatherwick, Philip Starck and Zaha Hadid (did) but from the direction of art rather than product design/architecture.
In addition to clocks at obvious locations such as stations, Munich also has many towers and steeples and most have at least two clocks.
Wagnisart Cooperative Housing Bogevischs Buero Architekten Stadtplaner + Schindler Hable Arkitekten 2018
Domagkpark, Munich
Domagkpark is a new residential area less than 7 kilometres from the city centre, 1.2 km from a metro station with two lines and 100m from tram stops. The size of the buildings is small enough to give apartments windows on at least two sides but large enough to reduce the surface area and provide efficiencies of construction and heating. I don't know why humane and generous low-cost housing is so difficult to achieve elsewhere. The three- and four-bedroom apartments are generous.
Both teams of architects know their way around low-cost housing but the Waginsart Housing aims at something higher than an already high standard. At first glance it appears little different apart from some wonky geometry but, in the co-housing blocks, this sensibly converges on the irregularly-shaped shared cooking and living areas.
Elevated bridges are not something you'd expect to find in a housing development like this and it's not clear what problem they solve. I'm guessing the upper storeys were first set back to give the central areas more daylight. Linking those setbacks with elevated bridges defines the central space as something more than just the space between buildings and at the same time makes the upper storey residents an integral part of it. If so, then its very clever and deserves repeating elsewhere.
Olympic Village, Munich
Some of the athletes' housing for the 1972 Olympics had been used as student housing and this project is a reconstruction since renovation proved unviable. The website says the density was increased but each student still has their own house, their own front door, own bathroom and kitchen. Everyone has the right to decorate their exterior as they wish.
158 Ungererstraße, Munich
I didn't know what to make of this building when I came across it. It had a strange monumentality from the size and spacing of the quoins being out of sync with the residential floor levels. Things like this were on my mind since, in a draft for another post, I'd been thinking about how architecture could be art independent of function. Overthinking it, I thought the stone might have been reclaimed. It turned out the building was a heritage-protected overground bunker repurposed as an art space and apartments. Not many apartments have two metre thick walls.
The size and spacing of the quoins were always at odds with the floor levels as originally and pointlessly indicated by the ventilation ducts (that must have zig-zagged to dampen blast waves). It's not often you become aware of a new building typology and, although it's not like you'll start seeing them everywhere once you do, the next day I did see this one not too far from the BMW headquarters. Built in 1941, it could shelter 448.
Blumenstrasse 28b, Munich
I was hoping this building would be of the same vintage as Chicago's 1892 Monadnock Building but no. A 1919 competition for the design of the building was won by Hermann Leitenstorfer, an architect, engineer and instructor at the Technical University of Munich, and the building was completed in 1929. This competition must have represented a huge and exciting opportunity for architects at the time. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Friedrichstrasse designs were 1921, Gropius, Loos and Hilberseimer's Skyscraper Chicago Tribune Competition designs were 1922, and Gropius tenure as Director of The Bauhaus was 1919–1928. I'd like to see the other entries.
Nevertheless, The Old Technical Town Hall can be enjoyed for what it is – a serious attempt to define what a high-rise building should look like in Munich when it could be no taller than the 99-metre towers of Munich's beloved Frauenkirche (Cathedral of Our Lady). This historic height limit is still respected in the city centre.
- https://www.archdaily.com/29664/bmw-welt-coophimmelblau
- https://www.bogevisch.de/de/projekte/projektdetailseiten/082-studentenwohnanlage-im-olympischen-dorf-muenchen
- http://www.bnkr.space/about-bnkr/
- https://www.raumstation-architekten.de/projekte; more bunker photos here: https://www.baunetz.de/meldungen/Meldungen-Umbau_in_Muenchen_3942681
Art comes with its own conceptual space observers are expected to enter. If this weren't the case, then a person wouldn't even know they were in the vincity of an artwork. [1]
Boundaries exist to be broken but an artwork's conceptual space is usually congruent with the physical space it's displayed in. You can be reasonably sure something is art if it's in an art gallery.
Or at least a painting because paintings need even though there was a moment when paintings tried to deny this. [2]
Sculpture was never that attached. It had an existence independent of space-enclosing elements but, regardless of how the sculpture relates to its intrinsic conceptual space [called the "sculptural field", I learn], its external conceptual space is still likely to be the physical space of a museum or gallery where you may be shocked by the encounter but not by the fact you encountered it.
Strange things begin to happen when the congruency of physical space and conceptual space is upset by artworks not appearing where they're expected to appear or by objects not considered artworks occupying physical spaces in which we expect artworks. [3]
Tazro Niscino gives artworks alternative contexts that contradict their given conceptual spaces. His 2002 Villa Victoria in Liverpool was a temporary hotel room constructed around Liverpool's Victoria Monument. The strength of his artwork spaces depends on how credible they are as living spaces.
Rather than exhibit art as an everyday occurrence, the Dadaists exhibited everyday occurrence as art. It was probably always necessary to propose and exhibit something as art in order to create the conceptual space for it to be considered Art but what the Dadaists did was prove it was sufficient. Moreover, once that conceptual space is created, it can't be uncreated. The found object can't be unfound. [4]
The threshold for shock is higher these days as we become numbed to "but-is-it-art?" artworks appearing in public spaces to enliven them or at least indicate the commercial intent to. Guerilla art may once have prompted reflection on the nature of art and existence but commercial interventions seem to err on the site of bright colours and whimsy.
Public space is a lost cause when driven by coffee shops and footfall. It's time to retreat inside and think about the manner in which art is placed in physical spaces, what it gives and what it takes away. If Art is never accidental then neither is its position in space.
The most unselfconscious positioning an artwork can ever have is in the artist's studio. Here's two photographs of Piet Mondrian in his, one with canvasses leaning against the wall and the other having a more self-conscious arrangement for display.
In the second photograph, there contrived surface similarities of colour and pattern between the artworks and the room, and there are also contrivances of placement. Some paintings draw attention to architectural features such as the door. Monochrome shapes blend the sofa into and out of the room and, via a cushion, red shapes morph into cupboards. The chimney breast is treated as an extension of the stove (that, come to think of it, it is) with black and grey squares for whimsical soot and whimsical smoke showing us not Mondrian the abstractionist but Mondrian the representationist.
We don't know if Mondrian was consciously trying to make his studio into a total work of art but we it anyway and Mondrian exhibitions typically reconstruct it. This next photo also contains a black square in another space that's often reconstructed for exhibitions. This time it's Kazimir Malevich's 1915 Black Square in its special corner.
In any room, a corner is a special position not normally occupied by paintings but the allusion to an icon corner would not be lost on persons of the Eastern Orthodox or Russian Orthodox faith.
But what did this association-heavy positioning mean? Was Malevich asking us to worship Art? His painting? Himself? In 1930 Malevich was accused of "degenerate art" and subsequent works until his (natural) death in 1935 posed no more unsettling questions. We're always told what the positioning of Black Square alludes to but we still have no idea what it was supposed to have meant. All we're left with is a sense it's important.
Implied importance is always the case when an artwork occupies a singular position such as the corner of a room or the midpoint of a wall – it's as if the space exists for the sake of the artwork. The sensation is heightened if the artwork is large, apparently heavy, and weighty in content. Less substantial artworks can employ Position to Unite for synthetic gravitas.
The centre of a room is the intersection of all axes passing through corners and wall midpoints. It's the primary spatial hotspot.
Donald Judd's art is often based on the sculptural field between the artwork and the observer – or so I remember reading once. It's basically the relationship we have with furniture before we use it. Furniture as art pays lip service to the notion of art for the people. These are artworks waiting for patron-collectors with spaces to fill. They might appear less like artworks and more like furniture if the spaces containing them looked less like galleries.
It's not unknown for people to purchase an painting or a print in order to "fill a space" that appears to be "needing something". Sometimes the opposite happens and specific spaces are created for the display of specific artworks.
The Bilbao Guggenheim website says "The entire room is part of the sculptural field. As he has done in other sculptures composed of many pieces, the artist has arranged the works deliberately in order to move the viewer through them and through the space surrounding them. The layout of the works along the gallery creates corridors with different, always unexpected proportions (wide, narrow, long, compressed, high, low)." [5]
Even if the room is part of the sculptural field, the distinction between art and space is clear, muddied only by a shared curviness. It's sometimes the case that shared surface characteristics of colour and pattern tell us the elements enclosing the space around the artwork aren't just the sculptural field but very obviously part of the artwork itself.
In her infinity room series, Yayoi Kusama uses mirrors to negate the physical space to create art with a infinite sculptural field even the observer is external to.
In this next example a found space has been made an integral part of an artwork. Artwork and space are one and people are invited. This is not a simple juxtaposition of art in space but nor is it space as art or architecture as art. It's an artwork that could exist nowhere else but in this space.
Now we're finally beginning to approach where we want to be.
A space constructed of elements unique to Architecture.
A space that has its existence as Art.
A space that admits the presence of People.
Here's another.
In all his works I know, artist James Turrell uses our perception of light to conjure up spatial experiences as artworks one contemplates and ponders accordingly. In this next image the volume is created out of nothing but light.
These next ones admit people and are also constructed from light but lack the usual spatial delimiters of surfaces with shadows.
Turrell's Skyscape series have a chamber with an opening to the sky and, because the frame of that opening has no apparent thickness, it makes the sky appear as if on a screen. It's bizarre how this makes it seem more real to us but most art is about making something strange in order to gain our attention and focus it. Within, Without is one of Turrell's skyscapes and is part of the permanent collection of the Australian National Gallery in Canberra.
The approach path slopes down below the surface of the moat-pond as you cross it to enter the truncated pyramid at a corner. You realize you're not as indoors as you thought you'd be as you find it's hollow, see a square of sky, and find yourself external to another raised pool of water pond with an object-structure at its centre. Either of two inclined L-shaped ramps will take you to its entrance and the space within from which you view the space without (and by doing that, I venture, your space within). It's a series of thresholds leading to one you can contemplate but not cross. The entire thing is a work of art.
This artwork uses much of the stuff of Architecture to make something that is very clearly Art and not Architecture.
- There's spatial anticipation and progression.
- There's the play of light and shadow on simple spaces as well as masses.
- There's more materiality than you can shake a stick at.
- There's a sequence of spatial experiences as you progress inwards.
- There's the heat of the summer air and the cool sound of water.
- There's the view of the sky that never before looked so stunning as it does now.
The question then is In what sense is architectural space Art? And what makes it Architectural and not Sculptural?
I don't want to get diverted by arguments of the Function vs. Form kind because I'd like to leave open the possibility of Function (or Performance, etc.) simply being a different form of beauty even if our era has no appetite for such ideas. But the issue of Function isn't irrelevant. The sole function of Turrell's Within, Without is for persons to enter and contemplate it or the sky or themselves etc. It doesn't exist for them to have a sit down, a lie down or a sandwich, chat or nap though it could be used for any of those.
Let's suppose Within, Without wasn't part of an gallery compound but on privately-owned land. It would still have the same existence as Art, and it won't suddenly become architecture if utilities, plumbing and some items of furniture were added to make it habitable. It'll still be the same artwork but with people living in it. It'll be as if – if you'll excuse me – the accoutrements of living are conceptually external to the artwork. The existence of the artwork remains conceptually separate from the people camping inside. All the same, that existence is a fragile thing and is easily compromised by the physical requirements for (the function of) habitation. For example, adding a glass roof to Within, Without for purposes of climate control would diminish the gradations of inside and outside that have been so thoughtfully set up and the artwork would suffer more from that than it would from a bed or a sock or toaster lying around.
Many people offer opinions on what makes architecture different from buildings but the question What makes art different from architecture? remains unanswered and, until now, unasked. What if it was possible to live in art? Where does that leave architecture? Is it possible to live in art that stays art and does not become or claim to be architecture? After half a century of increasingly joyless iterations, we've probably reached the end of the road with Houses are Art. Art as Houses opens up new frontiers.
So then. We began with ART IN SPACE! and ended up with Art as Space or, to be preceise, selected architectural devices used to create spatial experience as Art. The goal now is to find the conditions for intersecting a basic habitability with that and in doing so create Art as Houses.
How it's going to happen is another question. How to add people to an artwork without making it into or reducing it to architecture is going to need some more thought so this post is the first of four. The plan is to follow it with Houses as Art, Living as Art and Art as Houses.• • •
[1] Urban Camouflage, IKEA, Stockhom, 2008
[2] Left: Robert Rauschenberg,; Right: Robert Rauschenberg, Pilgrim, 1960
Nike Frauen Air Zoom Fearless Flyknit Trainingsschuh Mittelblau / Weiß , Ryka Frauen Savannah Sandale Rübenrot / Hyper Pink adidas Running Damen Supernova Sequence 9 Solid Grey / Matt Silber / Weiß , adidas Frauen Swift Run W Kern Schwarz / Kern Schwarz / Weiß Converse Chuck Taylor All Star Saison Farbe Hallo Delphin Topo Athletic MT2 Trail-Laufschuh - Herren Marine / Grau New Balance Damen 590v3 Laufschuh Schwarz / Pink , KEEN Kids Seacamp Ii CNX Wasserschuh Pastell Türkis Raya , OLUKAI Kahiko Slipper - Frauen Pfirsich / Tan Brooks Frauen Ravenna 8 Schwarz / Silber / Wassermann Frances Valentine Damen Lizzie Orange Patent , Nike Frauen Roshe Run Sneakers Gesamtkarmesinrot / Gesamtkarmesin-Konkord-Hyper , New Balance Damen 20v7 Minimus Cross Trainer Fuschia Skechers Sport Frauen Microburst Supersonic Fashion Sneaker Schwarz / Pink Vionic Damen Rest Juno Slide Sandale Dämmerung DC Frauen Magnolia TX Skate Schuh Rose NIKE Herren Zoom Stefan Janoski Skateschuh Schwarz / Mittel Olivweiß Vince Camuto Frauen Emmerly Slide Sandale Sunkissed Braun Vans Unisex Old Skool Klassische Skate Schuhe Lux Leder Rasierte Schokolade Porcini DAWGS Damen Arch Support Loudmouth Z Sandalen Rosa / Schwarz Fliese , Jack Rogers Damen Blakely Wildleder Slide Sandale Schwarz , Marc Jacobs Frauen Aurora Mule Silber Modemoven Frauen Lackleder Pumpen, Point Toe Absätze, Slingback Pumps, Abendschuhe, niedlich Stilettos 10cm Schwarzes Wildleder mit roten Sohlen Misu Frauen Peep Toe Sandalen Latin Salsa Blackgo Praxis Ballroom Dance Schuhe mit 2,75 \ Weiß , InterestPrint Damen Stiefel Einzigartige Designed Komfort Schnürstiefel Multi 24 , TOMS Damen Klassische Leinenseil-Sohle Bequeme und bequeme Slip-On Schokolade TOMS Damen Klassische Leinenseil-Sohle Bequeme und bequeme Slip-On Navy Suede / Blanket Stitch , Bates Frauen Lites Schuh Braun Frauen Overland Terra Shearling gefüttert Kuhfell Wildleder Slipper Schuhe Kastanie Trotters Frauen Liz Loafer Türkis [3] From the Tatsu Nishi exhibition, Sometimes Extraordinary, Sometimes Less than Common, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan, Gallery, 2006 (Photos by Yoshihiro Kikuyama)
[4] Ji Lee, Duchamp Reloaded
[5] The Matter of Time, Richard Serra, 1994–2005
ASICS Laufschuh Frauen Gel-Cumulus 18 Laufschuh Aquarium/ Flash 19909 Flash Coral/ Blaues Juwel 4b891ea - postnatalanxiety.site
Is it possible for an architecture to be popular and affordable? Is it even possible anymore to conceive of an architecture that exists outside the perceived status- and value-adding mechanisms of art? MUJI are giving it their best shot.
For a start, their houses are not unique in the way that superior art and architecture is supposed to be and nor are they designed to be representations of mass-produced things (viz. Warhol, Lichtenstein, etc.) Instead, they're designed to be mass-produced. Whether apartments or prefabricated houses, mass-produced housing has always suffered from the stigma of not being tailor-made, of not being unique, of not being art. It will take time to get over our belief that all good art is one-off.
Let's not forget that many of Japan's unique and arty houses exist on land leased from the landowner and that their lifespan is perhaps two or three generations max. They're only slightly less ephemeral than sofas or automobiles so it's only to be expected that a brand with a reputation for quality at low-cost will expand into the market for houses, the largest of consumer purchases. With such a system of land tenure, most Japanese houses are overdesigned and overconstructed. The modern world doesn't seem to want buildings or other products made solidly to last for generations. It's just not the way it's going. Many of our favourite Japanese art houses have lived longer in our memories than they ever did in reality.
Completed in 2007, Sou Fujimoto's O House was destroyed by the tsunami accompanying the March 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake.
Even without natural disasters, the Japanese are already receptive to the idea of replacing their houses when they no longer fit, or when they wear out, or when they simply don't like them anymore. Perhaps the strong Japanese brand MUJI (a.k.a. 無印, lit. no brand) is in a good position to make the Japanese (and by proxy, us) see the beauty in buildings that work well, are low in cost, have a simplicity that can be interpreted as an aesthetic, and that are not designed to be handed down over generations.
The MUJI Hut is the kind of tinyhouse oddity we see on the internet and, rightly or wrongly, associate with Japan anyway. Aesthetically, it re-presents pretentious minimalist aesthetic qualities (a.k.a. brand values) we're already attuned to.
MUJI entered the housing market after IKEA and are currently marketing three different types of house. They take a new approach to finding an aesthetic for affordable, mass produced housing. They are attempting to engineer a product that prompts us to see beauty in the simple and mundane (yet not in an overtly fashionable or stylish way), that works well, that performs well, and at a reasonable cost. They're rethinking the shed as a high-performance shed and, if we forget about the distraction of houses as art, this is something Japanese architects have been doing for more than half a century.
Storehouse Unknown Yayoi Period (approx. 300BC – 300AD)
Locally-sourced timber frame and infill, all raised on timber columns to protect valuable commodities from floodwaters and rats. Overhanging thatch roof reduces rain penetration. A design classic.
SH-1 Kenji Hirose 1953
Hirose's own house was Japan's first building using lightweight steel. It used little material, had many of the advantages of a wooden frame and could be factory produced. Infill walls were either brick or glass. It was not raised on columns for the sake of it, and its roof was no bigger than necessary.
Itsuko Hasegawa House at Yaizu 1 1974
Yamakawa Mountain Villa Riken Yamamoto 1977
An old favourite. It's not a shed in the sense of construction and materials, but in the sense of having nothing to do with the quality of interior spaces created, connections between them, or how they relate to the outside.
[If the nature of the various rooms is to be determined by the relationship with the outside, here it can be said that there is no place to engage with the outside, that is, every room is a homogeneous place of only the inside. So it is impossible to explain the linkage factor (the cause of the connection, relation) in each room. It only has to have the use function. Whether it is tied up or apart, it does not matter how it is.]
The translation is faithful but it's not helping me understand anything. I remember this house from the time and still believe it has something we can learn from. I don't yet know what it is, and include it here to keep it's memory alive until I do.
Kazunari Sakamoto House in Sakatayamtsuke 1978
House in Komae Go Hasegawa 2009
House in a Forest Go Hasegawa 2006
Pilotis in a Forest Go Hasegawa 2011
Osamu Ishiyama Dracula's Den 1995
Osamu Isiyama is a serial maverick and each of his buildings pushes some boundary. With this house, the clients wanted a comfortable box-like house, open inside but closed to society. The wall deformation is the sole architectural event and everything else happens as it would in any nondescript rural building. The architectural press shunned this one.
Danchi Hutch House YYAA 2013
Yo Shimada House in Rokko 2011
Despite this one having a pitched roof and being up in the air, no-one's ever said it references Ise Shrine or Katsura Palace. It was more important for it to be built from lightweight components and do all the right things re. passive design.
That quick history above shows two opposing forces at work on the Japanese shed. One is that Sheds are Art. The other is that A shed is a shed. Kengo Kuma has a history of trying to reconcile the two so it's not surprising his name is associated with a house for MUJI.
The Window House 2016
Kengo Kuma is reported as architect on content-accumulator sites such as ArchDaily, Dezeen, etc. but MUJI makes no mention of this or the level of his involvement. This might be because Kuma was merely design advisor or it could be because mentioning it would be contrary to their no-brand ethos. Either way, the design idea is that the size and positioning of windows is for the purchaser to decide according to practical or whimsical criteria they wish. Again, there are plan variations of size and proportion, and an interactive website will price them for you [!]
There's also a choice of two basic layouts, priced.
Interiors are nothing to be ashamed of.
There's an infinite number of variations for just the number, size and position of windows. The arrangement of functions inside the house is also flexible. MUJI's fabricators have obviously devised a system of manufacture and assembly that can cope with imposed site conditions but is also not compromised by things purchasers might like to customise, such as the positioning of windows and the allocation of functions.
The Wood House [木の家] 2009
The main features of this house are the double-height space and the deep eaves. The architect was Kazuhiko Namba and this house is the result of his research since 1995 into the "box house" concept I want to write about soon. On the non-Japanese internet, the name of this house is often googletranslated as "Tree House." This is of no great consequence but the house is often mis-attributed to Kengo Kuma which, as these things go, probably doesn't matter that much either. The website of Kazuhiko Namba and his studio is not translated into English and he deserves our respect for that.
In addition, Wood House has two basic layouts with the more open being for a family of four.
This is why you'll see many images of MUJI's Wood House (sometimes called Tree House) and few will be the same. Like IKEA, MUJI have found a way to make the catalogue house work, but MUJI appear to be doing it without repetition. Either the concept of "economies of scale" is a fiction or MUJI have found a different way to achieve them. Their interactive website plans suggest that variation without redundancy is something can be designed for upfront.
The Vertical House 2010~ MUJI + Tohoku University of Art and Design
Of MUJI's three types of house, Vertical House has least kerb appeal but is the most accessible. If Rural Studio in the US aims to provide the US$20K house, then the Japanese equivalent is the JP¥10 mil. house and this is what it looks like.
Here's what the MUJI website has to say. As a statement of intent, it's good.
"Vertical House proposes a new type of urban house that makes good use of small sites. The high "MUJI House" standards for airtightness and thermal insulation control the indoor temperature and air quality and the three-storey void provides an even level of comfort throughout the house. Split-level planning allows for six distinct spaces that have no doors or partitions yet which are connected by the central void. … This research collaboration between industry and academia explores how the comfortable internal environment of timber construction intersects with greater environmental imperatives and the Japanese culture of living with Nature, and asks how the Japanese house should be. Vertical House arose from attempts to solve questions of how people are to live in the city, using passive design to create a comfortable environment neither hot nor cold on small sites that don't receive much solar insolation, and connecting family members while providing their individual space.
This time there's no scope for infinite variations. Fixed variations accommodate different site proportions, directions of access as well as buildable volume truncations determined by Japan's sunlight code. With its end entrance and large genkan for bicycles and shoe storage, this first variation is for sites deeper than they are wide. Ground level is utility level, first is living and second is sleeping. It's two rooms per landing and a three storey lightwell. But see how finely the levels are set. The traditional genkan [Ent.] level is one step lower, but doesn't need a high ceiling so the living room above absorbs that height. It also absorbs height from the above bedroom under the higher end of the roof. The addition of risers at the room entrance thresholds mean the staircase can be made shorter and the house as narrow as possible. There's much intelligence in this layout. Plumbing, structure and construction are not complicated. In each of these three plans, the staircases have been ingeniously contrived so rooms are entered at positions requiring the least amount of additional circulation space.
This next variation allows for the parking of a small car so it must still be the case in Japan that you must first be able to prove you have a space to park a car before you can buy one. The cost of this is a complicated plan that now has a bedroom on the lowest level instead of that neat utility arrangement. That bedroom could easily be with the other one on the top floor and the plumbing simplified so it must have been done for some other reason. The house is definitely a three-person house but whether it is for parents and child or for parents and grandparent we don't know. Having views in both directions on the living space level seems to be a feature.
This next one is tight. Bathrooms at ground, living on first and bedrooms at the top is the pattern. The roof trunctation suggests this house is designed for slivers of land along the south side of a narrow road. Although the bedrooms are bed-spaces, the smaller genkan allows a second space for work and study at ground level.
I can't see how this can be rationalized any further. It's close to a perfect object as you'll find. The three-storey void won't enhance ventilation of daylighting much more than the stairwell is already doing so I suspect that, like the stairs, it's the best way to separate sleeping areas and other horizontally while still connecting them vertically. This volume could be bridged over and used as storage but, if you imagine a huge chimney-breast like volume in these next images you'll agree it's best left a void.
- http://www.interactiongreen.com/muji-house/
- http://www.kai-workshop.com/boxhouse/boxhouse01 ASICS Laufschuh Frauen Gel-Cumulus 18 Laufschuh Aquarium/ Flash 19909 Flash Coral/ Blaues Juwel 4b891ea
- https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/the-present-and-future-of-net-zero-energy-houses-in-japan/
- https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/10/why-buying-entire-pre-designed-houses-could-catch-on-in-japan/
- https://www.muji.net/ie/
When the market for architect-designed private houses finally dries up it will be said in today's world the private house is passée and anachronistic and no longer capable of conveying architectural meaning of any relevance. We're practically there now and architects have no option but to cast their nets wider and embrace the mass-produced home as the next least-worst branding vehicle. As far as net-castings go, it's not that much wider because the number of people having a patch of land on which to build is just another niche market. Tapping into it requires both purchasers and purveyors to discard any remaining notion of the house as a one-off and unique creation of an architect. Many architects perfecting prototype houses for mass production will more likely reduce, not expand, the demand for architects' services. Although every architect everywhere should feel the obligation to perfect a prototype house for mass production, it's not going to help their cashflow unless a housebuilder pays them good money to do it, as well as the opportunity to put their name on it.
The purchaser doesn't get the cachet of a bespoke house but, if they see value in what an architect provides, they can still say they have a designer house. It's pret-a-porter rather than couture, "a print" instead of an original. The currently preferred term of "catalogue house" is more neutral than "off-the-shelf" that is too casual for purchasers and "limited edition" which remains too pretentious for developers. Developers Cube Haus are on the case, offering four designs by architects of whom David Adjaye is perhaps best known, though Skene Catling de la Peña also have a reputation for bespoke houses.
One of the advantages of bespoke houses is that they can be tailored to suit whatever the owner thinks makes themselves special but another is that they can be designed to suit site-specific charactertistics such as direction of access, direction of sun and wind, and direction of views to and from the house. An architect can't go too far wrong if they design from these fundamentals. It's a safe way to begin and also makes sure the selling point of site-specificity is well embedded as unassailable nice things like sun, breezes and views can be used to justify design decisions and, later, their cost.Straßenlauf
Herein lies the cake-and-eat-it contradiction. The developers of catalogue houses want economies of scale and would rather have none of the adjustment or customisation that purchasers usually want. Even if it's not gratuitous or whimsical, customization may be forced upon a purchaser by those less glamorous site-specific conditions such as size, boundaries, overlooking restrictions and party wall and rights-of-way agreements.
Skene Catling de la Peña claim to have solved this problem by giving their house a central "core" so living spaces can pinwheel around it within the limits of arbitrary site boundaries. [1] Charlotte Skene Catling says, "Our solution was to pull all of the complicated bits of the house into a central core, and then have the skin adapt to fit the awkward geometries of the given site. It feels more like product design than architecture." This core must in some sense be structural but would be more convincing if it included such complicated bits as plumbing.
Adjaye Associates' proposal does. Its bathrooms and circulation are combined into a single module to which other arbitrary modules can arbitrarily attached. It's good thinking and shows how fluid our functional linking of spaces actually is.
As an approach I can vouch for it.
The structural system of Adjaye Associates' proposal fits rectangular sites but modules of different dimensions allow a better fit to the proportions of the site. This is limited pre-customization and, while not in the spirit of modules, allows a better fit.
If smaller sites necessitate more customization and accordingly reduced economies of scale, then one way around this is to have 100% fixed designs on larger sites. This is what happens in rural Australia where the primary requirement is that a house be transportable in as few pieces as possible.
This is the route IKEA has taken since 1997 when it began to developo its Boklok range of catalogue houses. We've known about them since 2005. [2]
IKEA have their catalogue houses in their catalogue. I like that.
The other psychological block that has to be overcome is to not denigrate product design but embrace it if one is to deliver the full range of tangible values such as physical comfort, thermal performance and cost-efficiency that designing for manufacture can achieve. [c.f. Architecture Misfits #24: Rural Studio] Early on, IKEA teamed up with Swedish company SKANSKA who look like they know a thing or two about construction.
Larger sites and larger economies of scale are more likely to happen on urban peripheries or land previously occupied by industry or infrastructure. Rather than squash their product onto pocket urban infill sites, IKEA sources property with characteristics that can be sold as part of the product. Their website https://www.boklok.se/hitta-bostad/ asks you where you would like to live, and shows you what's available in that location. The system is sorted.
There are the three basic types of apartments, a semi-detached house, and a terraced house.
They're all Skandi modern on the inside but we can forgive them that.
On offer in Uppsala are some Droskan that are a variation of the timber-clad apartment building Älmhult – which, incidentally, is the name of the Swedish town where the first IKEA store opened.
Uppsala is not sounding very central but, as a guide, 1.6 million Swedish Krona is US$180,000, which is very decent indeed.Droskan
They've done all the good stuff regarding planning and construction. I'm sure the windows are triple glazed and the insulation is more than adequate.
What fascinates me about these next images is the European-ness of the life they imply. If I went there once the projects are built and inhabited, I've no doubt I would see scenes like these.
It's a quality present in this next image that's definitely a photograph. The only demarcation of one property from another is those partial boundary screens that provide only 50% screening. Why? Because privacy is a two-way thing and it's important to these people to know if they're about to disturb someone else's. For now, the sun is very low and people are outside and joined in their appreciation of it. We may have reservations about how these dwellings look but what if the vizualizations are accurate and it were really possible for people to be content and live happy lives free from architectural pretence?
[1] http://www.cube-haus.co.uk/project/skene-catling-de-la-pena-architects-2
[2] https://www.boklok.com/about-the-BoKlok-concept/
[3] https://www.boklok.se/download/285/QgCKQPEXGOvBvFm_EGTN8Q__/broschyr_boklok_droskan.pdf
Everything in the world is a expression of its place and time and so it's not wrong to think good architecture is an expression of its place and time. It's just that every other kind of architecture is too.
Unworried, we understand it to mean good architecture represents its place and time. There are many cultural- and location-specific factors that can be called upon to create associations of place. And making a building look like a product of its time shouldn't pose a problem since we can't build in the past and we can't build in the future. Nevertheless, it's all too easy to contrive a building to look as if it's been built in the past, and making a building look like it comes from the future is actively applauded whether it's achieved by new materials, new technologies or new-looking styles. We never question this, even though new materials, technologies or styles can't create a "new" architecture any more than new sounds can make music new. It's not that simple.
If we exclude the human voice and singing, it's probably safe to say the first musical instruments were percussion and the first music was rhythm accompaniment. Chords and melody were possible but each note required its own instrument and player. People must have wanted more notes in more inventive arrangments because the drum kit and instruments such as the xylophone got solved this problem. The vibraphone is on one branch of this evolution.
With only the digeridoo as evidence, I'd say wind instruments came next. With wind instruments, the limitation of one note per instrument/player was overcome by adding holes to the tube to alter the length of air resonating inside. Instruments such as the fife with six finger holes allowed one person to play many different notes. The modern fife with ten or eleven holes allows a player to make even more. Hitherto [Greek mythology time], melody had been possible by pan pipes with their multiple pipes but now a single person could make melody with only one.
Early trumpets had a single resonator and a fixed pitched but modern ones use three valves to alter the effective length of the tube. The trombone alters the real length of the tube. There are six types of modern flute, all with different ranges.
The dimensions and key system of the modern western concert flute (#3 in the photo) and its close relatives are almost completely the work of the great flautist, composer, acoustician, and silversmith Theobald Boehm, who patented his system in 1847.
These next two diagrams show the relationship between the notes and fingering. The greater the number of open holes the higher the note. Nine different finger combinations produce three different registers, depending on the speed of air blown. Accomplished flautists make all this look completely natural.
This is what a piece of flute music for a beginner looks like.
All musical instruments have their respective strengths but their limitations are usually set by principles of mechanics. Recorders and woodwind instruments are closely related to the flute family but differ in how the air inside is made to vibrate. One of the most difficult things to do on a clarinet is play a high note immediately after a low note so, accordingly, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major has just that, about 2'40" into the second movement. It takes skill and bravery to nail. A player just has to go for it and hope for the best.
The Egyptian bowed harp and the Greek lyre were practically simultaneous developments circa 2,500BC but both evolved from the African Mesolithic stringed bow for which evidence points to circa 15,000BC.
These three types of simple instrument kept people entertained for quite some time. Up to and including the Middle Ages, I can't imagine too many people having the time or inclination to learn how to play them but it is easy to imagine the nobility having court musicians and peasants having to make do with wandering minstrels at festivals. Both ends of this spectrum are subject to the same limitations. Humans have only two hands and ten digits and, whether percussion, string or wind, there's a limit to the number of sounds a single mechanical instrument can make and to what a single player can operate. There's also a practical (and economic) limit to the number of players of different types of instruments that can be assembled at one time and place. [Orchestras defy this and it's not for nothing that classical music is regarded as the opposite of popular music.]
The Renaissance was the first time in Western history that people had the resources to devote to cultural pursuits as well as have the leisure to appreciate them. Developments in music and musical instruments paralleled those in art and architecture. The evolution of musical instruments is not just a quest for a more complex musicality but a response to the demand for novelty and new forms of entertainment. The theorbo, for example, wouldn't have happened if there hadn't been a demand for novel sounds and for novel music to make use of them. The theorbo is a lute supersized, with two pegboards and an additional six strings for added bass. It's a bass and lead guitar in one but there's still a limit to what two hands can do.
Robert de Visée's Prelude and Allemande for theorbo illustrates this new instrument and the musicality it enabled. It's loses a lot when transcribed for conventional lute or for modern guitar, even a seven-stringed one.
Richard Sweeney can tell you everything you need to know about the theorbo.
Even without wardrobe malfunctions, a player has their work cut out for them. The inherent limitations of manual plucking meant the theorbo never evolved into a harpsichord. For the same reason neither did the zither, variations of which exist in many cultures. The Arab version is a qanun and here's an 1859 etching of one being played.
The invention of the keyboard made it possible to play the supersized wind instrument that is the pipe organ. Instruments such as the accordion downsized the pipe organ into a portable and popular instrument capable of complex and sustained chords. Alexander Sevastian will make you think again about the accordion.
The invention of the keyboard also made it possible to play multiple chords on string instruments such as the harpsichord. The key mechanism didn't allow for soft or loud as strings were plucked to the same volume regardless of how strongly or quickly the keys are pressed. Even without this quality of "touch" Bach did his best to satisfy the desire for new sounds with complex polyphonic musical inventions such as the fugue, but it was the invention of the piano with its metal frame and the substitution of wires for strings that resulted in an instrument that, while not portable, had a large range and [to my mind] a reasonably rational method of playing it.
Ludvig van was the first to realize and exploit the capabilities of this new instrument and, ever since, the piano's range of pitch and expression has made it the instrument of choice for composers. In the two centuries after its invention, the (upright) piano found its way into churches and village halls, pubs and taverns, and into many households across society. It made access to music more egalitarian than it had ever been before. If a household had a piano and one reasonably accomplished player who could sight-read music, then published sheet music meant many people anywhere could hear simplified transcriptions of new classical works as well as new popular music. Live music was the only music there was and home recitals were much more common than they are today.
I once stayed a summer night in a tent at the bottom of a garden of a house in Bregenz. This next photograph is a bit higher up but basically the view. We're in Austria, Germany on the right, Switzerland on the left.3369864
When I woke there were sailboats flitting across Lake Constance and someone was playing Beethoven's Pathetique sonata, a bit too loudly I thought, until I heard a mistake – they were actually playing it! This is what music was until the advent of the phonograph. Music travelled as scores and the music you were exposed to depended upon the skill of people you knew and their access to sheet music. Salons and living rooms were as much education as entertainment.
Léon Theremin (Термéн) is an interesting character and had an interesting life.
He invented and named the theramin in 1922. It's unique in being the only musical instrument a person doesn't have to touch in order to play it. It permits the theatricality we associate with a certain type of performer but it never looked easy to play. The characteristic wavering quality comes from players not nailing the notes in one.
Léon Theramin was an accomplished cellist so he knew a bit about nailing notes in one. Compare the previous performance to this one of his. The man's good – he's not using vibrato for cheesy effect.
The electro-theramin was easier to play because it had a dial to replicate the coil for the left hand and a slider to replace the right. Notes could be now be assigned to marked positions on the slider, as frets do, but you either liked the sound or you didn't. One commentator said, "it sounds like a cello lost in the fog and trying to get home". It was part of a greater argument about the authenticity of electronic sounds. [N.B.: The Beachboys' Good Vibrations, features an electro-theramin, not a theramin.] The theramin may have been the world's first electronic instrument but all this means is that it didn't rely upon physical impact to make air vibrate to produce sound.
The theramin produced new sounds and came with a new way of making them but it did not change music. It did not herald a revolution in musicality. And nor did any other the other fantastical musical instruments developed in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. This may have been because "only a few professional, academically educated composers were involved in it."
I suspect there's another reason. In music, it is not assumed that every new sound and every new technology will advance something called MUSIC. It is understood that MUSICALITY does not work that way. It is something different. This is accepted and understood as obvious. It is ludicrous to think otherwise.
The Harpeji, the Medusa Guitar and the Marble Machine are all inventive and produce new sounds but are still waiting for a Beethoven to fully exploit their capabilities.
Internet users more attentive than me will know this redesigned violin has been around since 2005. It has only two strings but an interactive surface links to a computer and turns it into a species of synthesizer. The addition of a Star Trek vibe, a computer, and a second string takes us a long way from that first string instrument in Africa 15,000 years ago.
This next image is of a Bogányi piano. Its more open design and fewer legs are said to better direct the sound to the audience. Extensive use of carbon composites is claimed to produce a higher quality sound and make the piano relatively unaffacted by humidity and hold its tune longer. These and other improvements are all incremental and welcome but it is still a piano on which the same repertoire will be played, even if with greater clarity.
The theramin and other Soviet experiments in sound made possible the Moog synthesizer which was a more versatile electronic sound generator operated by keyboard and (as with a pipe organ) a multitude of dials and swiches for various registers. Herbert Waltl's 1968 album Switched on Bach quickly incorporated these new sounds back into the old musicality and, though it was undeniable evidence of the expressive capabilities of these new sounds, it was not an expression of a new musicality.
It was a new way of expressing an established musicality we were already receptive to. [Thought: Perhaps this is what all newness eventually boils down to.]
Musicality ended up evolving in different routes through rock, disco, metal, punk and hip-hop and a myriad variants, most of which were driven by novelty of rhytmn and not sound. Synthesized sounds were everywhere but [well, for me anyway] Kraftwerk were the first to give them an original voice.
The Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) is a digital synthesizer, sampler and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979. It was one of the first music workstations to have come with a digital sampling synthesizer. This is a series II from 1983.
The Fairlight made it it possible to make any new sound at will by simply altering the waveform of a sampled sound but even this ultimate power to shape sound did not lead to a new musicality. Contemporary musicians such a Kid Koala may combine and manipulate sampled music and sounds into sophisticated and entertaining compositions in which every sound – no matter what it is or where it came from – has the inevitability of art but it is still a conventional art despite its unconventional sources.
Although we think architecture now has the means to make buildings in any and many new forms, this should not be mistaken for a new architecturality.
Architecture has never had the equivalent of a piano – an instrument that can be used for the creation, research and development of new embodiments of the art at one end while simultaneously facilitating their dissemination and appreciation at the other.
The Georgian townhouse was an architectural invention that disseminated and appreciated across the social spectrum but, once it was invented, development stopped. Was it even an architectural invention? It seems more like a popularized construction invention, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Perhaps during the short period of overlap between the residential output of Frank Lloyd Wright and the residential output of Le Corbusier, the private house might have been said to be a generator of architectural ideas that could be disseminated and appreciated across society but, since the appreciation and subsequent dissemination was dependent upon other architects, it's probably not as valid as we would like to believe. Architecture still awaits its piano equivalent.• • •
- https://www.ancientlyre.com/the_incredible_survival_of_the_harps__lyres_of_antiquity_in_africa_today
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin


text:
no spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Please email email@example.com. We apologize that we may be unable to answer each email individually due to the volume we receive.
For information about becoming a sponsor at The Diabetes Site, download our Media Kit. You can also contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com
To contact our press representatives, please email firstname.lastname@example.com. To see recent press releases, stories written about this site, and information on making product review requests, please view our media and press page.
Editorial for The Diabetes Site is produced by an expert team of writers, editors, marketing coordinators, and more. If you have questions or concerns, please email email@example.com. Please note that we cannot respond to every email we recieve. We are not accepting unsolicited guest blog articles, advertising opportunities, article link exchanges, or hosting offers at this time.
For questions regarding the Shelter Challenge, we suggest reading the FAQs first. If you have already done this, please click on Shelter Challenge below to send an email:
Shelter Challenge
For information about how to sell products at The Diabetes Site store, visit our FAQ page.
Mailing Address:
The Diabetes Site
600 University Street, Suite 1000
Seattle, WA 98101-4107


text:
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Jimmie Johnson has gone from dominating NASCAR to watching others do it.
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Jimmie Johnson has gone from dominating NASCAR to watching others do it.
Johnson won the last of his unprecedented five consecutive Sprint Cup championships in 2010. But he hasn't won in his last 11 races and has visited Victory Lane just once in his last 39 starts. That from a guy who has won once for every 6.7 career starts.
Johnson even went winless last year at Martinsville Speedway, where he won six times in 10 races from 2004-09. But the drought isn't really what bothers him.
"What messes with my head is when I miss a chance to win," he said, noting five or six missed opportunities. "When you run 15th all day long and finish second, you leave the track knowing you got more than you should have. The days that you lead the most laps, and dominate a race and come home second, those sting. I think back to Dover last year (when he was beaten by Kurt Busch on the final two restarts). That one stings."
Mistakes he and his team have made have been especially difficult to reconcile.
"I didn't make those in years past, or the team didn't make them," he said.
"There are some things that boiled down to strategy and others down to restarts that have been on me; and some other issues in between."
The words of Jeff Gordon, a four-time champion and Hendrick Motorsports teammate, resonate with Johnson.
"When he won 13 races or something like that in a year, he said he won every race he should have, and then some that he shouldn't have," Johnson said. "We need to win the races we should be able to win and that we have a shot to win."
Johnson's best finish this year is second to Tony Stewart at Las Vegas. And there, he said, no excuse is required.
"I felt like I had a great car. Nobody had anything for that No. 14 car (Stewart) on restarts," he said.
Truth be told, Johnson said, his racing career has taught him to weather a dry spell.
"Growing up in racing, I didn't have this kind of success until I got to the Cup level. It's not that I was ever happy with not winning, but you just learn how to deal with your emotions and you learn how to learn from experiences and get better and stronger at it," he said. "But nothing is eating at me. Right now I'm very optimistic about our season."
Carl Edwards burst into laughter when he heard Johnson's one victory in 39 races had become a hot topic.
"He hasn't won in 11 races? The poor guy," Edwards said before getting serious. "That shows you how successful he is and the expectation they have for success, and I think that when Jimmie is upset about not winning in 11 races, he's truly upset."
Edwards has made 38 starts since his last victory, and said Johnson and his team remain the standard.
"We look at them every week. No matter where they're at in the standings, how fast they are in practice, I think everyone in the garage watches them because, like it or not, which I don't like it, they are the model team right now in this era of the sport."
And, Johnson said, close to showing why again soon.
"I really feel like we're in a position to capitalize on the opportunities when they're there. And then with just good, smart racing and running in the top five, you find your way into a couple (of victories) that kind of get handed to you," he said. "I'm looking forward to those days starting again."


text:
En español | Subscribe: RSS Search
Kirk Rademaker
Behind the Scenes: "Your Life Calling" Meets A Sand Sculptor
The following is a guest post by Kim Sedmak, Executive Producer of Your Life Calling TODAY. Santa Cruz, California is quite a place! Even Jane admitted that after all these years, she doesn't take her job for granted. Who can complain when you're sent to to such a beautiful location and spend the day working on the beach? The first night we arrived, the most glorious full moon rose over the Pacific Ocean. I sat on my hotel room balcony …


text:
DENVER (AP) — Lawyers for Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes say they might withdraw his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity after they see the results of his mental evaluation.
The defense made the statement in a motion filed Tuesday. The motion did not say what plea Holmes would enter if he decides to change, but their only other choices are guilty or not guilty, said attorney Dan Recht, a past president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar.
Nor did the motion indicate what kind of a result would cause the defense to drop the insanity plea, but presumably it would be a finding that he was sane.
Holmes is accused of opening fire in a crowded Denver-area movie theater in July, killing 12 and injuring 70. He is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Colorado's law on the insanity plea requires Holmes to undergo the evaluation before his trial, which is scheduled to start Feb. 3.
Recht, who is not working on Holmes' case, said the defense might be skeptical about the objectivity of the psychiatrist and psychologists who will evaluate Holmes because they are employed by the state, as are the prosecutors who want to see Holmes executed.
"The defense team is trying to save Mr. Holmes' life and is seemingly worried that this state hospital evaluation will not be objective and will be very harmful to Mr. Holmes," he said.
The possible change of plea was disclosed in a motion by defense lawyers saying they should get to see the report on Holmes' evaluation before prosecutors do.
They said if Holmes decided to change his plea, prosecutors should not get the report because they had no need of it.
Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. denied the request Thursday.
Samour said if Holmes does change his plea, the defense could submit new motions about the use of the evaluation report.
Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP


text:
Beachy Base 10
Lesson 4 of 5
Objective: SWBAT solve missing addend and subtrahend story problems using their understanding of base 10.
Objective & Hook
CCSS Context:
In first grade, students are expect to add and subtract within 100 (1.NBT.C4, 1.NBT.C6). This lesson is very much an extension of these standards. Students apply their understanding of different kinds of word problems, as well as their understanding of place value, to solve these problems. This lesson can be used as an extension in first grade, or as a lesson to align with 2.OA.1 in 2nd grade! Throughout this lesson, students practice making sense of problems and persevering in solving them (MP1) because students have to interpret what is happening in the problem in order to solve it.
Review Past Learning:
We have worked on so many kinds of problems this year. Today we are going to solve problems and find the unknown, then use our understanding of place value to help us solve.
Your thinking job is: What part is missing? What strategy can I use to solve for the missing part?
Present Problem: I have 54 beach toys packed for my trip. My best friend buys me more toys. Now I have 75 toys. How many toys did my friend buy for me?
- I'll have 3 students retell the problem. I will focus on making sure students practice explaining what is happening in this problem, particularly focusing on where the unknown is. This is aligned to MP1, Make sense of problems.
Focus Question: Will I get more or less than 75 new toys? Vote!
- A common misconception with missing addend problems is that students immediately add the 75. This question primes students to pay attention to how the number of toys will change- Will I have to add 75? To get to 75, do I need to add 75?
Student Work Time:
I'll have students work on the problem for 8-10 minutes, representing how they solved. I am looking for 2-3 strategies to share.
I saw a variety of strategies during student work time. Below are a few links to student work that are great examples of student strategies.
1. Modeling with Base 10: This student showed how she used base 10 blocks to help her solve. She also has a number sentence that shows exactly what she did in numbers. First she added 20, then 1 more.
2. Ten Frame: Here is another example of base 10 understanding, but using a different tool to represent it. I often have students try using ten frames for novel problem types because they understand that the ten frame represents 10 single ones, and they can easily see all the ones!
3. Combinations: This piece of student work is so cool-it models so much thinking. It shows MP1 (Persevere in solving) and MP5 (Use appropriate tools strategically). This student tried a strategy using fingers, drew it and then abandoned it because in his words, "tens were faster". Great mathematicians know when to abandon the strategy they are using to favor a strategy that is more efficient or makes more sense to them.
This student also used combinations-he explained it in words a little, but expounded on it when he explained his work. He knew 5 and 2 made 7, so he used that to know he would have to get 2 more tens!
Resources (4)
Resources (4)
Student Share
I'll have the 2-3 students I pre-selected share their strategy for the class. I'll draw what they did as they share so students have a visual map to follow later when they solve additional problems.
I chose 2 strategies that highlight the differences in counting.
- The first student used base 10 blocks, but counted on by 1s. Students will often do this when they encounter a new type of problem, even if they have traditionally used counting by 10s without any problem.
- The second student added 10 mentally. She counted on by 10s off the decade. This strategy shows that she can apply 1NBTC5 (add 10 mentally) to a story problem setting!
You can see both strategies here: Class Strategy Chart
After each strategy, I'll have students retell what happened in that strategy. At the end, I'll have students partner share how the 2 strategies were the same and different.
Revisit Initial Question: Did we have to get 75 more? Why not? How many more did we get?
Resources (1)
Resources (1)
Independent Practice
Students solve missing part problems that are differentiated to the number set they are ready for from the packet: Beach Toy Base 10 problems. This is a time that students can either use the strategy they used before and practice it, or apply what they learned in the Student Strategy Share time and use a new strategy. I'll have the Strategy Chart posted so students can reference it.
Group A: Intervention
These students will get numbers under 50, with at least one of the numbers on the decade. This will help set these students up to practice representing the number in 10s consistently.
Example number sets: 21 + ____ = 41; 30 - ____ = 10
Group B: Right on Track
These students will get numbers under 100, similar to that of the student share problem. All numbers off the decade.
See this Student/Teacher Dialogue to hear how I discuss a story problem with a student. You'll hear the questioning I use to prompt her to solve, without ever "telling" her anything!
Also, watch this Working through the problem conversation I had with one student. He was struggling to represent what he was actually doing with his cubes on his paper-you'll see how I ask him questions to help him understand at a deeper level-you'll also see how I reinforce precise academic language (MP6) throughout the video-a key aspect of the CCSS! Side note: His answer for why he took out 2 tens is HILARIOUS!
Example number sets: 43 + ___ = 68; 52 - ____ = 33
Group C: Extension
These students will get numbers where they consistently have to compose or decompose a 10.
- See the attached Mental Math strategy. This student used a different strategy for the opening discussion, but applied what she learned from the 2nd strategy we shared and used it to solve a subtraction story problem! This again shows she can apply 1NBTC5 to story problem situations.
Example number sets: 58 + _____ = 80; 82 - _____ = 54
Resources (4)
I'll have students share the strategy they used for the first problem with a partner in the same group (A, B or C). The focus question is: How are our strategies the same? How are they different?


text:
You asked - they listened. Apparently. Yep, we're talking Sonos and its Mac and PC Controller apps, which have both gone under the surgeon's knife and will be launching in sparkly new form next week.
The apps, according to their maker: "Will make it easier than ever to find, control and play music in any room - right from your favourite desktop or laptop."
Expect to be blown away then with instant volume control, a one-touch Party Mode that lets you set the volume in your grouped rooms simultaneously, faster access to music with an improved search feature and "better-than-ever" drag-and-drop interface.
Hyperbole aside, the new apps do look pretty slick and we particularly like the look of the new Mini Controller - "a slick, pop-out of album art that lets you control your music while you're working in other apps, so now it's even easier to control any music you want - any way you want".
It looks pretty awesome and much more in tune with the widget-based apps that people are familair with from their mobile devices.
Out next week, you'll need Mac OS X 10.6 or higher, or Windows 7 SP3 to make the most of Sonos 3.7.