Public Transit and Why a Zebra?

I’ve won­dered for a few years now while con­tem­plat­ing being car-less, and now being car-less if it would be pos­si­ble to travel to and from mul­ti­ple cities via pub­lic tran­sit. It turns out it is! Evan Siroky has assem­bled var­i­ous routes to prove the point. You got to love the efforts peo­ple make to share points on just how real­is­tic trans­porta­tion is with­out a car.

This oil spill is incred­i­bly awful, but in terms of its effect on the planet vs. our total con­sump­tion and demand for oil have. It does’t even come close. You may argue the point that man made cli­mate change is a hoax, and this is just the nat­ural cycle. Fine, I’m not going to argue that with any­one because I am not an expert. There are sci­en­tist and peo­ple see­ing it first hand that are bet­ter suited to do so. But for what it is worth the dif­fer­ence I see between man made devel­op­ment vs. a bal­anced ecosys­tem is visu­ally dis­turb­ing to me. If it weren’t for my stu­dent loans I would surly kiss this cap­i­tal­is­tic resource hog­ging world behind, and live with less out on the road.

Ok, back on topic. I really like this idea of pub­lic tran­sit being used to travel great dis­tances. Think about it, I could get on Trimet then con­nect with other regional tran­sit sys­tems and in a mat­ter of hours I am in Seat­tle. It may not be as con­ve­nient, but there is noth­ing con­ve­nient about sit­ting in your car all alone unable to share the expe­ri­ence with other peo­ple. We are social ani­mals, and while some of the peo­ple you may encounter on the bus aren’t the type of peo­ple you want to buddy up to. If more peo­ple ditched their cars the chances are bet­ter that you could meet some­one new on your com­mute to — for exam­ple, Seattle.

This is just another idea that a bet­ter planned urban area, that focuses resources on tran­sit of the foot, pedal, and mass-transit sys­tems could go a long way towards devel­op­ing stronger com­mu­ni­ties. So what am I miss­ing? I’m not sure human beings; despite our social nature are ready for that close of a com­mu­nity. Some peo­ple just don’t want to change, don’t want to lis­ten, and don’t want to give up on what they have come to believe is the Amer­i­can Dream. I wish it were dif­fer­ent. My inner hippy mel­low is being harshend, haha.

Cal­i­for­nia just banned plas­tic bags. Ore­gon, are you lis­ten­ing? Safe­way, you are the worst offender. My Safe­way store doesn’t even offer paper. So if I for­get my reusable bag, I have to take plas­tic. Boo!

Oh, check out this great audio visual bliss of five New York neigh­bor­hoods cap­tured in their full glory. No inserted out­side music, just a great ambi­ent sound­track and neigh­bor­hood blips. Sources: Archi­tects News­pa­per Blog and Urban Omnibus

Daniel, stop being such a gloat­ing flower power dude and show us a cool house. Ok, here you go.

This is the JD House. It is located in the for­est of Mar Azul, in the Argen­tin­ian province of Buenos Aires. Minus the Zebra skin on the ground, I really love this. The Archi­tec­ture is so inspir­ing. I also like the min­i­mal­ism of the inte­rior. Sure it could use some art and a bit of color, but that is really those per­sonal touches that are made by the inhab­i­tant. Here, have a look.

Sources: Con­tem­po­rist and BAK Archi­tects

Jun 04, 2010 | Architecture, Design, Interior, Personal, Travel | Leave A Comment »

Good News, New Stuff and Things to Share

First, the good news. Start­ing June 21^st I will no longer be unem­ployed! After more than 8 months of incon­sis­tent income, over­whelm­ing stress and gen­eral eco­nomic slumps — I will rejoin the work­ing class. Awe­some, and I have 3 weeks off until then to work on odds and ends with­out dwelling on the future.

I put up this weeks mix­tape. You can lis­ten to it, or down­load it on the side­bar to the right. Um, the lan­guage is NSFW. But so is leav­ing the win­dow open. I guess try it out with head­phones first before you start a dance party in the office. This will be a weekly thing, unless I find it to be too much to keep up on. For now, no prob­lem on that front. Enjoy.

30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity starts today. I made a mix to kick things off. I have a few ideas in my head and sketch pad that I am going to try and get more devel­oped. One of them includes a remodel exper­i­ment for my family’s house down in Flo­rence, Ore­gon.  It’s a really great mid-century ranch style house. Some other things will show up here before or after that. This 30 day project will be my moti­va­tion to really kick my port­fo­lio into high gear.

“30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity is a social ini­tia­tive encour­ag­ing peo­ple to cre­ate stuff, any­thing, every day for 30 days.

This is your excuse to buy that tub of Play­dough, unbox your Erec­tor set, or dust off your Holga. You might be work­ing on one huge project for 30 days straight. Maybe you are cre­at­ing some­thing new thing every day. (That’s the best way to par­tic­i­pate!) It could be as sim­ple as tak­ing a pic­ture of your out­fit for 30 days to some­thing as involved as a writ­ing a song or mak­ing a movie every day.” — MAKE Mag­a­zine Blog

#30daysofcreativity — A How To Guide from 30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity on Vimeo.

Finally, some­thing to share. I’ve been try­ing to share at least one project/design a week that inspires me. Today I am shar­ring the Palmyra House located in Nandgaon, Maha­rash­tra, India. This has been fea­tured on a few archi­tec­ture blogs. So it may look famil­iar. It was designed by Stu­dio Mum­bai Archi­tects.

What I like most about it is the inte­rior use of very dark and rich woods, along with nat­ural stone and con­crete ele­ments. It has a strong tex­tural aes­thetic — almost rough look­ing. Still though, the end expe­ri­ence that I observed from the images it that the the house has a quiet and soft feel­ing. The house has great East­ern Asian design ele­ments as well, to unify the mod­ern design with tra­di­tional fin­ishes. More images and obser­va­tions are avail­able over at Con­tem­po­rist.

Jun 01, 2010 | Architecture, Art, Film, Interior, Music, Personal, Work | Leave A Comment »

Wow, New Acropolis Museum and Urban Farming

I love this. It encom­passes a total grasp of clas­si­cal con­cepts, with a con­ver­sion to mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Beau­ti­ful wraps of glass, stun­ning hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal planes, and inter­est­ing angles. Looks like I found another rea­son to get myself to the Acropolis.

Archi­tects: Bernard Tschumi Archi­tects
Loca­tion: Athens, Greece
Asso­ciate Archi­tect: ARSY
Bernard Tschumi Archi­tects Team: Bernard Tschumi; Archi­tect and Lead Designer Joel Rut­ten; Project Archi­tect, Adam Dayem, Aris­totelis Dim­i­trakopou­los, Jane Kim, Eva Sopeoglou, Kim Starr, Anne Save de Beau­re­cueil, Jonathan Chace, Robert Holton, Valentin Bon­t­jes van Beek, Liz Kim, Daniel Hol­guin, Kriti Sider­akis, Michaela Met­calfe, Justin Moore, Joel Aviles, Geor­gia Papa­david, Allis Chee, Thomas Good­will, Véronique Deschar­rières, Christina Devizzi
ARSY Team: Michael Pho­tiadis; Prin­ci­pal, George Kri­parakos, Nikos Bal­ka­lbassis, Philip­pos Pho­tiadis, Jaimie Peel, Niki Plevri, Maria Sarafi­dou, Makis Gri­vas, Elena Voutsina, Manoulis Economou, Anas­tas­sia Gianou, Mil­tiadis Lazaridis, Dim­itris Kos­mas
Struc­ture: ADK and ARUP
Mechan­i­cal and Elec­tri­cal: MMB Study Group S.A. and ARUP
Civil: Michan­niki Geo­sta­tiki and ARUP
Acoustics: Theodore Tim­a­ge­nis
Light­ing: ARUP, Lon­don
Gen­eral Con­trac­tor: Aktor
Project Area: 21,000 sqm
Project Year: 2003–2009
Pho­tographs: Cour­tesy of Bernard Tschumi Architects

via Arch­daily.

URBAN FARMING: GOOD

I think GOOD is becom­ing one of my favorite infor­ma­tion sources for all things I love. They have a really inter­est­ing arti­cle, writ­ten by Peter Smith on future farm­ing. Urban farm­ing was a topic I stud­ied for an envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence class while in school. It is an idea that I see totally viable for reclaim­ing vacant or unoc­cu­pied land in cities all over the globe. If you are inter­ested and have a cou­ple of min­utes I sug­gest check­ing out the arti­cle. This idea could do a lot to decrease our depen­dence on oil and bring local jobs. For­ward think­ing my friends! I need to work on my green thumb.

May 27, 2010 | Architecture, Design, Interior, Sustainable, Travel | Leave A Comment »

Time to Share

I went to the open house yes­ter­day for the house I had been work­ing on ear­lier this year. Of course I for­got my cam­era. It looked great with fur­ni­ture though, I swear. I am still busy look­ing for work, but I wanted to take a break and share some things that I’d come across over the weekend.

This first video is some proper reuse/adaptation to the fore­clo­sures and eco­nomic dumps of these crazy times. This may be a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sial depend­ing on how you look at it. I grew up skate­board­ing, and see no harm done. What do you think? If you are watch­ing at work, be care­ful. The lan­guage is NSFW.

Can­non­ball from Cal­i­for­nia is a place. on Vimeo.

This next item is a fan­tas­tic com­bi­na­tion of mod­ern archi­tec­ture and near per­fect inte­gra­tion into the house’s sur­round­ing land­scape. I call this suc­cess. Beau­ti­ful tex­tures, stun­ning lines, and so many inter­est­ing focal points. I would love to be a part of a project like this some­day. This gets me going.

Los Molles House / Olt­mann Ahlers W. + Olt­mann Ahlers G. + dRN Arqui­tec­tos — Source: Arch Daily

(more…)

May 17, 2010 | Architecture, Design, Film, Interior, Sustainable, Work | Leave A Comment »

Good Bye 2009

It’s been quite a year. There were plenty of chal­lenges along the way, and many lessons that have shaped me to become bet­ter. I am very opti­mistic and puz­zled to what we will face next. I cant wait to see what 2010 and beyond will be like, and what I can do as a designer and human to make things bet­ter. I can say this, I am ready.

I just watched Invic­tus. The film exceeded my expec­ta­tions and left a lump in my throat. It was also an incred­i­bly moti­vat­ing story that inspired me to look at our chal­lenges with resolve. It has left me anx­ious to con­tribute in these demand­ing times, to lend a hand in solv­ing some of our social and eco­log­i­cal prob­lems. I rec­om­mend the film to every­one who is strug­gling to adapt. Obama is just another in a long line of lead­ers faced with adver­sity, and because of peo­ple like Man­dela we know great change can hap­pen. Go see it.

Here is another image from the Con­rad house. I intro­duced sun­light to test the expo­sure to nat­ural light. I should have the upper level and office ready to show by the end of the week.

Dec 27, 2009 | Design, Film, Interior | Leave A Comment »

Bah! Humbug!

The hol­i­day sea­son has been par­tic­u­larly good to me this sea­son. That being said, and of no real choice of my own, I no longer have a car. I am happy how­ever to shed my car­bon fueled addic­tion and see where this chal­lenge takes me. It does makes job hunt­ing a bit more dif­fi­cult because I have to limit my searches to those located near pub­lic transit.

Speak­ing of the job hunt, my inter­view last week was unsuc­cess­ful. The job really wasn’t in my impact mar­ket. I am get­ting really antsy to con­tribute and start whit­tling away at the goals I have tar­geted. I have a fear of being trapped in a dead and uncre­ative job where I have no chance at accom­plish­ing what I want to do in life. I know I’ve only been out of school for 3 months, but I’m not where I thought I was going to be. So deter­mi­na­tion must take me to where I need to be, I just hope it hap­pens soon.

I have been con­tin­u­ing on some older work. The first being the “Con­rad House” that you can see a pre­view of on the front page slideshow. This is a design I am work­ing on for a friend, as more of a dream home. It was a project I started on my 2^nd year of school that I am now revis­ing and cre­at­ing some ren­der­ings for. So that has been keep­ing me busy. If you don’t like wait­ing, or you want to get a deeper look the image is below.

I’ve also been work­ing on a bar that was in another project in one of my stu­dios from school. Which is below. It was part of a resort hotel in Whistler, BC. I am really happy with the result, but I’d love to get some­one else’s thoughts.

I head down to Flo­rence on Thurs­day for the Christ­mas week­end to spend time with the fam­ily. This is the first time in years that we have all been together. Look­ing for­ward to it. Then it is back to get­ting a job, and being some­where com­fort­able again. And hon­estly that is all I really want from 2010; com­fort and happiness.

This songs sums things up pretty good right now. It’s Iron Chic, off their newest EP. Which can be pur­chased here.

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Dec 22, 2009 | Architecture, Design, Interior, Music, Work | Leave A Comment »

Coolness achieved

How cool is this? The Guggen­heim’ Wright Restau­rant opens today, and I wish I was there to see it.

From the NY Times article.

“…exactly as Frank Lloyd Wright him­self would have wanted it: among the 400 draw­ings he made for the 1959 build­ing, a few were devoted to a ground-floor din­ing space, though not one par­tic­u­larly suited to a con­tem­po­rary audi­ence. “The lay­out was very sim­ple, almost monas­tic, with clus­ters of tables aligned with the port­holes,” said the archi­tect Andre Kikoski, who designed the restau­rant. But, as he explained, “it wasn’t con­ducive to social inter­ac­tion, and it cer­tainly wasn’t about the inte­gra­tion of art.” Rather than exe­cut­ing Wright’s orig­i­nal sketches, Kikoski turned the space — most recently a generic cafe­te­ria with brown car­pet­ing — into a mod­ern homage to the leg­endary archi­tect, who designed the museum to har­mo­nize with the art­work within.”

Read all about it here — The Guggen­heim’ Wright Restaurant

This is equally amaz­ing. How cool would it be to work in this office? This is a design by Mau­rice Men­t­jens Design, based in Hol­tum, the Nether­lands — designed for Post­panic an ani­ma­tion and design studio.

The link to this is here -Cool Hunter

(more…)

Dec 11, 2009 | Architecture, Art, Design, Interior | Leave A Comment »

Weekend manifest

So things around here are about 95% done. I’ve done quite a bit of work over the past week. I just have some fine tun­ing and var­i­ous small tweaks left to do. I cre­ated a new logo this morn­ing and a new back­ground ear­lier in the week. The Port­fo­lio page is up, but needs some changes to the func­tion and inter­ac­tion of the images, and some more sta­tic images.

This isn’t a sports blog, so I will spare my opin­ion on a few things. But, I have to say — it is hard to be a Blazer fan. I am not a huge “luck” guy, I think that good things come from good deci­sions. How­ever, when your coach is injured some­thing isn’t right. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this team bounces back from all the injuries. New York is show­ing it’s pos­si­ble to play well well with lim­ited resources, and this Blazer team has bat­tled back and shown tough­ness in the past. I’m still a Blazer fan, and I don’t see that chang­ing any­time soon. I just wish it would be a lit­tle easier.

This is a print by Vasco Mourao, only 10 were made. I would be stoked to get my hands on one of them. I love the depth and weight of it. I must of spent a half hour just star­ring at it. The print is I bet quite a mind blow­ing visual experience.

I still have about a days worth of work left at CDS. I’ve been doing SketchUp work for a Whole Foods store pro­posal in Cal­i­for­nia. If they like it there might be more work for me. It feels great doing some­thing that I have fun with. If I can I’ll post some ren­der­ings of the store.

One quick rant: I really wish the Food Net­work had a veg­e­tar­ian show. I am a huge Food Net­work fan, but it really lacks veg­e­tar­ian pro­gram­ming. What would it take to get a well pro­duced, fun veg friendly pro­gram? Please?

Dec 06, 2009 | Art, Blazers, Design, Interior, Sports, Vegetarian Food, Work | Leave A Comment »

Monday workday

Well Thanks­giv­ing is over, my stom­ach needs a break from all the food. We got our Christ­mas tree set up yes­ter­day, the guys I live with love this time a year, so the spirit is a lit­tle con­ta­gious.  I think we need a few more orna­ments for the tree though.

I start work tomor­row with CDS, which should take about a week to com­plete the project. After that I will be focus­ing all my atten­tion on find­ing more design work, hope­fully land­ing a full time posi­tion before the end of the year. At least that’s how my goals are writ­ten out.

Instructables.com has posted plans for con­vert­ing burnt out light bulbs into ter­rar­i­ums. I have been intrigued by ter­rar­i­ums lately because of their scale, they give back a lit­tle bit of the out­doors where ever you put one. If I have time this week I want to make one of these. There are two burnt out bulbs in the garage just ask­ing for a renewed lease on life. The link for the instruc­tions are here.

It’s small things like this that can really make a dif­fer­ence in our con­nec­tion with the out­side. Kind of makes me want to crawl inside and explore.

I have more work to do on the site today. Port­fo­lio should be up and final­ized by the end of today. I will also be play­ing with a few other func­tions of the site to clean up some for­mat­ting that is bug­ging me. I also need to find a bet­ter link­ing sys­tem to con­nect me bet­ter with other sites I use. So we’ll see how it turns out.

Nov 30, 2009 | Design, Interior, Sustainable, Work | Leave A Comment »

Onward

I updated the port­fo­lio and about pages with new con­tent. Still work­ing on get­ting all the images together from my printed port­fo­lio to their future online home. That should be done tomor­row. I also added a paper I wrote my senior year about my role as a designer, which would be a good read for any­one that wants to know my per­spec­tive on design and how it inte­grates with the world.

Thanks­giv­ing is tomor­row, and I am really look­ing for­ward to spend­ing time with fam­ily. We are a small fam­ily group these days, but it’s still nice to catch up. I need to look up some recipes and start cook­ing soon. No Tofurky this year though, but I do have some of the gravy!

Fri­day I will drive down to Flo­rence to spend some time with my Dad and see what he’s been up to. I am going to try and dig up the blue­prints to the house down there, been want­ing to do some design work with that house for a while — just for fun though.

I am now unem­ployed for a few days, next week I start some Sketchup work for CDS. This is really excit­ing! It is kind of my first shot at paid design work. Should be a nice chal­lenge and a much needed change of scenery.

Nov 25, 2009 | Design, Interior, Travel, Vegetarian Food | Leave A Comment »

Online

It’s been 5 years since I’ve been online with my own site. I used to run a site called NWequation.com, and it just seems weird that I have never had my own blog. Though if you know me, than you know my tug o’ war with social media. I take that back, NWe­qua­tion was some­what of a blog back in the prim­i­tive years of blogging.

So I’ve spent the bet­ter part of the last two months going over how I want my web­site to look and oper­ate. I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that instead of doing some sim­ple “here is my resume, here is some port­fo­lio stuff of my inte­rior design work, blah blah blah”, that I would use danielmcclintick.org to be my per­sonal story and con­stantly devel­op­ing project. Noth­ing amaz­ing is ever fin­ished, and I love to tin­ker and have my hands dirty with many projects at once. So here’s to another work in progress.

The site has much more instore, sam­ples of past work and future work will be in place soon. I have more ideas of pieces to add and how to place them into the mud of this foun­da­tion. I plan to talk about what I’ve done, what I want to do and where I want to go with my time. This should be fun.

This is such a good song by the way.

Kind of Like Spit­ting — Dodge Dart

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Nov 14, 2009 | Design, Interior, Music | Leave A Comment »