America’s Worst Remodeling Disaster?

June 21, 2017

Design

...I’m not seeing a lot of stuff built post-WWII that’s standing the test of time. New buildings should have to prove their worth, and that’s a high bar. But, perhaps, I’m making the same mistake. Only time will tell. Sources Biography of Greene and Greene, An Enlightened Client. Post-remodeling Dunn residence photos: https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt538nd8wj/ “Outside In: The Architecture of Smith and Williams” Edited by Jocelyn Gibbs, Debi...

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We Went to Japan

Mr. Homegrown

March 13, 2024

Thoughtstylings

1 Comment

...uma doll to bring good fortune. Daruma dolls for sale at the festival. Our time in Japan was just before Sakura (cherry blossom season). A few trees were blooming early and the stores were full of Sakura themed goods and foods. There’s even a Sakura themed Domino’s pizza meal. Tokyo was immensely fun to wander at night and I kept thinking of the class I took on Frederic Jameson’s book Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. In th...

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Sensuous Space: How to Create Romantic, Seductive and Sensuous Settings

Mr. Homegrown

April 21, 2023

Design

1 Comment

...he many pages of charts, spreadsheets and graphs. We’re 30 pages in by the time we see our first hot tub. The power nexus of the erotic panopticons in this book are, naturally, your disco control centers because your house must have its own private discotheque. I don’t know how you keep the blow from gumming up the electronics. Of course, such idiosyncratic spaces are the domain of the ultra-wealthy who can afford serial remodeling. Reznikoff note...

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How to Store Bulk Goods

Mr. Homegrown

April 22, 2020

Food, Preparedness

8 Comments

...t the Japanese introduced into the labor process in the 1970s with just-in-time production, the tight scheduling of flows of goods in space and time such that you had almost no inventory anywhere in the system. This was the innovation which gave the Japanese car industry its competitive advantage over all others during the 1980s, and the Japanese raked in the ephemeral form of relative surplus-value until everyone else caught up. The downside of t...

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A William Morris Pilgrimage

Mr. Homegrown

November 9, 2022

Design

12 Comments

...se preservation owes a lot to Morris. Morris opposed a common trend in his time of restoration work that involved significant alterations. Morris and his wife Jane are buried in the graveyard of the church under a modest marker designed by Philip Webb. We also dropped by the nearby St. John the Baptist church in Inglesham. This church also reflects the influence of Morris’ ideas about building preservation. In 1880 Morris started a campaign to opp...

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