HERE AND NOW

Finally DC has caught on to the fact that installation art makes a HUGE scene, and creates a wonderfully intoxicating buzz around it. Transformer Gallery has invited a crew of modern artists and thinkers to take over the raw and vast warehouse space on the corner of 14th and T Streets, NW, and saturate it with art that creates an experience, makes you think, question, and become inspired by something that you never expected. If you have not yet wandered through, you MUST. It is open Wednesday-Saturday 1pm-7pm T Street entrance in the graffiti covered building. It is open until May 24. Pictures of DC as background to several dozen hanging fishbowls invokes the thought that maybe we all live in a fishbowl? The room without walls casts shadows of the ephemeral, follow the path of raked glowing rice though the space where other semi-non-spaces exist. Color, Layer, and mass in several other installations add to the oddness of the former church spaces. The fourth floor penthouse is a fantastic light filled space that glorifies building decomposition, and celebrates it by integrating color, translucency and organic form to the infrastructural weatherings and failures. It is always a trip to venture into an experience that takes your thoughts to another level. Here and Now. Go There and be Wowed.
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Travel Log : San Francisco

...continued from previous two posts. This will be the final post on my adventures and discoveries in San Franciso, California. That trip yielded an abundance of possible blog posts for this site, but I chose the buildings that most inspired me. The integration of historic San Francisco and modern San Franciso side by side and mixed into each neighborhood created the feeling of a very significant history along with a very modern city. The following pictures are just some glimpses of other buildings that caught my eye and added significant modern design to the ever changing cityscape.
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Travel Log : San Francisco

...continued from previous post. The Mission District in the city, especially along Valencia Street, is a hip and funky neighborhood just like DC's 14th Street corridor. Vintage shops, cool restaurants, independent designer's storefronts, and some new innovative architecture make this place a must see. The following townhouse is really sleek in it's use of modern materials and how they are implemented to define the varied massing. Commercial and industrial finishes are softened by simple bamboo stalks and a more human scale to the overall composition by the use of plenty of outdoor spaces. Here the old and the new can each stand on their own merit, while giving nods to each other by way of massing and bay structures. This is a great example of how modern architecture next to historic architecture adds interest to the neighborhood, rather than diminishing its significance.
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Travel Log : San Francisco

During my week in San Francisco, I was inspired by many modern houses. Many of these were infill buildings built along side of more traditionally historic buildings. The interplay with classic townhouse forms between the old and the new was the connection to the past, while the juxtaposition of the very modern materials against the old gave these places a stunning prominence. The modern houses all had one common element; they were designed to capture the amazing views and to celebrate the landscape. The next few posts will be of a particular building, or a series of buildings in a particular neighborhood. The first is of a house high above the Castro neighborhood.
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