All posts tagged: buildings

Jeff Shelton’s storybook-like buildings spark joy in Santa Barbara

Jeff Shelton’s storybook-like buildings spark joy in Santa Barbara

Published by Sam Flores

Walking through downtown Santa Barbara, it’s impossible to not turn your head when you see it: those marshmallow-like plaster walls, wiggly wrought ironwork and tile that looks as though it belongs in a palace you’d stumble upon in a storybook. This is the effect architect Jeff Shelton’s signature design has on viewers: the ability to pluck you out of the monotony of the day, if only briefly. When asked why he thinks this is so, Shelton is quick to point to the tried-and-true architectural methods of the past, which he proudly uses. Buildings, he said, had to be designed “to act more independently” in serving the needs of their specific inhabitants. A window’s primary purpose, for example, was to allow the ideal amount of light to enter. “So therefore they had taller windows,” he said, sitting opposite me in his Fig Avenue office in downtown Santa Barbara, surrounded by endless sketches and pattern mock-ups. Shelton obsesses over other design details that are often overlooked in modern architecture yet instinctively felt when you encounter them: high …

Reeling from Venezuela’s earthquakes, churches rush to inspect buildings, distribute supplies

Reeling from Venezuela’s earthquakes, churches rush to inspect buildings, distribute supplies

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — The day after twin earthquakes rocked northern Venezuela, Presbyterian Pastor Ricardo Corzo Moreno was doing two jobs at once: calming his family through the aftershocks and helping launch a 24-hour prayer and collection center for survivors. For days after the June 24 quakes, as aftershocks rocked Caracas, his family took turns staying awake in case they needed to flee their building. Eight-year-old Miranda didn’t sleep through the night until Tuesday (June 30), when the family brought the children to relatives in Barquisimeto, more than 200 miles away.  “Not even in my worst nightmares did I imagine a situation as apocalyptic as the current one,” Corzo Moreno said in Spanish.  The official death toll is 2,295, likely an underestimate — more than 46,000 people have been reported missing on a website where families can share details, and it’s unclear how many have been found. Across Venezuela, faith leaders who are themselves impacted by the disaster have become its first responders. Corzo Moreno is working with Bishop Keison Carrillo of the Emanuel federation — some …

Decarbonising multi-family buildings: The solutions are here

Decarbonising multi-family buildings: The solutions are here

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Multi-family buildings that house half of all Europeans have more clean heating options than typically acknowledged. Thomas Nowak, EUSEW digital ambassador, discusses these options and why multi-family buildings must be the target of investment. Half of Europe is waiting Almost half of all EU citizens – roughly 200 million people – live in flats according to Eurostat, with the highest level in Spain and Latvia (around 65%). Most urban residents in central and eastern Europe live in multi-family buildings, which means large, prefabricated blocks from the 1950s to the 1980s featuring, in too many cases, minimal insulation, ageing district heating or central gas boilers, and energy bills that too often dominate household budgets. The scale of the challenge is clear. Buildings account for 40% of total EU energy consumption; about 80% of household energy goes to heating, cooling and hot water. Some 85% of the building stock pre-dates the year 2000, and three-quarters of it is classified as energy-poor. The annual renovation rate sits at barely 1%. At this pace, the essential contribution of a …

Apartments to take over empty office buildings with new L.A. ordinance

Apartments to take over empty office buildings with new L.A. ordinance

Published by Sam Flores

Los Angeles officials just made it easier to convert empty commercial buildings to housing, opening the door to the creation of thousands of apartments across a city clamoring for housing. Developer Garrett Lee already is rolling. After years of struggling to find white-collar tenants for a gleaming office high-rise on the edge of downtown, he has just begun converting its office space into close to 700 apartments. With the new Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance going into effect this month, many more housing conversions are coming to Los Angeles, Lee said. “This is monumental for the city,” he concluded. The ordinance opens the possibility of conversion for many more buildings than the 1999 guidelines, which paved the way for converting older downtown buildings and jump-started a residential renaissance that turned downtown into a viable neighborhood after decades as a commercial district where few wanted to live. The first ordinance applied to buildings erected before 1975 and was focused primarily on downtown. Under the new guidelines, commercial buildings that are merely 15 years old throughout Los Angeles …

10 buildings that tell the story of L.A.’s Roaring 1920s, year by year

10 buildings that tell the story of L.A.’s Roaring 1920s, year by year

Published by Sam Flores

Then: From some angles, this theatrical collection of whitewashed walls and red roof tiles might look like another SoCal mash-up of Spanish Colonial Revival this and Mission Revival that. But this 1925 complex, designed by Elmer Grey to house the Pasadena Community Playhouse, marked a milestone for live theater in Southern California. By 1939, playhouse leader Gilmor Brown had staged all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays, won designation as the state’s official theater, and had ventured into edgier contemporary material with a production of “Our Town.” The theater’s courtyard served as an outdoor lobby, shaded by palm and fig trees. Indoors, above the seats, the ceiling seemed to be adorned with Spanish-style hand-painted tiles. Now: Outside, the palms and fig stand tall. Inside, that strange ceiling remains — but as Pasadena Playhouse producing artistic director Danny Feldman enjoys revealing, it’s an illusion — lightweight burlap, painted to look like tiles. Someday, Feldman hopes, audiences will again see the stage’s asbestos fire curtain, which features an epic painting of a Spanish galleon by California impressionist Alson Clark. …