I’m familar with most of the pros/ cons of PNG and have utilized them for their benefits in gradients and tackled the whole IE transparency issue. The question is, would you bother with PNG?

Type:

St. Paul…er…New Hope…er…UK based Process Type Foundry (Eric Olson) has a new typeface out called Seravek.

Portugal Based DSType Foundry (Dino dos Santos) is having a half-off summer sale. Dino has some great faces that are already affordably priced. Half off is going to make it hard not to resist purchasing a few of these…

Architecture:

Building Minnesota is a MN-centric architecture blog written by Todd Melby that I came across via the AIA MN’s Blog.

Shopping:

Have you been through Target all summer eying that nice looking modern plywood toddler two-wheeler for $50 for your 3 year old? It went on sale last week for $25. Go grab one. Link? For some inexplicable reason, Target isn’t selling their own Target branded outdoor toys online.

CSS grid-based layout frameworks:

At work here, we recently had a consulting firm deliver us a prototype for a new intranet. They built the site using pure CSS-P which is great, and then I noticed that they decided to use the Yahoo CSS framework. We have the daunting task of somehow getting this inside of SharePoint, which may or may not work as-is, but I am going to be interested in how easy it is to work with Yahoo’s prebuilt CSS framework. Seems that the biggest complaint about them is a lack of semantic labeling, which is to be expected if the framework is to work as a generic platform. Blueprint is another grid-based CSS framework that has been making the rounds this week which is also being compared to the aptly named Yet Another Multicolumn Layout CSS framework. I hope to take a closer look at these options soon. If you’ve used them, please share your thoughts.

Plus, well, I REALLY wanted to build a rain barrel. When spring comes, I’m eager to drop all freelance gigs and get the hell out of the house to putz around the yard. Last year we grew a garden for the first time. The kids loved it. So did the pumpkins, which soon overtook our garden space. However, our water bill kind of spiked last summer so, hence the rain barrel idea.

So I was off to get one. Googling for resources in the area only returned the odd, deeply buried, 7 year old PDF on some local government site, or the the Minneapolis Rain Barrel program (allowing you to purcahse a pre-made rain barrel at half price). Being in St. Paul, I didn’t have that option but eventually found a blurb regarding Vine Park Brewery giving away free food-grade barrels. I called them up and they said ‘sure, stop on by’ and by that afternoon I had myself a 55 gallon blue barrel and a 6 pack of Vine Park Root Beer (good stuff!). A few plumbing odds and ends from Menards and a whole bunch of this really sticky waterproof gutter glue and we were up and running!

I was pretty proud of myself. And then I stumbled upon fellow St. Paul Graphic Designer Jason Hammond’s Strib blog documenting the journey he and his wife are having building a modern home in Maplewood. There’s a lot to like about the house they are designing, but check out the ‘rain barrel’ idea they’ve come up with. Impressive!

Then, we grow up, go to college, get married, get a mortgage, and have a handful of young’uns. Suddenly (or not so suddenly) our turn-ons aren’t what they used to be.

For me, I haven’t picked up a playboy in years. While I might glance momentarily at the latest FHM cover when at the big box book store, my ‘fix’ is only to be had in the home remodelling section. Yep, I’m addicted to house porn.

Fortunately, HGTV and TLC aren’t premium channels, so I’m not going broke oggling an hourly innundation of home redocrating and remodelling shows. But TV just doesn’t have the tactile appeal of flipping through a glossy color magazine.

A few years ago, Dwell was released. A magazine dedicated to modern and modernist residential architecture. A rarity on the magazine rack a the time. That combined with the odd copy of This Old House or Fine Home Building kept me going with fantasies of boxy houses clad in galvalume with Eames furniture as far as the eye can see.

But like all fetishes, you’re constantly looking for something just a bit more. I recently found that bit more for me: Houses magazine. Like Dwell, it’s full of birch panelling, concrete flooring, geometric landscapes and minimalist furnishings. Unlike Dwell, it has twice the articles about actual homes and half the ads. In addition, you see plenty of georgeous floor plans…something that has been sorely missing from Dwell. Granted, you pay for this fix at $10 an issue. Part of that, no doubt, is the fact that this publication hails from Australia.

Which leads me to my next tacky comparison…The Netherlands are to drug culture as Australia is to modern architecture. They love the stuff down there it seems. From what I can tell, Australian neighborhoods are to someone like me what an Amsterdam street cafe is to a hemp wearing Grateful Dead fan.

Which is also a bummer in that I live on the other side of the planet. Why DOES Australia embrace modern residential design so readily? In the past, I’ve been frustrated in our quest to find some more modern options for our own house. We found some amazing modern steel fencing systems. Alas, from a company in Australia. We’ve been looking for an alternative to your standard pergola to cover our patio. Yep, also from Australia. We’ve been wanting to convert our old wood fireplace to a gas fireplace. Around here, your two options are brass or black iron. Well, unless you go to Australia for one of these beauties.

Until an Australian version of Home Depot opens here, I guess I’ll have to appease my perversion with my issue of Houses magazine and the latest episode of HGTV’s Design Star.

Alas, most of the prefab hype has been dissappointing. It’s mainly high-end, extremely expensive options that really are targetted at the art-snob crowd rather than the average city dweller. Not to belittle the efforts of some great prefabs from local architects, of course, including the WeeHouse, Hive Modular and the FlatPack. (I’m not going to link to the flatpack web site because it rudely resizes your browser).

Still, most of these are more a dream than practical solutions for our family.

Of course, prefab is nothing new. Our country has always had an off-again/on-again relationship with residential prefab. There was the Sears house. FWL even dabbled in prefab. And then there’s the Lustron homes. A wonderful mid-century home built entirely out of steel. Only 2,500 were made. The few that survived are often considered historical landmarks.

The US Marine Corps Base Quantico has a bunch of them that they need to get rid of, and are asking anyone that wants one to submit an RFP and come pick it up. If one has the truck, and a few weeks worth of vacation time, this could be a great opportunity.
(Via inhabitat)

Scanning the magazine rack I noticed an impressive new MN Architecture, published by the AIA-MN. Turns out that after 25 years, they felt it was time for a full redesign and brought in Tilka Design to tackle the project.

In addition, the AIA now has a blog for your local architecture news.

The Emerging Green Builders is a new sub-committee of the Mississippi Headwaters Chapter of the USGBC. We are a group for students and young professionals who are interested in green building and sustainable design. Our first event is a tour of the green unit at the Midtown Lofts in Uptown. This will be an Open House type event on Tuesday, August 16th, between 5:30 and 7pm and will be followed by drinks at Bar Abilene. The building is located at 2845 Colfax Ave S and the unit is number 306. Please RSVP to Ben Kerl at ben@landergroup.com, 612-827-3393 to attend or to learn more about Emerging Green Builders.

(via the most excellent NextStep/MnSCN update)

Jim, you out there? Tell us about this place!

Dwell has an article this month on the Mayo Woodlands in Rochester. The Mayo Woodlands is a 470 acre housing project funded by the heir’s to the Mayo Clinic. What makes this project notable compared to most MN housing developments is that it has a focus on the land itself and it’s about good architecture. These are the two primary elements missing from nearly every suburb surrounding the twin cities.

The Mayo Woodlands will retain wide open shared spaces, rather than the typical private fenced acre you see in Woodbury McMansions. And the architecture speaks for itself fairly well. Of course, it has to, because the web site is severely lacking in content. But we’ll save that for another post.

April 13, 2005—Northrop Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Daniel Libeskind

Already one of the world’s leading architects, Daniel Libeskind’s profile has taken a dramatic leap forward with his selection as the lead architect on the rebuilding of the World Trade Center Site, the most important American architectural project in decades. His winning proposal features a tower 1,776 feet tall, for the year of American independence, that will demonstrate “the durability of democracy.” The top levels will hold indoor gardens that will be a “confirmation of life.”

Born in postwar Poland in 1946, Daniel Libeskind became an American citizen in 1965. He received his professional architectural degree at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1970 in New York City and a postgraduate degree in History and Theory of Architecture at the School of Comparative Studies at Essex University in 1972. In addition to his work on the World Trade Center Site, his other major projects include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and the American Institute of Architects.