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So we painted and cleansed the co-op grocery building by the 13th Street garden all last week, leading up to the CSA pick-up on Thursday. Documented here by Sean Thomas of the Old North Restoration Group. Woop woop. It was very satisfying to just go in there, get some clutter out, and paint it fun fun fun colors. I hope this leads to more usage of the building. Right now, it is used as the drop-off point for the CSA and some of the vendors for the North City Farmers' Market (which you should go to every Saturday 9-12, they take debit and credit cards as well as EBT cards and vouchers hooray!). It is still a total monster, but it's becoming lovable for strangers, too.(Isn't it funny that the garden has started and is rocking a booth at the farmers' market while all we've given the building is some paint and reused wood? Either way, the building is on its way!)many many hugsHitomi
I read this article! And I thought about the farm. And what everyone said at the Real Food Summit and what everyone said at the Michael Pollan talk the other day. Are we changing?Can we bring back our hands into our lives? Can we stop typing typing typing on the computer for no good reason? Can we all become awesome grown-ups?
Paul McKee and co. spoke at Central Baptist Church this evening. It was basically the first time the public saw what the developer had been planning with the massive amounts of plots he had bought out in North City; the presentation was prefaced by a statement saying that there was no final plan. The slides were not very specific, and the audience grew frustrated as the developers and politicians told them over and over that there were no plans, just "concepts and opportunities."McKee did not present a comprehensive plan of what will go where, and how much. Costs were shown, but in very general terms. The grave concerns of the residents, especially about the use of eminent domain and the poor upkeep of the existing McEagle properties in the area were not satisfactorily resolved. Most importantly, the atmosphere of the meeting was very tense (especially when the man cussed McKee early in the meeting and stormed out) because the residents felt as though he had facilitated the decay of their respective neighborhoods by allowing properties to deteriorate. No one took him seriously when he or his colleagues mentioned McEagle's maintenance practices.The plan seems too large of a scale and relies on the completion of all the components to be successful and worth all the losses incurred already. Someone in a discussion mentioned how WingHaven had to change plans mid-development and ended up something different from what the initial residents hoped for. Any valuable opportunities from this plan have been marred by the secretive and corrupt dealing of McEagle and their disrespect for the existing neighorhoods. The meeting was pretty well-attended (I think), but the take away from it for me was the question of if someone that didn't show you respect to you deserve your respect?
WashU architecture school is hosting many a cool things right towards the end of the school year to cram in brownie points. No matter. David Orr is speaking at the architecture school graduation, which is happening right after commencement on Friday May 15th. Orr's writing about education being a driving force in the environmental movement resonates with a lot of the stuff going on right now on the grassroots level. The faculty speaker is Jen Maigret, who is also an awesome person that brought a lot of great teaching and honest ecological perspective into the design studios. (she has a masters in ecology) She's also leaving WashU.It would be interesting to see them speak about the state of education at this school.see you there?
The Hug Life crew loves loves Andrew Faulkner. He loves the city and he loves his bike. (maybe a little bit too much, but it's a nice bike.) He invites "all community activists, developers, politicians, design professionals, artists, concerned citizens, and anyone with a love for Saint Louis" to Reconsidering Saint Louis: Forming a New Future.The exhibition and dialogue is the graduate architectural thesis projects from this year and focuses on "adaptive reuse of existing structures and new visions for development within Saint Louis city and the broader metropolitan region."It is going to be at:1400 North Market St. (corner of N. Market and N.14th Street) in Old North St. LouisThursday May 14, 20096-9p.m.See you there!
Forgive my long absence from the blogosphere, stuff has been crazy. I do this much too often.Anyway, here is a ridiculous picture I found today in my building systems book. It's unintelligible, so i am appreciating it purely for its aesthetic value.
I met someone at a bus stop today, and he (she?) was very good at talking. Sometimes people get good at speaking because you need to, and sometimes people get good at speaking because you NEED to. I think this case was the latter, in conjunction with the right amount of sass in the personality department.The feeling that I got was that of general amazement, love, fear, joy, sadness, among other things. It was really complicated and confusing. But great speakers can just jolt you into some land and shake you up.I really would love to become one, but I think my voice is too squeaky.hug life,Hitomi
Yo.Does this blog partake in hibernation??What do you guys/gals think about requirements? Do you think it destroys the souls of most involved, or does it seem like a good idea to you?In general terms, I think it's pretty vague and iffy, but what about required classes? I only thought about it seriously when I (overreacted and) felt as if my educational plans were in shambles. Having to teach a required course must suck, especially since many required courses are general overviews of topics whereas electives are more specialized and both the teachers and the students care about that specific topic. Isn't there a better way to teach general knowledge? What happened to good elementary school teachers?Love,Hitomi
I am just now realizing (in a flurry of excitement and a tinge of jeals mad jeals!) that each of the newer Rural Studio projects have blogs!! Some of them document the process really well, from the site to the design process to the construction. It's really really cool. The Lions Park Concession Stand one has fun fun sketches and photos.Maybe we should do that more often?
Hugs Mcgee
A few weeks ago, DJ and I were biking home from an Architecture for Humanity event and we stumbled across this set of ruins. Its about a block south of Chouteau near Lafayette Square. Its surrounded by some small houses on two sides, an alley on the other, and an abandoned, also overgrown lot. 
We were left awe-struck. 
Obviously, this building is really old. But why is it still standing? Or maybe, more importantly, HOW is it still standing? It's such a beautiful, old creature. Was it once a home? A shop? Or something more sinister? Who knows?
Now, it's returning to the earth from whence it came. We're going to do some investigation and attempt to discover its provenance. We'll keep you posted.Hugs,Antonio Pacheco
We've mentioned in prior posts that we're working on designing a co op grocery store/kitchen incubator/artist's studio in Old North St. Louis. Our project is moving along slowly, with many fits and stops. But ultimately, it is moving forward. We're taking this existing building on 13th st and St. Louis ave. It sits on a large lot and has a small community garden funded by a grant from Missouri Foundation for Health. Our main goals with this project are to 1) provide a venue for healthy, good food in the Old North area, 2) create habitable, pleasant space, 3) reuse this old building in an interesting way. 
Here are some images from the work we've completed so far.
That's an elevation DJ drew of the north side of the building. The grey part is the artist's studio. The boxes on the roof are greenhouses and the red part is the actual grocery store. The original building was built in the early 1900s. There was an addition made (the artist studio) in the 70s. At this point, much of the building was clad in ugly brick. Since the artists studios are distinctly different from the original building (where the grocery and incubator will be housed), we didn't feel right keeping the ugly brick veneer. Instead, we're proposing taking the brick off and exposing the concrete masonry unit construction.
This is a drawing Hitomi made of the same elevation that takes DJ's ideas further. Here, the blank, windowless walls are cut into to 1) allow light into the space, 2) help with ventilation, and 3) break up the facade, giving it a more human, less monolithic scale. Hitomi proposed the idea of cutting these notches into the wall (the lower half of the drawing) to do just that. We're thinking of covering the walls between these notches with advertisements for the grocery or simply, pictures of veggies and maybe installing benches along these spaces, as well.
This is a drawing I made that we all helped photoshop. It's of the loading dock/east/west facades. Here, we're exploring rooftop access and how that could work. We're proposing having a staircase that leads to the roof but begins inside the building. We're proposing this for safety reasons (Roofs are dangerous, you cant just have random people climbing up there willy nilly) and because it's kinda cool.We made a rough Sketch Up model. It has helped us quite a bit with figuring out some of the spaces, but we're still far from done. The following screenshot looks down into the building. Please not the elevated deck/covered eating area on the right (south) side of the image. This deck will help to soften the transition from the inside of the building to the garden on the opposite side of the lot, as well as help enclose and define a playground we're proposing for this part of the site.
Here's a plan. Again, it's rough. 
The bottom rectangle house the grocery (far left), incubator (square-ish thing near the center), bathrooms and an office/storage space (far right). The rectangle above all that stuff is where the artist studios will be (note hitomi's notches along the uppermost/northern wall). The deck is the angled form at the very bottom.I know these were all pretty superficial analyses of the building; we're still trying to work out all the kinks. So, please, forgive the roughness. But we'd love some feedback!Hug Life,Antonio Pacheco
Michael Pollan came,and he said (something like)"Is a building a piece of art,or is a building a reaction and adaptation to its surroundings?"(apparently the theme of his book A Place of My Own)Although I don't agree with his woodchuck management methods, Dependent Study is having a Pollan intensive period; it would be fabulous to have you along.
I just finished Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty for a class. It's very informative in the history of the specific area and the program the author focused on (Westside Las Vegas), but the meat of it is the personal growth of the women leading the change in the impoverished community. It made me feel better about a lot of things because it documents people that don't have specific training or education in terms of getting political, financial, and social support for starting community-based antipoverty programs. Similar things are going on in St. Louis, with Urban Studio and a lot of other new things that I come in contact being initiated by motivated people that manage around different obstacles in getting to their goal.It relates to the idea that companies and firms are beginning to be less homogeneous, that engineers, social workers, architects, businessmen, and whoever else would be working on a same project to bring their expertise into the same goal. I find that really really exciting, but as of now, a lot of grassroots movements lack the variety of resources, so individuals end up doing multiple of those tasks by themselves. Maybe after this generation (which I think is focused and very specialized) grows up, the grassroots movement can have a more dynamic, cohesive momentum behind it.Maybe maybe?love, Hitomi
We're having an Apple Break tonight!!It's and rainy out, so we might have it indoors.
We just got these nifty new posters from our friend Kevin McCall.He's got talent; We've got apples.So, wherever you are in the world, take 15 minutes tonight, find some friends, have an apple, and relax.hugz,Antonio
"I do not put my faith in institutions, but in individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly and act rightly. They are the channels of moral truth." -Rabindranath Tagore"Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men." -Ralph Waldo Emerson (on the cover of Louis Sullivan's copy of Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works)
Sadly, Proposition M did not pass. It was a really close margin (52% for no, 48% for yes with the difference being under 20,000 votes), and I can see glimpses of hope in that. The only thing we Metro supporters can do is to try to come up with better ways to fund and support it in the near future.Things I noticed from the comments on the Post-Dispatch article online were that people were unaware that the city had already passed a similar tax measure in support of Metro years ago, the leaders that misused funds in the past have been replaced, and that revenue from fares do not run the Metro or any public transportation system anywhere. It's a failure on our part to properly educate the public, but Metro also could not advocate for themselves at their stations. I think it makes a huge difference if people truly understand the issues and consequences at play, which is very difficult to do from a short proposition on a ballot. It's frustrating that hope was such a large part of this election, and many propositions (M, 8 in California, etc.) failed due to voter's unwillingness to give these issues a chance for whatever reason.Thanks for voting. We'll keep fighting/loving.Hitomi
The only serious political advocacy I have ever participated in is for Proposition M on tomorrow's ballot. This issue seems entirely dire to me; if it fails, I know St. Louis itself will not be able to recover. The idea that punishing poor management by removing funding is preposterous. If the Metro system doesn't get enough funding, they will be forced to cut services, thus decreasing reliability for the riders, and in the end (which won't be so far away if it is to come) the entire system will have to shut down due to lack of ridership. Of course I want the Metro to be managed better so that it can run more trains, buses, and Call-a-Rides more frequently and more cheaply, but the current situation trumps this concern. Prop M is not a heart-attack prevention plan; it's a defibrillation, and it's the last try.Public transit has allowed St. Louis businesses to hire more employees who had no way to commute to their jobs before it existed. Public transit made St. Louis more conscious about the effects of traffic on both people and the environment. Public transit funneled tons of Cardinals fans together into the Stadium station every summer. It lets me go places that makes me feel like I live in a city that's worth saving. Unfortunately I cannot vote (in the U.S.), so I'm hoping that the joy I feel of riding public transportation has reached enough people in time for tomorrow.Please please vote,love,Hitomip.s. Let's go on a Metro adventure when Prop M passes, yeah?Sample ballot can be found here. Prop M is the second from last measure on the ballot tomorrow.Video testimonials about the importance of Metro (including one from Miz Metrolink herself!) here.
Aren't we all doing it for the kids/future generations? Whatever we're doing?
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So we painted and cleansed the co-op grocery building by the 13th Street garden all last week, leading up to the CSA pick-up on Thursday. Documented here by Sean Thomas of the Old North Restoration Group. Woop woop. It was very satisfying to just go in there, get some clutter out, and paint it fun fun fun colors. I hope this leads to more usage of the building. Right now, it is used as the drop-off point for the CSA and some of the vendors for the North City Farmers' Market (which you should go to every Saturday 9-12, they take debit and credit cards as well as EBT cards and vouchers hooray!). It is still a total monster, but it's becoming lovable for strangers, too.
