Before the Light Fades Entirely: A Dialogue Involving Two Buildings Wholly Unconnected to the Community Around Them (and yet complete within themselves)

I had a dialogue with the ghost of John Graham Sr as I walked around this building on Sunday.
St Edwards Seminary, home to 214 students in its heyday, abandoned 300 feet above the north end of Lake Washington.  No one wants it anymore.  But there were so many people and their children here--strolling about the grounds.  Anyway, we talked about the Romanesque Style.  We talked in the fading light about

Rhythm Scale Light Axis Massing and a little bit about detail.

And then I went next door to Bastyr College and saw the garden, tried out the shiatsu footpath and observed 556 herbs being grown for medicinal purposes.  The village, housing 132 students in LEED Platinum Certified cottages, with no one about whatsoever and the architects Collins Woerman spoke to me, through their building, as architects often do,  about rain gardens and vegetative roofs.  We talked in the fading light about

Rhythm Scale Light Axis Massing and a little bit about detail.

And when I left I hoped they talked amongst themselves (the buildings, not Collins Woerman) because they both seemed rather lonely.

   

Putting Parking in its Place

Parking spaces usually diminish public spaces -- but it doesn't have to be that way.
according to Ethan Kent , and The Project for Public Spaces.

The real shortage, Kent has found, was of places for people to go, not spaces to park.

"The realization that creating a place where people want to come and spend time is more important than parking unfortunately eludes many municipalities. ...parking is taking over our communities. So how can we put parking in its place and draw people back to public spaces?"

These are pictures of Bothell's Country Village, a minimall with a different sort of "floorplan." It makes room for cars, but the cars are secondary to the buildings and the life that goes on around them.