Three slabs down, three to go.

The retaining walls for the sunken courtyards are being formed. Since the walls surround the courtyard and extend to the interior of the house we are lining the forms with cedar to give them a softer wood finish.



Cutler approved:

The foundation footings are currently being formed and we hope to pour them in the next couple days. Unlike most of our previous projects, on Peak Place we arranged to get the underground utilities and site retaining walls in place prior to construction of the actual homes. This should make life much much easier as the project progresses since we won't have to move scaffolding or interrupt subs in order to do trench work.
On a side note: I remember in architecture school being told that concrete is "placed" not "poured" and an architect should never refer to "pouring concrete". Pouring implies an action that drops the concrete too far from one level to the other thus causing the aggregate to fall too fast and congregate at the bottom of the concrete instead of evenly throughout, thereby weakening the concrete. While all of this is true, if you're ever on a jobsite and say things like "place the concrete" everyone will think you're a tool. Also, if you say cement instead of concrete they'll think that too.

As the museum turns 10 years old this year, they asked about 40 firms to create custom carry ons for airline travel to coincide with their theme of "celebrating the journey and carrying on to the future".
We started with some sort of multi-functional utilitarian hat that would include things like an ipad projection, neck pillow, and headphones. This progressed into the idea of a portable anechoic chamber that isolates the wearer from the not so pleasant environment of the airline cabin. Then at some point it got fun and evolved into some sort of Evil Knievel meets Batman meets Daft Punk meets Keith Richards creation. The idea of the final product, which we named "Easy Rider", is to fly like a rock star even if your stuck in coach. You put on your Easy Rider pre-flight, load up on Xanax, and wake up at your new destination, thus avoiding all the hustle and bustle, cattle herding, crying baby, snoring neighbor, sneezed on fun that airline travel has become.

Some of the helmet features:
-Leather neck pillow that unrolls into a bad ass cape/blanket
-Programmable LED screen on front visor reads: "Be calm + carry on" as a play on the show's title and the fact that the helmet is a little intimidating to others
-Squirt pump that sprays out of each side of the helmet in case your adjacent passenger is bugging you
-Backlit pill container
-One way reflective visor can be seen out of but not into
-N20 switch which emits a darth vader like sound
-Functioning headphones
-LED lights indicating status of consciousness

More on the A+D event here:
A+D Museum

We poured the footings for one of the houses today. It took 30 yards of concrete, which happens to cost $12/yard more on the west side than on the east side. Not a huge difference, but the project will take about 220 yards total so that's $2,640.