Shout out to Seinfield.  My wife and I can’t get enough of it.

I was on a hunt this morning for the first city to legislate against pollution.  I may be wrong, but the earliest thing that I could find was London in 1853.  The act was called the Smoke Nuisance Abatement Act.  It was pushed through the House by a man named Mr. Palmerston and their were, apparently, quite a few prosectutions of companies that didn’t adhere to the act.  If anyone knows of anything any earlier let me know.

Segovia, Spain

Segovia has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  There is an aqueduct, a cathedral, tiny streets and a castle to top it all off.  I lived in Segovia for the good part of a year, and it’s just fantastic.  Walking around the streets is an architectural thrill-a-minute.  It’s all very old and protected so don’t expect modern, but it is very charming. This aqueduct was built about 100 AD, it stands 93.5 feet tall, and runs almost 20 miles from the source of water.  I went back about 3 years ago with my wife, and I recommend it to everyone looking for old school beauty.

My Wife in a Skinny Street

Today, I throwback to Japanese  joinery.  It is an art, and I know that it was used in Japanese architecture, but I’m looking for modern applications.  Anybody seen beautiful joinery used in a modern building’s structure?

Today’s Thursday Throwback goes to front porches.  I couldn’t love them more.  Though it’s difficult to imagine them on a beautifully modern house, I have to think that there’s a way.  The picture below gives a pretty good interpretation, but it has that screen that I’m not so much in love with.  I’ve worked on a house where the owners were outside on a porch every morning at 8:00 am, when we got there.  The porch was actually off of their bedroom, and they would watch the sunrise together and eat their breakfast.  Another couple in a neighborhood we used to live in was very similar, and they would talk to us (from their porch) about how in the “good ol’ days” streets were so much more social because of front porches.  They said that people started putting patios in the backyard for more privacy and now neighbors don’t have the same opportunity to converse.  I want a really great house someday, but I’ll tell you one thing:  ugly or not, I’ll have a front porch with a swing on it.

I never would have guessed that this monument was built in 1971.  It’s called the Azadi Tower, and it commemorates the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire.  The architect’s name is Hossein Amanat, and he was the winner of the competition to design the monument.  It’s covered in marble, and there is a museum inside of it.  The Azadi Tower is located in Tehran, Iran.  Maybe that’s why I’ve never heard anything about it… we don’t tend to study much architecture from the middle east.  Has anybody ever seen this before??

Falling Water from cihanozdemir.com on Vimeo.

The term “Gothic” has come to be synonymous with “scary” and very associated with the color black.  But today’s throwback goes to Gothic architecture.  Because of the stigma I took a long time to warm up to it, but the term “Gothic” to me now means “not scary” and I associate it with the variouse soft colors of amazing stained glass windows.  My fave of all Gothicdom is the Cathedral of St. Chapelle.  It’s not nearly as large as other Gothic cathedrals, but it’s basically all windows, which was what the masons and the Catholic church were going for.  The structural support all but disappears, there’s tons of light and color, and there’s a feeling that the whole thing should collapse any minute; the buildings actually represented some of the magic that is religion.  Being inside these cathedrals was to be a heavenly experience.

Let’s not forget other beautiful aspects of the Gothic era: