Tag - architecture

Bucharest photostream, part 1

Here’s a selection of my photos from Bucharest.

The first few are people, and if you want the details on who they are and what they do, you might want to go to Flickr to see all the notes. The majority of the photos, however, are of the city and architecture …

Click the expand button to go fullscreen.

Moshe Safdie: dreaming big

Moshe Safdie spoke at TED in 2002, saying a few words about a number of his compositions, and concluding with some words on beauty and truth. It’s worth 15 minutes of your time to watch:

The thing that strikes me most as I watched was how big he dreamed. Science centre not connected to nature? Route the river around it, and make an island! Memorial building too big for mountain? Cut right through the mountain, and embed the architecture into the earth!

Amazing and wonderful.

H2O




H2O

Originally uploaded by johnkoetsier.

Teresa and I were out shopping this afternoon … our main floor bathroom is about to get blown up and redone.

High time, too …

We saw this sand-blasted glass sink and faucet – beautiful. Unfortunately, due to irritating facets of reality (namely, pipes, placement of, and bathroom, dimensions of) it just won’t work for us.

We await our next home, which we will build, and which will be perfect in every detail.

. . .
. . .

(Remember how you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.)

More San Antonio architecture

San Antonio has some wonderful architecture, as I’ve previously posted. Here’s another taste.

They seem to like adding funky little additions to existing buildings:

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Another one. Perhaps they’re even built at the same time as the main building – but they sure add some flavor to the design.

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Lots of pattern and similarity in this government building near the Tower of the Americas and the new courthouse. Not much differentiation, though.

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A 15-20 metre high sculpture in downtown San Diego near the convention centre. Labeled Friendship or something like that. I took this shot from directly underneath it, in the middle of its two legs.

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Smaller buildings have their own flavor. This one might be boring and staid under the covers, but has been wrapped in living beauty:

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More designed than architected, this little cafe just jumps out of the background:

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San Antonio knows how to present itself after dark better than most cities. Here’s one of the towers of the old courthouse, near the Riverwalk.

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Arguably the most beautiful of all San Antonio buildings at night – the 275-year-old San Fernando cathedral, just across from the old courthouse. Beautiful!

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San Antonio architecture

Part of what makes a city a great city is its architecture.

You can have great architecture without a great city, but you can’t have a great city without great architecture.

When I travel, I love to experience the new place. And it becomes a special experience when the place has a style all it’s own. San Antonio’s style is heavily Southwestern, of course, and monolithic: stone.

Here are a couple of the sites and sights that caught my eye.

Two buildings for the price of one:

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Funky streets make for funky buildings. This one with a bit of traffic light thrown in for special effect:

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San Antonio loves its trees. These two are growing out of a restaurant right on the Riverwalk:

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Kress appears to be some sort of department store or something like that, currently undergoing repairs:

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