Notes from New Orleans and the cities of the dead

One of these days I'll get back to writing about kitchen and bath design but in the meantime, I'm going to continue to write about whatever comes to mind. Bear with me. I'll get back to my niche eventually.

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I spent a good part of last week visiting some long-term friends (Kevin Smith and Brandon Bergman) in their new hometown, New Orleans.

While the rest of the world thinks of New Orleans in terms of Bourbon Street and the shenanigans that accompany Mardi Gras; or the horrors it suffered when the infrustructure failed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; there is much more to that city. It's a place that doesn't feel like the rest of the United States, and the city's conventions and norms make it unlike anywhere else. New Orleans feels like a place without a time or a country and it serves as pressure valve for the world.

I have a number of friends who've moved there over the course of the last four years from Florida. Collectively, I refer to them as economic refugees. People who moved to New Orleans to seek their futures as the city rebuilds itself in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans is back in a very big way and it's a real thrill to watch my friends there riding the wave of the Crescent City's rebirth; FEMA, BP and the Army Corps of Engineers be damned.

Rebirth isn't really the right word though. New Orleans has been through the mill since its founding in the early 1700s as La Nouvelle-Orléans. The city passed from French to Spanish and then back to French hands before it became part of the US. Huge amounts of that pre-US infrastructure still exist and it's impossible when in the heart of the city to keep an accurate count of the 18th-Century structures that are still in day to day use.

Beyond its architecture, the culture of New Orleans stands apart from the rest of the US. While it's a thoroughly American city, it retains a feel for its founding cultures that the rest of the US has lost utterly. One of the things that amazes me more than just about anything is its numerous "Cities of the Dead," as cemeteries are known.

I had the pleasure to spend a leisurely afternoon this week in Lafayette #1, one of New Orleans' cemeteries in the city's Garden District. Lafayette #1 was established in 1833 and is a perfect example of how the City has sent her residents to their final repose since the city's beginnings.

Unique in the United States, New Orleans disposes of its dead in above-ground crypts rather than burying them. The going story is that the crypts are a function of the city's low topography but that's not really true. It's as much a throwback to its Continental roots and the reality of its lack of space as anything.

The crypts of New Orleans, like everything else about the place, have an interesting story to tell.

Crypts are owned by families or organizations and the crypts sit on leased land.

When someone dies, he or she is placed on the shelf shown here and the crypt is then sealed.

After a year and a day, the crypt keeper opens the crypt and with a ten-foot pole, pushes the remains to the back of the shelf. At the back of the shelf there's a slit and the remains fall through that slit and drop to the bottom of the crypt. The crypt is now ready for the next family death and it's re-sealed. According to the lore of New Orleans, this is the origin of the expression, "I wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole."

On All Soul's Day every year, the people of New Orleans lay tribute in front of these crypts in the form of flowers, beads and other mementos. It's a touching gesture of respect of the deceased.

Not all crypts are owned by families. Some are owned by fraternal organizations or charities. While at Lafayette #1, I came across a large crypt owned by the Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys, an organization that still exists in New Orleans.

In the most touching example of an already touching practice, the ledge on the face of the crypt was filled to overflowing with toys.

New Orleans is an amazing city and one with a legacy it's all to willing to share with anyone who asks. So head there some time and ask.

Cotto d'Este rethinks what tile can do

One need look no further than newspaper headlines to see that utility deregulation has been a bust. As public utilities have been allowed to consolidate and behave more like private concerns, their dividends to shareholders may have increased but their rates have have gone up significantly at the same time. Similarly, a near obsession with reducing labor costs has left them with a power grid that's as prone to breakdown as any business that cuts itself off at the knees in order to maximize its quarterly earnings. With increased earnings, utilities are better able to lobby legislatures to advance their agendas. As so-called public utilities buy off legislators they're able to pass along more of their costs to their customers. The utility I deal with, Progress Energy (Soon to be Duke Energy), has managed to convince the Florida Legislature that it's a good idea to have their customers pay for a new nuclear plant before it's even built. My electrical rates will increase by nearly 50% over the next eight years to pay for this new plant. As Fukushima demonstrated so perfectly, is nuclear power capable of living up to its promise?

Clearly, a central supplier of electricity is a losing proposition. But how to get out from under unresponsive and increasingly expensive "public" utilities? This isn't a failure of government as it is a failure for government to behave like a profit-making business.

So what there is to do is to start to take responsibility for electrical power away from the utilities and to make it more local and more personal.

My travels to Europe in the last year have shown me that there are a lot of ways the US can improve on our business as usual. The technologies evident over there during trade shows do point to a way out.

The rage these days in Europe in architecture is to install ventilated facades. These facades are a way to remake a building and insulate it at the same time. But the Sassuolo-based Cotto d'Este takes the idea of a ventilated facade and turns it on its ear.

Cotto d'Este's ventilated facades make electricity.

While solar power and photovoltaic cells can't obviate the need to electrical utilities, it's an enormous leap forward. Since utilities don't feel any pressing need to actually provide the services they're tasked to do, why not set about making our own electricity?

Cotto d'Este has a ceramic product that carries a 25-year warranty and that you can walk on. That's amazing. I live in a part of the world where the sun shines for an average of 360 days per year. I look at my roof and my neighbors roofs and wonder why we're not putting them to use. Between the incredible sunshine we enjoy and the sea breezes we experience ever day, why aren't we harnessing those forms of energy? Why do we rely on a power plant that burns coal, degrades our air and dumps mercury into The Bay?

Why does burning fossil fuels hold the appeal that it does?

How did oil- and coal-based energy generation become the standard for what constitutes a prosperous society? Isn't it time to look for another answer?

I love New York so much it hurts sometimes; the Delancy Street "Low Line"

This is the Williamsburg Bridge.

It connects the Lower East Side of Manhattan with Mid Brooklyn and on its Brooklyn side, it marks the start of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. On the Manhattan side, The Williamsburg  crosses over Roosevelt Drive and what appear to be endless housing blocks.

The approach to the Williamsburg is Delancey Street, a pretty non-descript patch of well-traveled road that looks like the rest of the Lower East Side.

 However, underneath Delancey is an abandoned rail yard.

It's but one of countless abandoned rail yards in Manhattan and it always amazes me that the city with the most expensive real estate values in the US has so many under utilized nooks and crannies.

A couple of years ago, an abandoned, elevated railway was turned into New York's now-legendary High Line. However, a couple of forward thinkers have an similar idea for the Delancey Street only instead of a High Line, they've come up with the idea that's come to be known as the Low Line.

The Delancy Underground is its official name and at this point it's in the process of raising money to make the dream a reality. I remember when the High Line was in a similar situation and just look at it now. I have no doubt that the Delancey Underground will happen and based on the speed of the High Line's development and conversion, it will happen pretty quickly.

However, the Delancey Underground is very different from the High Line, primarily because it's underground. However, the plan for the Delancey calls for a host of sky lights, solar collectors and fiber optics to bring the light of day underground. The light levels underneath Delancey Street will be intense enough for trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses to grow. check out these renderings.

It's going to be amazing and if any city in the world can pull this off, New York's definitely the one. No where else in the world can mount projects on the scale New York can and nowhere else on earth can channel ambition and vision the way New York does so regularly.

Man I love that town and the Delancey Underground is one more reason to hold it in as high a regard as I do.

New Yorkers aside, what public space initiatives has your city undertaken? Are publicly-funded, public spaces important and worthwhile? Talk to me about this stuff.

Real design stars and a concrete counter guy

During my travels last fall, I had some incredible opportunities to meet some people whose work in the design world I admire greatly.

Everything started at Cersaie in Bologna last September. Endless thanks to Chris Abbate, Novita Public Relations and Tile of Italy for making it possible for me to meet and talk with some people whose work I've long admired.

In order of appearance, I met Patricia Uriquiola,

Philippe Grohe

and the Bouroullec brothers, Ronan and Erwan, all in the same day.

I've written about these peoples' work quite a bit over the years. I shower with a shower that Ms. Uriquiola designed and Mr. Grohe brought to the market. It was great to be able to tell them how much I appreciate their vision and hard work in person.

Later in London for BlogTour 2011, I met such notables as Nicky Haslam,

Barbara Barry

and Lee Broom.

There were more people whose work I admire during those weeks on the road but I don't want to be too much of a name dropper. BlogTour 2011 dropped me into the middle of the London Design Festival and were it not for BlogTour I'd have never been there otherwise. So thank you.

But out of the entire who's who of the world design scene I met, none can compare to a man I had the pleasure to meet in San Francisco last month.

I'd been brought to San Francisco by Zephyr to attend a design event at their spectacular showroom in San Francisco's Design District. One of the night's speakers was Fu-Tung Cheng, the man who brought the decorative and functional possibilities of concrete to the world's attention.

There were at most 30 people in attendance at Zephyr's event and most of us knew one another. It felt more like a dinner party than it did a formal function.

After Fu-Tung spoke, he mingled with the everyone as if he were just another guest at a party. Never mind that there was a stack of his books by the door.

Here's a little back story. In 2002, Fu-Tung Cheng published his first book, Concrete Countertops; Design, Form and Finishes for the New Kitchen and Bath. I was a relative newbie to the kitchen and bath industry then and his book was nothing short of a revelation. It gave rise to a new aesthetic in my work but far more than that, his first book showed me that I could forge my own way and that I could create a career for myself. All I needed to do was channel my passion and my energy as tirelessly as I was able.

Concrete Countertops was far more than a book about a new idea in surfaces, it was a wake up call for me and it challenged me to strike out and make a place for myself in the world. Fu-Tung Cheng's generous spirit jumped off the page as I read his words and I realized that my making a place for myself wasn't a matter of my ambition. A career of my own making could only happen if I could be of service and use to other people.

Part of me knew that already, but Cheng's book about concrete drove home that point and sent me on my way. I'm not kidding when I say that his first book changed the trajectory of my life.

Fast forward to October, 2011 and I found myself in the same room with the man who'd had such an impact on me. I walked up to him and told him essentially what I just wrote in the previous few paragraphs. He was as gracious as he was grateful to hear that he'd impacted me so positively.

We ended up having a longer conversation and later, exchanging business cards when the event was breaking up for the night. And in a final gesture, he inscribed his latest book, Concrete at Home for me.

I'm a fortunate, fortunate man. I say that all the time and I mean it. I have opportunities extended to me on a regular basis that make my head spin, not the least of which are numerous opportunities to meet some of the  people I admire. So thanks Zephyr for a great event and thanks for allowing me to complete another circle.

Oh give me a home where the reindeer roam

Wednesday's Homes section of the New York Times profiled a cottage on the outskirts of Helsinki Finland.

The cottage in question belongs to a husband and wife team of architects and they built their little slice of heaven for €30,000 ($42,000 US).

They were looking for a getaway and rather than build something far from the city, they built this cottage in a recreational park ten minutes from home.

At 150 square feet, they report that there's ample room for the couple and their two kids to relax and unwind. In their design, they took a page from the boat builder's handbook and built in space to hide everything when it's not in use.

The home sports a high-efficiency fireplace and tatami mats that heat automatically when the temperature drops below 40 degrees.

I love the idea of living in a small space, and a small space on the shores of the Baltic sounds like an ideal get away. It does to me at any rate. What do you think? Could you live in a small space?

This is my bridge

This is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

It crosses the mouth of Tampa Bay and it separates the Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. The bridge connects St. Petersburg and Terra Ceia, the town immediately across the water from St. Pete.

The entire length of the bridge is five-and-a-half miles and I rely on my many crossings to serve as a kind of mini vacation. Mobile service cuts out about half way up the center span and doesn't kick back in until you cross to the Terra Ceia side. I used to find that to be irritating but these days it's one of my favorite things about that bridge. It's a five minute respite from being available.

It's the tallest thing around here and if memory serves, at 431 feet, it's the tallest bridge in Florida. As tall as it is, it's a singular thrill to be crossing it when a cruise ship squeezes underneath it.

Driving north and home to St. Pete never ceases to inspire me. It feels like I'm landing an airplane on the downside of the hump and no photo I've ever seen or taken has come close to capturing the azure-emerald clarity of the water of the south Bay. "I live in paradise" I say to myself every time I'm making that drive.

It's difficult to live here and be near the water and not see that bridge. It looms over everything and it serves as our visual anchor. No matter where you are on land, air or sea, seeing the Skyway is an automatic location beacon. It's the pivot point around which the entirety of south Pinellas and north Manatee counties rotate.

It frames the sunsets and reminds me of the vast expanse and possibility of the Gulf of Mexico on its west side. The whole world's out there, just waiting.

That steel and concrete can join together to form such sculptural utility gives me hope for humanity. It reminds me time and again that art can be anywhere and that beauty abounds, it's just a matter of taking the time to make it and to appreciate it.

More than just about any other feature of the the part of the country I call home, The Sunshine Skyway feels like it's mine. It feels like my retreat, my point of reference, my personal bridge. No matter what happens, no one can take that away from me.

A little more Italy

I've been on an Italian kick lately. I'm putting together a trip for myself and a couple of friends (are you reading this Saxon Henry and my beloved brother Steve?) for the fall. Houzz.com had me interview Milan-based architect Marco Dellatorre and seeing the modern face of Italy through his projects is making me ache for a return to the bel paese all the more.

Here's the piece I wrote for Houzz on Marco's loft in Milan. As much as I love southern Italy, Marco's loft makes me want to shift my attention north.

Houzz Tour: Warm and Seductive Loft in Milan

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Exploring Moorish and Mudéjar influences in Aragon and Teruel

In the year 711, a loose confederacy of Berber, Black African and Arab tribes invaded and conquered most of what is now Spain. In English, we call these people Moors though that's not a term they used for themselves. They called their conquered territory Al-Andalus and they remained on the Iberian peninsula for nearly 800 years. The Islamic impact of the Moors was profound and it can still be felt and seen in modern Spain today. Here are some details of the Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza. This is true Moorish architecture.

Starting in the 1200s, a coalition of Christian kings started to drive the Moors from Spain in a three century long campaign called the Reconquista. As Moorish territory fell to the Christian kings of Spain, the Moors who stayed behind were allowed to continue to practice their religion. At least until the 15th century that is.

The Spanish called the Moors who remained in these newly conquered territories Mudéjar. The word itself is a Medieval Spanish reworking of an Arabic term for "the ones who stayed." Mudéjar is also the name of the architectural style from this period. Mudéjar is a hybrid of Moorish, Gothic and Romanesque styles.

It is this Mudéjar architecture that most non-Spaniards think of when they think of Moorish architecture. Mudéjar reached its highest degree of sophistication in the Spanish provinces of Aragon and Teruel. Thanks to the generosity of The Spanish Tile Manufacturer's Association (ASCER) and Tile of Spain, I had the chance to be in both of those places last week and to see for myself what Mudéjar looks like in person.

Here's a collection of architectural details and all of it is in the Mudéjar style. I took these photos in Zaragoza and Teruel and they're not in any particular order.

So the next time someone starts talking about Moorish or Moorish Revival architecture, ask that person to clarify whether he's talking about true Moorish or Mudéjar. It will make you sound smart.