Archive for the 'On Building' Category

This article appeared in the June 2007 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of
Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
On the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend, when most people struggled with turkey-induced lethargy, architect Malcolm Wells wrote me a two-page letter of considerable intensity. In the upper-right corner, he noted the time: 7:43 a.m.

Malcolm Wells, several decades ago. [...]

This article appeared in the May 2007 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
High in the Berkeley hills, in a magnificent house by Berkeley architect Dan Liebermann, a two-story space contains so many features that it’s hard to get a handle on them all. One first notices a stone fireplace, [...]

This article appeared in the April 2007 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of
Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
My last two columns focused on making small spaces feel bigger. Once you’ve achieved that, you potentially face a new problem. When ceilings soar and when exterior walls are mainly sheets of glass, a house may feel more [...]

This article appeared in the February 2007 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of
Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
In his book Gentle Architecture, architect Malcolm Wells considered the majesty of a wind-twisted tree growing from a crack in a rock. Then he imagined this tree grouped with its peers in a nursery, the whole dull crowd [...]

This article appeared in the March 2007 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of
Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
From the Egyptian pyramids to Taipei 101, humans can’t seem to abandon their “bigger is better” mentality. How refreshing, then, when an architect calls an 850-square-foot house his best building. In 1958, Berkeley architect Dan Liebermann started building [...]

This article appeared in the January 2007 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of
Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
Driving past warehouses recently, I felt completely blah. It’s logical, I reasoned. What else can one feel in an industrial setting? But I also know that after adaptive reuse, former warehouse spaces can feel wonderful.
Take Tokyo Fish Market [...]

This article appeared in the December 2006 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of
Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
Beneath his painting of a pipe, surrealist René Magritte wrote, “This is not a pipe.” The dissonance sends one’s brain into a loop: “It’s a pipe. It’s not a pipe. It’s a pipe that’s not a pipe. It’s [...]

This article appeared in the November 2006 issue of the Greater Bay Area edition of Builder/Architect magazine.
By Eve Kushner
On Vine Street near Shattuck, a Berkeley wine shop called Vintage affects me in the strangest way. The structure long served as an East Bay Municipal Utility District pumping plant, then stood idle, cut off from the [...]

Column 1 for Builder/Architect magazine explores the creative frustration that many architects experience.