Villa Savoye, sort of . . .

My kids gave me a Lego set of the Villa Savoye for Father's Day this year.  I had seen this series of Architectural Legos at conferences and in trade journals, but they were too pricey and kind of gimmicky.  A gift is another thing altogether, though.  This was an excuse to get back into Legos with my kids.  Not shown are Merida's castle from Brave and various Chima vehicles and forts.

Below is the nearly finished model.  This thing is crazy cool.  You really have to walk yourself through the building.  My daughter once again pointed out my poor use of color.

As an architectural grad student I visited the real thing just outside of Paris.  I recall not wanting to sketch any views that had been overly documented, a rationale I regret today.  That left the more utilitarian spaces, and so I sketched the entry lavatory off of the garage (left) and the kitchen (right). Letters from Le Corbusier's clients on display when I visited complain of how uninhabitable the place was.  Drafty and leaky, the Savoyes ultimately abandoned the "machine for living" a few short years after it was completed in 1931.  Seas of ink have been spilled over this building.  It remains today an amazing piece of sculpture and a museum for the architect's Five Points of Architecture.

July 4th, 2014

July 4th at the beach

All five siblings with spouses and children, our parents, and more cousins in two houses.  Wonderful to see all the young cousins growing up together.  Somehow I snatched a few minutes to do the below sketches.  My sketchbook spent most of its time in the hands of my daughter and her cousins, and their contributions to it deserve their own post.  Forthcoming . . . 

 An over-sized chess set was a hit.

 From the upstairs porch of the Floramay I.

Creeping in to the right of the below image is my daughter's impression of Hurricane Arthur, just passed through the day before.