Thursday, January 21, 2010
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Gamble House - Pasadena, CA














• The Gamble House, also known as David B. Gamble House, (constructed 1908 - 1909) is a National Historic Landmark and museum in Pasadena, California, USA. It was designed by the architectural firm Greene and Greene, brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, as a home for David B. Gamble of the Procter & Gamble company.
• Originally intended as a winter residence for David and Mary Gamble, the three-story Gamble House is a residential ark commonly described as America's Arts and Crafts masterpiece, whose style shows influence from traditional Japanese aesthetics and a certain California spaciousness born of available land and a permissive climate. Arts-and-Crafts architecture was focused on the use of natural materials, attention to detail, aesthetics, and craftsmanship.
• Rooms in the Gamble House were built using multiple kinds of wood; the teak, maple, oak, Port Orford Cedar, and mahogany surfaces are placed in sequences to bring out contrasts of color, tone and grain. Inlay in the custom furniture designed by the architects matches inlay in the tile mantle surrounds, and the interlocking joinery on the main staircase was left exposed. One of the wooden panels in the entry hall is actually a concealed door leading to the kitchen, and another panel opens to a clothes closet. The Greenes used an experienced team of local contractors who had worked together for them in Pasadena on a several previous homes, including the Hall brothers, Peter and John, who are responsible for the high quality of the woodworking in the house and its furniture.
• The sensuous woods, the generously low and horizontal room shapes, and the quality of natural light that filters through the art glass exterior windows, coexist with a relatively traditional plan, in which most rooms are regularly shaped and organized around a central hall. Although the house is not as spatially adventurous as the contemporary works of Frank Lloyd Wright or even of the earlier New England "Shingle Style," its mood is casual and its symmetries tend to be localized - i.e. symmetrically organized spaces and forms in asymmetrical relationships to one another. Ceiling heights are different on the first (8'10") and second floors (8'8") and in the den (9'10") and the forms and scales of the spaces are constantly shifting, especially as one moves from the interior of the house to its second-floor semi-enclosed porches and its free-form terraces, front and rear. The third floor was planned as a billiard room, but was used as an attic by the Gamble family.
Note: • In Back to the Future, the house served as the exterior of Doc Brown's mansion. While the Greene's Blacker House was used for interior shots.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Red Tide - September 2009 - Santa Monica

Red tide is a common name for a phenomenon more correctly known as an algal bloom (large concentrations of microorganisms), an event in which estuarine, marine, or fresh water algae accumulate rapidly in the water column and results in discoloration of the surface water. It is usually found in coastal areas.[1]
These algae, more specifically phytoplankton, are single-celled protists, plant-like organisms that can form dense, visible patches near the water's surface. Certain species of phytoplankton, such as Dinoflagelate, contain photosynthetic pigments that vary in colour from green to brown to red.
When the algae are present in high concentrations, the water appears to be discoloured or murky, varying in colour from purple to almost pink, normally being red or green. Not all algal blooms are dense enough to cause water discolouration, and not all discoloured waters associated with algal blooms are red. Additionally, red tides are not typically associated with tidal movement of water, hence the preference among scientists to use the term algal bloom.
Some red tides are associated with the production of natural toxins, depletion of dissolved oxygen or other harmful effects, and are generally described as harmful algal blooms. The most conspicuous effects of red tides are the associated wildlife mortalities among marine and coastal species of fish, birds, marine mammals, and other organisms. In the case of Florida red tides, these mortalities are caused by exposure to a potent neurotoxin called brevetoxin which is produced naturally by the marine algae Karenia brevis.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)

































