I spend a lot of time riding my bike on the back roads. And it just seems that everyone has no trespassing signs posted on their property. It also seems that there are more and more of these signs all the time. Sure, everyone has a right to do that. But is it really that important? Are we really that concerned about where our boundaries are? Plus, when the signs are as dense as in the photo above, it starts to look junky.
I slammed on the brakes when I saw this assembly on Route 166 just south of our farm.
The garage is properly stick built. It is rooted to the ground and bolted to a slab. It was built in place. It has a relatively high authenticity. This is where the vehicle lives.
The house is modular. It is floating and unattached to the ground. It was built elsewhere, and brought to the site in two pieces. It could have been built on Mars. It has low authenticity. This is where the humans live.
Is this telling us something? Is this a commentary regarding the evolution of machines and of humans? Is this, truly, the state of the art? Does this metaphorically say that humans, with our technology, are increasingly unmoored to the planet? Or is this saying that the vehicles have greater value than do humans, given the vehicles have a more authentic building? If this triggers an association with you, we would love to hear about it. The floating house / anchored garage is simply too good to ignore.
This did provide the impetus for a fantasy. The garage might be seen as the root, anchored into the ground. And the house might be seen as the leaves, gently oscillating in the breeze.
This winter was fantastic. We’re guessing that the snow was on the ground, continually, for around 10 weeks. This allowed for XC just about any day you wanted. We were able to maintain the same track set thru the fields. Every time there was new snow, we were usually able to ski over the old trail. As we did, we kept compressing the snow in the tracks. As the snow was melting, the denser snow in the tracks is the last to go.
We are happy to announce that Kurt’s book, Transparent Drawing, is now available in the US. Published by Black Dog Press in the UK, it attempts to provide a new mode of knowledge about form. To do this, the book offers a set of analogue tools and concepts which anyone can use to think about form and design in a new way. Historical precedents for the theory are also extensively linked.
The idea for Transparent Drawing sprang from my daily sketches here in the office. In a direct way, it is a manifestation of our practice in Cooperstown. So you might say that Altonview is powered by Transparent Drawing.
Does it get any better than this? We have had weeks with these exact conditions. Skiing in the fields yesterday was just about perfect. And what does the image look like to you? Maybe an underwater organism? Think of Haeckel’s Kunstform der Natur. Or maybe it was some sort of unclassified creature, like a turtle propelling itself across the sand.
The warehouse structure behind Bruce Hall’s is the coolest building in Cooperstown. The foundation portion appears to be concrete cylinders. I can almost imagine that they were cut off silos. Or they may have been some sort of holding vessels for when the railroad was there. And then the wood structure with the curved roof seems to float, or rest very lightly on the cylinders. There is a classic symmetry to the side that I photographed. I’m sure that local historians know the whys and wherefores of how the building came to be. At any rate, it is absolutely great.
All of us (and we mean all of us) at AVA wish you Peace in this season of renewal.
We hate to see barns removed from the landscape. The photos below document the demolition of what was an excellent barn on County Route 35. While it is really none of our business, we do wonder what set of decisions prompted this action. Barns, certainly of this caliber, seem to be an inexorable part of the landscape. We imagine them with a geological weight, as they are akin to a rock outcropping. They serve as anchors to our cultural imagination.
Previously Published 21 September 20.
Did you realize that at least 85% of our electricity comes from hydroelectric generation? We learned this when we were talking with Otsego Electric, our energy provider. Most of the generation is at Niagra Falls. So our new geothermal system makes even more sense for the planet, given that hardly any fossil fuels will be expended for our increased electricity usage.
Previously Published 19 August 20.
We just installed a ground loop geothermal system at the Farm. There was an amazing confluence of events and incentives: our boiler needed to be replaced, grants became available, there was a direct financial contribution, and there was an economic incentive. So all of this was too good to pass up. And we discovered, to our delight, that there is a feeling of liberation when you remove a fossil fuel component from your lives.
