How to Determine Water Flow in a Fountain Spillway

Spillways add drama to fountains and guide water flow, helping minimize sediment and waste of fountain surfaces. In order to remain fresh and clean, all of the water in little fountain pools must cycle through the fountain each hour — larger pools must recycle every two hours. Your pump, rated to lift a quantity of water to a particular height to the spillway, gives you a hint about how much water flows — or should flow — over the spillway. Measuring the actual leak requires a bucket, a timepiece and a bit of arithmetic.

Locate a bucket of known quantity — 5 gallons is a good size. Many buckets are a bit larger than their stated volume, so utilize a gallon jug to fill the bucket with exactly 5 gallons of water and mark the degree using a waterproof marker.

Place the bucket under the spillway’s lip so that it catches all of the water passing through the socket and start the stopwatch. Hold the bucket steady so no water splashes over a tipped border.

Catch the water until the water strikes the 5-gallon mark, then stop the stopwatch.

Divide 5 gallons by the number of moments it took to fill to the mark.

Multiply the number of gallons per minute by 60 to find the number of gallons of water that fall over the spillway per hour — the gallons per hour, or flow speed.

Repeat the measurement at least three times and divide the gallons per hour by the number of trials to get an average flow for the spillway.

Measure all the spillways in this manner and add the flow speeds to get the entire water flow to your fountain.

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The way to Adjust an Eclipse Push Mower

If you possess an Eclipse push mower, you have part of history. The Eclipse Lawn Mower Company, founded in 1900 by Fred Adams of Prophetstown, Illinois, stopped producing them in the early 1950s, when it started producing motorized versions, and the Eclipse Business was acquired by Hahn, Inc. in 1961. Eclipse push mowers usually have rubber tires and a rubber-coated roller. They also have two adjustments — one for adjusting for the length of the grass and one for setting the height of the cutting bar, which determines the way easily and effectively the blades cut.

Placing the Cutting Height

Locate the two lock nuts on each side of the roller, that’s the wooden dowel that tracks behind the cutting bar. They are on the inside of the frame that holds the roller and about 2 inches over the roller.

Turn both nuts using a wrench. If they are stuck and will not turn, douse them with lubricating spray, then permit the spray to work for a couple of minutes, and try again. Loosen the nuts sufficient to enable the roller to slide up and down to the frame.

Push down the elbow to lift the blade and cut the grass more evenly, and pull on the roller up to shorten the amount of the grass. Ensure both ends of the roller are the exact same distance from the top of the frame, then tighten the nuts.

Adjusting the Cutting Bar

Locate the two nuts on each side of the leading bar holding it to the lawn mower frame. Contrary to the nuts holding the roller, these nuts are on the outside of this frame. Loosen them using a wrench, using lubricating spray, if they’re stuck.

Notice the curved rod attached to the middle of the bar. It goes above the reel and connects to your tie rod on the front of the mower by means of adjustable wing nuts. There is one wing nut beneath the connection point and one over it.

Reduce the edge of the outer blade related to the reel by turning the lower nut counterclockwise and then turning the top nut counterclockwise by the exact same quantity. This pulls the rear of the cutting bar up and lowers the leading edge. Turn the nuts in the opposite direction to raise the edge of the cutting bar.

Use a bit of paper to find out the right setting for the bar. Put the paper between the bar and reel, have a helper push down on the handle to raise the mower wheels off the ground. Turn one of the wheels counterclockwise by hand. The bar is adjusted correctly if the blade slices the paper cleanly.

Tighten the nuts on each side of the bar when you are delighted with the adjustment.

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Comfort and Comfort in a Minnesota Manse

The husband wanted a masculine home. The wife wanted a place filled with vibrant color. Short of calling a marriage counselor, what was the designer to do?

For interior designer Darsi Floersch, the solution was a neutral inside with splashes of color throughout. “It was a balancing act of finding the color in the marketplace, but not needing it over the top,” states Floersch, of Martha O’Hara Interiors in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

Her clients — a professional athlete and a fitness trainer — built the 8,700-square-foot house for themselves and their two brothers near the shores of Lake Minnetonka, a popular resort area west of the Twin Cities. Regardless of the home’s huge size, the couple wanted it to look unpretentious and family friendly, and also to reflect the husband’s upbringing to a South Dakota farm.

“They’re down-to-earth,” Floersch states. “They wanted a place to entertain friends and family, and to reside in comfort. It was important to them to become more casual than dressy.”

at a Glance
Who lives here: A fitness trainer, a professional athlete and their two brothers
Location: Close Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota
Interior designer: Darsi Floersch, Martha O’Hara Interiors
Architect: Tritch Design
Builder: L. Cramer Designers + Builders
Size: 5 bedrooms, 41/2 bathrooms

Martha O’Hara Interiors

The owners opted to get a great room instead of a formal living room, and requested for an ottoman rather than a coffee table so they could put up their feet while watching TV.

Floersch used neutral colors on the sofa and chairs, then indulged the spouse’s love of color with the hot pink ottoman. “As long as the entire house wasn’t pink, the husband was willing to let her have that,” she states.

Your husband is a large man, and his wife is petite, therefore Floersch opted for heavier seats and added throw pillows, because you can always earn a chair smaller with pillows, but you can’t make it bigger.

Wool broadloom was trimmed and jumped to produce the area rug — a less costly option than purchasing an present rug.

Ottoman: Stewart Furniture, with cloth by Villa Romo; chandelier: Visible Comfort

Martha O’Hara Interiors

When is a formal dining room not a formal dining room? When it is supplied with a bleached, textured table surrounded by slipcovered necklace seats.

The owners are avid boaters and wanted some of the maritime feeling from the decoration. Floersch loved the curtain cloth and echoed the shade in the wing seats at either end of this table. “Going all around the dining table with it might have been a lot of,” she states.

Chandelier: Century Furniture; table: cFc

Martha O’Hara Interiors

The kitchen island is painted charcoal and topped with Argento granite; the counters at the back are Carrara marble. Upholstered stools supply an abrupt jolt of color and pattern.

Lanterns: Visible Comfort

Martha O’Hara Interiors

Folding barn-style doors, a homage to the husband of youth on a farm, offer access into the butler’s pantry in the hall.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

To produce the study flow with the rest of the house, Floersch eschewed stained millwork for striking charcoal paint. The hammered metal desk, paired with stainless steel counters, indulges the husband’s industrial aesthetic.

The yellow leather wing chair provides the requisite pop of color, but is trimmed with oversize nailheads to get a little machismo.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

Light floods the landing on the back stair, which features built-in window chairs where relatives can contemplate the view.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

Punches of aqua fortify the warm gray walls from the master bedroom. Tongue and groove paneling adorns the tray ceiling.

Paint: Winter Gates, Benjamin Moore

Martha O’Hara Interiors

Floersch obliged a petition for fun color in the laundry room with a cheery cherry paint and background, each of which extend to the home office.

Custom legs give the laundry room sink farmhouse appeal, while a bowed counter manages both laundry and children’s art projects with equal aplomb.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

The lower level contains a media room and pub. The floor is covered with 3- by 6-inch travertine tiles, designed to maintain up to celebrations and moist feet in the nearby pool.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

Rusticated stone behind the bar adds to the pub-like feel; the bell was a gift from Floersch.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

This foot rail was salvaged from a train track near the husband’s youth farm.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

The lower level also contains a game table illuminated by means of a custom light fixture. The pendants have been affixed to paths salvaged from a barn on the farm in which the husband has been raised.

“It meant a great deal to them to have their family legacy in the home,” states Floersch.

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5 Sensational Flowering Vines for Warm Climates

Love them or hate them, no tropical garden is complete without those wild and crazy vines. They move on where they do not belong, require persistent pruning, consume more space than they are ever awarded and will swallow a drop in a week if given the opportunity, but we grow them for one very good reason — the flowers, obviously. Here are a few of the showiest flowering vines you will see from late summer through autumn.

Cape Honeysuckle
(Tecoma capensis)

You will love this sprawling and rambling vine (more of a shrub, really) because of its profusion of vibrant orange flowers and its fine evergreen foliage. As you can tell from the bee at the photo, pollinators love it hummingbirds especially. The flowers that cover the plant in the summer and autumn include a gold orange to a deep and dramatic red-orange, so buy a plant when it is in bloom so you receive the type that works for your landscape.

Cape honeysuckle produces a big and untidy bulk of prolifically blooming stems, but it may be trained to develop trellises if you help it along by tying the rambling stems loosely to their support. Use it as a ground cover big hillsides or to restrain erosion, but be ready to give it plenty of room. It will spread.

Gardeners in colder climates will also be in luck. As long as you are willing to give it an occasional trim, cape honeysuckle works nicely in the container garden and may be kept upright with the help of stakes or permitted to scramble over the pot’s edge.

Where it will grow: Hardy to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (USDA zones 9 to 11; find your zone)
Water requirement: Low once established
moderate requirement: Total sun
Mature size: 6 to 2 feet
Seasonal interest: the largest flush of blooms is from late summer to fall.
When to plant: Spring through autumn

Passionflower
(Passiflora spp)

They come in all sorts of colours, ranging from the intense scarlet blooms of crimson passionflower (Passiflora miniata) into the pastel lemon passionflower (Passiflora citrinus) and white passionflower (Passiflora ‘Constance Elliott’). Not that passionflowers really need much else to warrant their use, but edible types — like the passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) and giant granadilla (Passiflora quadrangularis) — are delicious eaten out of hand, added to ice cream or juiced.

Passionflowers are invaluable host plants for butterflies, particularly the ones that are native to your region. Maypop is native to much of the eastern United States and has the bonus of producing edible fruits, and corky stem passionflower (Passiflora suberosa) is a fantastic selection for most of Florida. Another one to look for is incense passionflower (Passiflora ‘Incense’), that comes packed with a surprisingly strong odor.

They do not need much in the means of care, but passionflowers are ordinarily quite vigorous (some might use the word “weedy”) and might need to be heavily pruned or pulled up from time to time. In other words, if the butterfly caterpillars do not get to them first.

Red passionflower (Passiflora miniata) is among the more dramatic species offered and will occasionally bear fruit.

Where it will grow: Varies by species. Some are hardy to -10 degrees Fahrenheit (zones 6 to 11).
Water requirement: Typical
moderate requirement: Partial to full sun
Mature size: Varies, but maximum reach 6 to 8 feet
Seasonal interest: Summer through fall
When to plant: Spring through autumn

Gloriosa Lily
Gloriosa superba ‘Rothschildsiana’

This vining lily lookalike has flowers that are every bit as exotic looking as people of the passionflower, but with a twist. To start with of the flowers have twisted petals, and the blooms face down, looking much like comets or flickering flames as they switch from a light yellow to full-blown orange and crimson.

Plant the long and fleshy roots just as you’d bulbs, 2-3 inches beneath the soil surface from spring through the summer. Tropical gardeners and impatient gardeners in colder climates may add container-grown plants into the garden whenever freezes are not a problem.

Plant gloriosa lilies near a support such as a wire trellis or an informal shrub, so the distinctive tendril-like leaf ideas may grab a foothold. Resist the urge to prune errant stems, as doing this will kill back the whole stem into the ground and delay blooming.

Where it will grow: Hardy to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (zones 9 to 11)
Water requirement: Typical
moderate requirement: Partial to full sun
Mature size: Rambling blossom 4 to 6 feet long
Seasonal interest: Summer through fall
When to plant: Spring though summertime

Caution: All pieces of gloriosa lily are toxic if ingested, and handling the roots can be irritating to some, so plant it out of the reach of children and manage the roots using gloves as a precaution.

Pink Trumpet Vine
(Podranea ricasoliana)

Its cotton-candy-pink and trumpet-shaped blooms resemble those of the associated crossvine and trumpet creeper (that are also good choices too), but that South African native speaks in softer tones and ha finer foliage, which makes it ideal where a bit of subtlety is necessary. Oh, and did I mention it smells amazing?

Plant this one in the base of your tallest trellis, fence or pergola, since it has the potential to grow 20 feet tall when given the space. It’s also drought tolerant once established and requires little care if it is given enough room to roam freely. It might be suitable for containers, as long as you have pruning shears in the ready to keep it at scale.

Noelle Johnson Landscape Consulting

This pink trumpet vine is twining along a weapon.

Where it will grow: Hardy to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (zones 9 to 11)
Water requirement: Low
moderate requirement: Total sun; will require some color
Mature size: 15 to 20 feet
Seasonal interest: Flowers summer through autumn
When to plant: Spring through autumn where hardy

Bougainvillea
(Bougainvillea glabra)

Out of each of the vines in this ideabook, bougainvillea is the most frequent; it may be found in gardens everywhere from the shore of Florida to California, where it climbs scalp and stucco mansions. It naturally lends itself to Mediterranean design, with its muscular and winding woody trunks and rosy warm-hued blooms, or maybe it’s just because of its exceptional drought tolerance?

What most people consider that the flowers are actually papery and vibrant adapted leaf-like structures known as bracts that surround the real flowers, which are usually insignificant and white. The second most obvious characteristic is a bit more unpleasant, as the whole plant is generally armed with narrow and piercing thorns — certain to make any burglar’s day a memorable experience if it is planted along a wall.

Bougainvillea may be pruned back hard in spring, or you could remove the lower branches to reveal the twisting and fissured trunk for a piece of living sculpture. Just make certain to look but not touch.

Where it will grow: Hardy to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (zones 9 to 11)
Water requirement: Low
moderate requirement: Total sun
Mature size: Up to 40 feet
Seasonal interest: Summer through fall
When to plant: Spring through autumn

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Retirement Reinvention: Boomers Plot Their Next Big Move

We’re on the cusp of a great migration that will fundamentally change the landscape of America. It is a simple matter of numbers.

We of the boomer generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, are retiring. The oldest people have started reaching what the Social Security Administration calls “full retirement age.” The likely result over the next decade or so will be a migration from the North into the South. Obviously, not all those 80 million people will decide to move, but those who do will cause massive changes to the built environment.

Just as boomers generated sequential surges in the construction of K-12 schools, suburban home, shopping centers, faculty expansions, more suburban home, vacation homes and hotels; our generation will cause the building of a tide of “retirement home.”

In a feeling, this migration is going to be the final chance boomers might have to reinvent themselves. So what locale and type of dwelling will they select for their golden years? A single-family detached residence? A community of condominiums, townhouses, villas or other attached forms? Will it be on the water, nestled in the woods, by a river, overlooking a fairway, perched atop a hill, place among the cacti or at an urban setting with all the conveniences? Will it be a modern equivalent of the Plains Indians’ cellphone, light-on-the-land teepee, fixed in place, or some blend of the two?

Let us take a peek at some of the chances.

Water, palm trees and an incredible pink blue sky: A house in Florida or the Caribbean has for its reward that wonderful blend of sky and water with you in between. It is a life that disturbs us to love and enjoy each passing blur, each shade of lush green and each rising and setting sun.

Christopher A Rose AIA, ASID

Maybe we favor a 200-acre “backyard.” We would like the expansive vistas and all that green but do not wish to worry about maintenance. In addition, we need a place of community, with a clubhouse and a social life that retains our evenings and days filled with action to replace the old 9-to-5 grind.

Andrew Hinman Architecture

Many of us boomers will hear the call of the open road. We’ll proudly display all those state decals on the side of the RV as we consider in what this vast country has to offer you. And if we are fortunate enough, we’ll have a place we could go back to whenever we need. It’ll be a place that we simply drive the RV around and anchor ourselves while the batteries get recharged. A property yacht indeed!

Carney Logan Burke Architects

How about a cabin somewhere on the Great Plains? A place of reflection and solitude, where we establish a bond with character that could only be located there.

Many people, thankfully, will stay up North near family and all that’s familiar. Cold and snow are all components to be enjoyed. Skating, skiing, sledding, hot cocoa by the fire, snow angels and much more are all things to be cherished and celebrated instead of to be escaping from. A location nestled in a wood however near a little town might be just the right answer.

Edgewater layout llc

Those people who stay near home and kids might need to be certain that we’ve got our own space, even if it’s attached to our child’s house. Something that’s not too little, not too far away rather than a burden on us. Maybe this is a location where, when it is just too hot in the South or cold in the North, we locate ourselves for a few months. Or perhaps it’s a permanent house that we’re able to escape from for travels across the world.

jamesthomas Interiors

And who among us would not want their very own small pied-a-terre? While this might be the year-round residence, it might also be that special place we go to once in a while, once we would like to observe the glowing lights and enjoy city life.

For many, this can be an out-of-reach luxury that makes no sense as a first or second residence. In these cases, we could home swap or perform a temporary rental. Just think, with no 9-to-5 grind along with the kids on their own, getting to research many different lifestyles and places could just be what the doctor ordered.

Sure, there are some who state that people haven’t saved and sacrificed enough to ride into the sunset and revel in their golden years. While the fantastic Recession has made it hard for many, especially where the property markets took a nose dive, the reality is that tens of millions of people are financially protected. And, like they have done in every decade since the 1950s, they will guide the way in a lot of things.

Inform us about your dream retirement house. Are you currently staying stuck or planning a move? Please tell us how are you going to make it a reality, and the way you’ll love yourself once you get there.

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20 Wonderfully Inventive DIY Projects by ers

Home dwellers can reveal great creativity when confronted with less-than-ideal conditions such as a tight budget, a small space or a dull rental. Even the most mundane and unexpected items — FedEx boxes, mason jars, metal salad bowls and wine bottles — locate instant lives as decoration in their palms. Have a look at these 20 creative DIYs and get inspired for another weekend project.

Andrew Snow Photography

1. Salvaged storage for basement appliances. This old, peeling door was cut into three separate hinged sections to fit to this basement kitchen nook. The sections open to show the fridge, freezer and microwave.

See this house: Creative Moves Turn a Toronto Basement Into a Fashionable Lease

Emily Campbell

2. Flying-carpet coffee table. The illusion of the wonderful flying-carpet table adds a small bit of magic to this DIY-heavy apartment. A small Persian rug rests along with a piece of plywood. Once removed, the plywood reveals a small wooden coffee table with a built-in wine cooler.

See this house: Ultimate Live-Work Space Adapts to the Requirements of the Day

Megan Buchanan

3. Wallpapered stair risers. Leftover background and vintage address numbers pasted onto this Vancouver staircase risers make for an enjoyable, interactive way for your homeowner’s young kid to learn how to count.

See this house: Quirky, Colorful Vancouver Heritage Home

Rikki Snyder

4. Colorful cardboard-box wallpaper. A collection of old FedEx boxes went to great use with this wall covering — each box was cut into several shapes, layered onto the wall and hands painted.

See this house: An Antique Cape Cod House Explodes With Color

Shannon Malone

5. Outdoor-friendly wine-bottle light fixture. This homeowner created an outside light fixture out of wine bottles along with a steel bar. Edison bulbs alternative with tea lights for additional charm.

See this house: Eclectic, Artistic Rented House in Ojai

Andrew Snow Photography

6. DIY salad-bowl sink. A hardy stainless steel salad bowl fit the bill for a modern and very affordable sink in this home. The base of the bowl was drilled through for the pipes.

See this house: Creative Open-Concept Home in Toronto

Valerie McCaskill Dickman

7. Free-form wallpaper replacement. This homeowner took a while – and money-saving approach to her wall decoration — instead of hanging background, she painted a simple circular design, inspired by a favorite designer.

See this house: Budget-Friendly Bohemian Ranch in Dallas

Chris A Dorsey Photography

8. Salvaged wood seating. This awkward space instantly turned into a cozy corner with some salvaged wood joists, cut to size and wedged into place.

See this house: Artful Restoration for a Brooklyn Brownstone

Sara Bates

9. Freezer-paper wall therapy. This couple came up with a smart and cost-effective solution due to their plain walls. After cutting and ironing 550 circles of freezer onto the walls, then they added a coat of paint for a brand-new appearance.

See this house: DIY Efforts Vary a South Philly Row House

Amy Renea

10. Built-in CD rack storage. You need to get creative when you’re moving into an old pretzel factory. In search of additional storage, these homeowners put in Ikea CD racks in between the wall studs, creating four additional cabinets in their very long hallway.

See this house: Converted Pennsylvania Pretzel Factory

Lindsay von Hagel

11. Custom Southwest stencil artwork. This Dallas couple custom made a Southwest-inspired stencil for their own dining walls. Several colors of purple create a dazzling ombré effect.

Watch this house: Colorful Hand Painting Bedecks a Creative Home

Julie Ranee Photography

12. Easy and very affordable bulletin board. In search of a means to maintain her family organized, this homeowner snagged a huge pinboard from a school auction for $1, sawed it in half and coated it in fun fabric with a lively pattern.

See this house: Glowing and Eclectic Ohio Family Home

Heather Merenda

13. Stacked-lampshade lighting fixture. Plain-Janelampshades acquired new life in this homeowner’s artful lighting installation. Each lampshade is stacked on top of another, and the whole thing is lit by a series of low-wattage bulbs.

See this house: Travel Art and Creative Layering Mix in Vancouver

Corynne Pless

14. Pinned-up-paper wall therapy. Textile designer Kate Roebuck couldn’t bear to have too many white walls in her Mississippi rental. Green printed paper rolls pinned to the wall act exactly like background, without the hassle.

Bonus DIY: Roebuck also made the glittery chandelier cover shown to hide an unattractive existing fixture.

See this house: Artful Character Colors a Textile Designer’s House

CM Glover

15. Undermounted mason jar storage. Mason jars make for a smart storage fix in this crafty home. Mounted under small floating shelves, the jars are easy to twist out and in — ideal for a sewing room’s small odds and ends.

See this house: Craftiness and Colour in 3 Charming VIrginia Spaces

Shannon Malone

16. Simple sticker wall artwork. What child would not want a giant sticker album on the bedroom walls? Butterfly stickers cover the walls of the woman’s room for a wall remedy than could be easily added to or replaced.

See this house: Hip, Historic Victorian in Santa Cruz

Holly Marder

17. Custom Expedit room divider. Maybe the most astounding Ikea hack ever, this retro DIY shelving unit and room divider is created completely out of Ikea Expedit shelves, MDF panels and plastic foil.

See this house: Plastic Is King in an Out-of-This-World Home

Esther Hershcovich

18. Doorknob coatrack. Rather than hanging hats and clothes on his house’s doorknobs (like so many of us do), this smart homeowner left a coatrack out of black porcelain doorknobs and a scrap of wood.

See this house: Ecofriendly and Salvaged Style in a Montreal Triplex

Heather Merenda

19. Contact-paper wall artwork. Using an overhead projector, this bunch traced letters out of a photograph onto shelf-liner paper. They’re tenants, along with also the touch paper may peel off easily whenever they proceed.

See this house: Passionate Repurposing in a Heritage Home

Lucy Call

20. Wooden-crate wall closets. Wooden crates like these are simple finds on Craigslist. These crafty homeowners chose to make the most, installing several on their bedroom wall for practical storage.

See this house: Eclectic Repurposing Fits First-Time Homeowners in Utah

More: 29 incremental home decorating projects to make you a DIY superstar

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Are These Best Houses on the Planet?

A white box covered in Teflon-coated fiberglass cloth in the Netherlands. A Cor-Ten-clad volume cantilevering within a glass shop in Pittsburgh. A home in Tokyo composed solely of glass and little platforms of stainless steel. A concrete box in West Africa designed by two artists. A seven-story concrete tower serving as a home and workplace for Chilean architects. These are a handful of the 50-plus houses collected in the third volume of Philip Jodidio’s Architecure Now! Houses novels (Taschen, 2013).

The Architecture Now! Series also concentrates on green buildings; interiors for eating, eating and drinking; landscapes; temporary buildings; and even those made of timber. Nonetheless, it’s that the Houses books that are some of the most popular, given that the continuing experimentation that architects tackle in residential commissions and, as Jodidio explains it in his introduction, ” these are no thin times for the wealthy and that, consequently, luxury homes are being built.” Luxury isn’t the defining feature of the houses within this volume, as they vary from under 1,000 square feet to more than 20,000 square feet. Rather, the book is about the wide array of forms, programs and websites that are being made and formed by architects for homes in the past couple of decades.

This ideabook touches a small percent of the houses in the book to, I trust, provide a feeling of the formal and geographical variety found in all of the jobs, and to see whether the choices are, even as Jodidio claims the “finest of what has been achieved anywhere in the world.” Even though “best” is such a subjective word, it is hard to deny the ways that many of the houses go well beyond the norm.

These architects are certainly pushing the boundaries on what may be possible, even as the ideas the houses Celebrate may take years to be integrated into more mainstream style, if ever at all.

TASCHEN

If a book can be judged by its cover, Architecture Now! Houses 3 presents design that is modern but with a twist. Instead of a glass box sitting in the landscape — the penultimate modern home in this strain is the Farnsworth House — we’ve got three boxes that are linked to another and rising out of and alongside a dark rock foundation that merges into the landscape.

The L House in Yvelines, France, designed by Christian Pottgiesser along with his company, architecturepossibles, is really composed of five towers. This caused the customer’s desire to construct a single tall structure (to obstruct views of a neighboring land) together with local codes and the landmarked orangerie it adjoins. Each tower is attached internally on the bottom floor, which can be pierced by skylights.

TASCHEN

The book includes eight jobs in america. Among them is that the Woodstock Farm Estate in Vermont, designed by Rick Joy, a architect normally associated with his home base of the desert Southwest. This project — two gable volumes forming a “L” in plan (the shorter leg, a two-story barn, is out of frame on the left) — reveals Joy is a fantastic enough architect to create a thing in your home in rural New England too.

Jodidio calls for the home “an extrapolation of [the] vernacular genre,” given that proportionally the pictured section is stretched longer than, and therefore has a considerably different percentage compared to barn. However, the design is serious, with shingles covering the roof and walls that are long, and mottled stonework covering the ends. (A photo of one of the rock ends actually graces the cover of Diane Keaton’s book, House.)

TASCHEN

Two projects in the book are in Sri Lanka, either by Japanese architects. One is a massive 27,000-square-foot home designed by Tadao Ando, and the second is that the 8,800-square-foot Villa Vista designed by Shigeru Ban and really built for the son of Ando’s client. Ban was employed in the region in the middle of the last ten years, building catastrophe housing after the earthquake of December 26, 2004, and has been approached to style Villa Vista after his renovation work was completed. Throughout his career he has balanced design houses for those in need and for the wealthy, in this instance in certain comparative proximity.

Boundaries between indoors and outside at Villa Vista are blurry. While this view from a bridge traversing a pool (visible in the lower right corner) reveals, the shutters serve to aid shade what’s basically a terrace covered by a generous woven teak ceiling. Trees are visible in the distance through the shutters, but when we turn to the left we see over more trees into the sea from a large opening.

Belzberg Architects

Two of the eight houses in the USA are designed by Hagy Belzberg, one in Hawaii and one in Los Angeles; the latter is pictured here. The Skyline Residence is a large house perched on a ridge in the Hollywood Hills. The project is called for the detached carport that doubles as a projection screen. Wood slats unite the 2 structures and color the spaces in the home and above the garage.

Belzberg Architects

Appropriately, given the name Skyline Residence, the design can be about the view. Belzberg took good advantage of the site to not only provide a excellent place for watching movies, but to produce the valley that is Los Angeles a constant presence through the full-height glass walls.

TASCHEN

Though Japan is only roughly the size of California, the book features 10 jobs in Tokyo and other environs. Easily the most striking is Sou Fujimoto’s House NA, in a residential area of central Tokyo. At first glance there is nothing house-like about it … it is even hard to decipher how one occupies the small platforms made of stainless steel and defined by glass partitions.

Fujimoto contrasts it to living in a tree, even though he doesn’t attempt to possess the home formally resemble one. It is like the home is made up of a series of little tree houses, but the openness of these glass walls sets the occupants obviously on screen.

How somebody lives in the home is a matter Jodidio appropriately asks, and the response could find a parallel in the sharing of lives that occurs in electronic networks. The home is subsequently for young people with various approaches to dwelling, “assembled more online than on the machine-driven world of the past,” in Jodidio’s words.

Almost as striking is Ryue Nishizawa’s Garden and House, also in Tokyo. The architect calls the home with four levels plus a roof a building with no walls. There are some walls — fixed and sliding walls of glass — however their location and extents of enclosure differ from floor to floor, like the earth floor is mainly enclosed but the third floor is outside, with no stair and a toilet. Each floor is then a mix of indoor and outdoor, house and garden.

The majority of the jobs in the book are single-family houses, but the Shakujii Apartment building in Tokyo differs. The project, designed by SANAA/Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa, consists of eight apartments that complete 5,200 square feet (so much smaller than the home in Sri Lanka from Shigeru Ban!) . The units are a mix of full-height glass partitions and open porches, strung along a road in 2 layers front and back.

SANAA’s project is like a metropolitan, multifamily update of the Farnsworth House. The steel frame, glass partitions and open porches are here, but everything is slightly intermittent: Roofs and floors don’t align, and things change in plan to squeeze a lot of units on this small site.

In the end of the book’s socioeconomic scale is the Float House, designed by Thom Mayne and Morphosis for Brad Pitt’s Make It Right base, which helped rebuild portion of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

The design relies on a traditional shotgun home, however asymmetry and some flourishes in the construction, porch railing, dividers and windows make it a contemporary neighbor. And while the house may seem too low for a Katrina-like occasion, it can really be increased up to 12 feet high on guideposts.

This last project is the cantilevered building in Pittsburgh mentioned in the introduction. Called the Art Glass House, by architect Eric Fisher, the house is for the owner of the eponymous company that occupies the industrial building it cantilevers over. The Cor-Ten steel siding calls even more attention to what the architect explains as “the world’s longest residential cantilever” — inspired by Fallingwater but going well beyond the limited reach of the earlier residential masterpiece.

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