Monday, June 13, 2005

Weekend Activities



We had a pretty fun weekend. At least I thought so. Besides to runs to go shoppping for groceries, we went and looked at a property to build on. There is one that is relatively inexpensive and still a large piece of land close enough that I can commute to and from work. It's about 45 minutes away during the good times and about an half and change during the bad. It's also .4 acres. The problem is that to build there, we'd have to get a variance with the city its in since most of it is creek bed. My wife and I have been discussing what we could do for mitigation for the construction. We've got a few good ideas that I just discussed this morning with someone at work that's done a good deal of construction work: he thinks they're very good ones that ought to be excellent for convincing the city in question. With that encouragement, we're going to do all the research we can prior to buying the property.

If you didn't notice on SHWI, I love architecture. I have become enthralled with variants of Byzantine architecture. I love the churches of Thessalonica and Mystra. I even have rolled a few threads on alternate archiectures. One of which was to seek out ideas of a house waaay back. The architecture thread that I am most proud of comes from my Morean Empire TL. There I wrote about the Senate of Trebizond and its architectual design while hinting at politics and history up through the Age of Tourism.

For the house, if we get to build it, I am going to take my base of extrapolation to be Byzantine architecture. I'd like to steal a thing or two from the architecture that comes from the Great Camps of the Adirondacks in New York. I especially like Camp Topridge (and here) and its style of everything having grown from into place. However, I am equally salivating over Art Nouveau for the interior designs. There are bits and pieces from other eras and places, but the biggest contributor that I can think of I'd love to incorporate (or mutate and then incorporate) would be the hallway and entrance from Bag End in the movie version of _The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring_. IDK how much we'll be able to incorporate in this first house. We shall see though.

I'll be sure to post pictures when the time comes. If it does.


No comments: