It has been awhile since I blogged. I apologize to everyone, but to be honest I havn't really been inspired for awhile, or perhaps I just had a serious case of writers block.
This has been a strange winter around here. The last postings I did were of our pre-Christmas blizzard. Oddly enough, a week after that storm, we had another pretty big one, and it seems a weekly storm of some sort. And it has been VERY COLD this winter! Usually we get an arctic blast for a week or so in the winter, then it is over. And we always have some very warm days during the winter when we can get out and enjoy life, go for a walk, play a round of golf, ride bikes, or even clean up the yard a little bit.
Not this year...we are in week 7 of cold snowy weather. The snow from the blizzard is STILL on the ground! and we have hardly had any days above 40, with most of them in the 20's and 30's, or colder. I am getting cabin fever big time. I have a burning desire to build something, but it is way too cold in the garage to fire up the woodshop. Even though the garage is fully insulated, it would cost a fortune to crank up the space heaters to get the temperature into the mid 40's so I could work without gloves. Fortunately, I did figure out how to completely drain the trailer this year, so hopefully no broken pipes this time! I need a break from this weather...Calgon take me away!
On the bright side, business has picked up dramatically in the last couple of weeks! If this keeps up, it looks like this will be a good year, and my inspiration is starting to make a comeback!
Friday, February 02, 2007
Jan. Fugglies
OK, so I am a couple of days late posting, but I found this one in January! This wonderful project is a perfect example of what not to do for project planning and streetscape design! This particular apartment project is in Castle Rock, Colorado, next door to one of my projects. They both were designed and approved roughly at the same time, but what a difference in concepts and execution!
The apartment home site was originally a beautifully sloping site vegetated with scrub oak and other native plants. The developers of the apartment homes probably had a standard building plan they wanted to use (usually on flat sites), so in order to get that product to work on this site, they had to construct some incredible retaining walls to pull this off. The picture shows the result of what happened along the public street adjacent to the site. Not only are the walls incredibly tall (around 40 feet at one point), they were designed without any anesthetics in mind. There is no variation in color, no pattern, nothing. Just a huge homogeneous wall. Then, they didn't even bother to screen it plant material, trees, or shrubs. Just a few trees scattered here and there. Ugly.
Watch for my other post of our project coming up shortly.
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