piping hot spelt bread fresh from the oven

…this afternoon while trying to approximate the simple primitive spelt (farro) and water non-yeast bread that I fell in love with in Italy – especially the stuff made by the mystical baker/artist with a little stand at Rome’s Città dell’altra Economia whom I would visit most Sunday’s (who would apologize for the ashes on the bottom of the loaf while brushing off that evidence of the homemade fire it was baked in) - and it was on my first attempt of what I thought would be many, and with many recipes – that the magic steaming loaf came out of the oven, warming this rainy day – amazingly textured, light/substantial, delicious and satisfying in the way that only bread can be – especially to someone who is vegan and avoids wheat – making me wonder why I ever bought bread? (recipe website)

3 cups spelt flour – organic
1 1/2 cups water - purified
1 tbs. baking powder – non-aluminum
1 tbs. olive oil
1/4 tsp. sea salt
Mix liquids and dry ingredients separately; then combine and mix well. Place in oiled and floured cake pan. Bake at 375 F  for 50 – 55 minutes. When top is light to medium brown, bread is ready to cool on rack.

…plus I basted the top with homemade almond milk before baking…and next time, nuts!

Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter, 2004

…the super charming 2004 survey of hand made homes (adobe, bark, barns, bottles, camps, canvas, floating, geodesics, green-roofs, mobile, mud, sandbags, straw, stone, tiles, timber, tiny, tipis, thatch, treetops, yurts…) from all over – including up close and personal profiles of the builders – is the book I just picked up by Lloyd Kahn which I am extremely jazzed about, representing for me the height of architecture – a follow-up to his 1973 best-selling ‘Shelter.’

the beckoning storefront colors of Cookbook in Echo Park

…is the recently opened neighborhood boutiquey charming but expensive green grocer that I am hearing about – as I’m asking around trying to figure out what progress has been made with access to simple good food on the east side of LA while I’ve been away the past 16 months – so I stop by this afternoon, impressed by the way it feels like someone has opened up a room in their home as a store – reminding me of the candy-jar-filled wood-paneled glass-cabinet-lined Minneapolis candy store in the first floor parlor of the Melby family house a few blocks away where we got out sugar fix as kids.

Organizing Cools the Planet, 2011

…is the title of the Hilary Moore and Joshua Kahn Russell authored booklet from PM Press that I was seduced into buying at Skylight Books in Los Feliz this evening – mostly because of it’s engaging simple loose sketchy illustrations about a heavy dark complicated topic – and I look forward to digging in. (website)

one massive trunk of the carob tree gently resting on the fence

…which is now lying in wait and shorn of it’s branches – will include: the chipping of it’s branches into mulch for the garden beds, paths, and slopes; the cutting of it’s medium sized trunks into 18 and 30 inch pieces for garden seating and table surfaces; and the really massive lower sections will remain where they have fallen to retain planting terraces and to create long tree seating landscapes, to be occupied like driftwood on the beach.

over the lighted grids of LA

…beginning to emerge as the pilot announces our descent into the city somewhere over 29 Palms, then Palms Springs, then the endless Inland Empire – welcomes me back home to the wild urbanized west for a few weeks.

Princeton building leftovers

…from slate pavers to gothic finials and concrete culverts to steel beams – collected, organized, and saved for future use by a thoughtful facilities manager – cover a massive field near campus as far as you can see, which I am inspecting for possible use in next term’s Princeton Student Colony.

Lenape garden 30 months later

…was established in 2009 in front of the Hudson Guild community center at Elliott-Chelsea Houses near the corner of West 26th Street and Tenth Avenue with thirty edible plant species that the native Lenape people of the island of Manhattan would have been eating from as recently as 400 years ago – and being in the neighborhood this morning, I stopped by to check it out (since there is no particular family that takes care of it and eats from it – as with most of the other Edible Estate gardens - I have always been a bit concerned about it’s future prospects) where some plants had gone and others had arrived, but it was still looking good, and even a little wild – in a good way. (webpage)

Mao Marathon at the Jane Hotel

…at the Jane Hotel’s luxe comfy ballroom, where I found a spot on an old homey velvet upholstered couch, was an all afternoon performative reading of the entire text of of Frederic Tuten’s 1971 novel The Adventures of Mao on the Long March by over 70 people including Linsey Abrams, Michael Almereyda, Kurt Andersen, Laurie Anderson, Véronique Béghain, Ross Bleckner, Thomas Bolt’s, Cecily Brown, Lori Marie Carlson, Mary Ann Caws, Jerome Charyn, Clifford Chase, Michael Coffey, Lydia Davis, Mónica de la Torre, Jim Drummond, Deborah Eisenberg, Adam Ende, Barbara Epler, Francisco Goldman, Brad Gooch, Francine du Plessix Gray, Adam Green, John Haskell, Amy Hempel, Oscar Hijuelos, A.M. Homes, Richard Howard, Dakota Jackson, Ben Janse, Wayne Koestenbaum, Bettina Korek, Anne Kreamer, Paul La Farge, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Douglas Light, Phillip Lopate, Karen Marta, Patricia Marx, J.W. McCormack, Edward Mendelson, Gregory R. Miller, Hannah Tennant-Moore, Walter Mosley, Linda Norden, Sarah Paley, Robert Polito, Ernesto Quiñonez, Jonathan Rabinowitz, Dawn Raffel, Pedro Reyes, Rachel Rosenfelt, David Salle, Grace Schulman, Wallace Shawn, Aurelie Sheehan, Julie Sheehan, Geoffrey D. Smith, Iris Smyles, James Leon Suffern, Betsy Sussler, Lynne Tillman, James Traub, Lily Tuck, Edmund White, Andrew Zornoza - which just happened to coincide with my breezing through New York on the way to a few days in Princeton.

the missing tree

…is a hard thing to point out.

Jedediah Caesar's COMMA 23

…inverted cast pits of London rubble from a project at Bloomberg Space have arrived for display in LA – opening at Human Resources tonight – before being ceremonially destroyed…which I heard happened later in the evening as the opening evolved into a dance party partially on top of the sculptures.

one part of the carob tree hanging over the 'cave'

…was one of the dramatic results of a truly terrifying night of hurricane strength winds that loudly pounded the hilltop last night – so loud that I didn’t hear the beloved massive carob tree crash down in two directions (towards the neighbors where a few other trees and my redwood fence fortunately braced it from crashing into their bedroom  - and on to the lower level of my house, fortunately braced from crashing through the roof by a perimeter concrete wall), but when I finally awoke at 6am from two hours of fitful sleep in the slightly muffled retreat of the downstairs bathroom, I discovered a totally new world in the garden, where the largest presence on the land was gone – replaced by the view to Glendale, Burbank, and beyond.

a Cohabitable Architecture bat workshop meeting at the London Animal Estates HQ conference table

…kicked off the series today at the Animal Estates London HQ, Urban Wildlife Client Services, and we’re getting reports back of good times with bat ecolocation device demonstrations…

This workshop proposes the design of cohabitable space that is to be shared between bats and humans. Through the acts of drawing and model making we will attempt to explore means of cohabitation between species. In traditional bat mitigation projects a small percentage of space is given for bat habitation within agricultural buildings with the majority of space allocated for human habitation. In order to subvert this idea we will design structures where bats take up 90% of the space and humans the remaining 10%. Inverting the proportion of living space allows us to explore aspects of the bat world that will assist us in designing the human space. Aspects such as flight, blindness, suspension, inversion and clustering will be explored regarding the human side of the cohabitation.

honey from all over London

…by our friends at Åbäke is in the works for the Animal Estates London HQ, Urban Wildlife Client Services, and today we received this exciting preview planning picture of jars and jars and jars of the local stuff….mmmm honey.

Jean Dujardin and Uggy in The Artist

…’where have you been all of my life?’ is what I was asking myself – surprised I had never heard of him and being such a French film fan and now planning to see all of his lowbrow slapstick comic roles – after making a rare cinematic pilgrimage to LA’s Cinerama Dome to get a privileged LA preview of the new French movie that I have been hearing about all over the place called ‘The Artist‘.

LA sunrise panorama

…this morning is one of the reasons I’m back here in LA, yes.

Matt Merkel Hess's Bucketry at ACME

…is an artist and a potter interested in the environment (see his old ecoartblog) whom I originally met years ago when he inquired about taking some dirt from my garden to use in the making of plates – upon which he would later use for a dinner party along with plates made from dirt from a lot of other people’s gardens – and last night he made my hike to the LA’s West-ish Side worth it, to see his show ‘Bucketry‘ at ACME Gallery of common plastic receptacles in the form of fabulously glazed ceramics.

Bert Rodriguez's mother cooking in the gallery

…is what I stopped by a West Side LA gallery to see Bert Rodriguez doing tonight. (more in the Style of the Times)

Dynasty Handbag at Human Resources

…brought her intense frenetic eccentric hilarious N.Y.C. monolog performing styles to L.A. at Human Resources tonight – nobody like her – crazy times. (website)

'A Ray Array All Day' at Human Resources

…is the title of the video by Sara Rara of Lucky Dragons, screening all day at your friendly neighborhood performance art space, Human Resources…things to do there everyday this week.

Devendra Banhart (blur at left) & Gregory Rogove at Human Resources

…(unrecognizably clean-shaven) making cameo appearances, came to Human Resources tonight.

Samara Golden at Night Gallery

…which is painted black only open from 10pm to 2am, Tuesdays through Thursdays – was worth staying up past my typical bed time tonight to head just down the other side of my hill for the opening of their latest show and finally check out the local late night art hangout. (website)

Llano del Rio Collective at the base of City Hall

…(previously mentioned here) organized a conversation about art and activism on the front steps of Los Angeles City Hall last night featuring recent NYC transplant A.L. Steiner and Andrea Bowers – and my first chance  to check out the Occupy L.A. village on the lawn surrounding City Hall. (website)

in and out of the big red extruded space where Machine used to be

…opened Nate Page’s Storefront Plaza this afternoon , which involved the simple act of moving the storefront glass back 20 feet into the space, creating a mysterious deep red extruded orifice facing Alvarado Boulevard that had cars slowing down this afternoon during the ribbon cutting…and stay tuned for the upcoming Storefront Plaza events.

Eve Fowler day-glo posters

…have been going up around town in day-glo colors, and if you are in LA, perhaps you have noticed them at occasional intersections and freeway exits?

the Chez Panisse worthy spread at Dosa

…housed in cozy vast top floor downtown LA loft hosted Alice Waters for an Edible Schoolyard benefit event and sale this afternoon….yum.

Zac Monday's crocheted monsters guiding visitors in a performance

…(the local artist-run performancey venue initiated and run by a loose collective of five, including friends Giles Miller, Dawn Kasper, and Eric Chen moved into a grand new space on Cottage Home in Chinatown while I was away) hosted the release event for Darin Klein’s Box of Books tonight, featuring colorful crocheted monsters by Zac Monday who took you by the hand to guide you through a performance. (website)

rainy LA sunset and mini-rainbow from the dome

…yesterday evening where the city welcomed me back with some sunset sprinkles and I can’t remember ever being so happy to arrive anywhere, eager to nest back into this crazy city, the winter weather, the east side art scene, plus the familiar home, dogs & garden.

leaving Sofia

…flying over a picturesque landscape of Soviet housing blocks on our way up and out  yesterday, and then anticipation to finally get home at long long long last…LA.

Sofia Women's Market & Supermarket

…old and new are in vivid contrast all over town – as in many of the European cities I’ve been visiting lately – most vividly evidenced on visits to the super long and lively ‘Women’s Market’ that runs all the way up Boulevard Stefan Stambolov and then past the nearby supermarket with mega plastic graphics of picture perfect produce wallpapering the facade.

a half pipe in a Sofia park

…sitting side by side in a park in central Sofia, Bulgaria – with young Balkan skate rats attired in impressively authentic Western skate rat fashions – is what I noticed on the long circuitous walk I took on the way to my Sofia Architecture Week lecture this evening.

Bulgarian morning TV

…is where I started out my first morning in the country for a live interview to discuss my work, and tomorrow’s talk at the Sofia Architecture Week, and then out to explore the streets of Sofia for a brisk afternoon of meandering wanderings in crisp cool sunny weather enjoying one of my last days as a free flâneur this year (before moving back to the dome and L.A. on Wednesday!)….when I very luckily happen upon a young man preparing some wholesome looking bread in a warm window at the intersection of two small tree-lined side streets, which draws me in to discover The Sun and Moon Cafe, a very very awesome slow/local food, vegany, fresh, cozy place, my ideal sort of food refuge in a foreign city, where the menu full of good/real vegan food overwhelms me so much that the waitress has to return a few times until I finally figure out what from the menu bounty I want to order, and then afterward it is clear I will not find a better place to eat in town, I will eat all of my meals here, and decide to change hotels so I can stay around the corner….but I guess that’s what happens when comfort craving begins to rule at the end of three months on the road.

flying over an abondoned steel mill outside of Sofia, Bulgaia

…is what made the first impression as we approached the Sofia airport over a late autumn umber and ochre landscape, for my first visit to the country (whose only previous associations for me come from the amazing Le Mystere des voix Bulgares album released by 4AD in the late 80′s) for a talk on Tuesday at the Sofia Architecture Week – preceded by an interview in yesterday’s national newspaper.

fig.1: Dry Goods Store as the first installation for The Narrowsburg Mews, Circa and The Mildred Complex(ity)

…one of my favorite places, just arrived from J Morgan Puett, excerpted below:

This fall, we are introducing The Mildred Complex(ity), the public face of Mildred’s Lane…located on Main Street in the village of Narrowsburg, NY, across the Delaware River from Mildred’s Lane. We occupy the top floor of the Narrowsburg Mews building at the corner of Main and Bridge Streets…setting up a project/studio space…and will serve as the office for Mildred’s Lane. The Mildred Complex(ity) is not for profit. We will fundraise to support upcoming artist projects, programming and events with Mildred’s Lane and the Upper Delaware River Valley community.Our first collaboration is in a unique little storefront called Circa currently operated by Nest, a home accessories store on Main Street…a little storefront tucked in the alley of the Narrowsburg Mews, next door, right behind Narrowsburg Roasters, the coffee shop. Anna Bern, owner of Nest, approached us to collaborate in this small storefront. We immediately jumped on this opportunity to use the space to launch a series of projects, ideas, experimental exchanges….

J. Morgan Puett, Ambassador of Entanglement

Cédric Andrieux in Jérôme Bel's 'Cédric Andrieux'

…Art Center in Minneapolis tonight is especially exciting and anticipated since it’s the first time I will see his work in person, seeming to be just missing performances of his work for years like ‘The Show Must Go On‘  and ‘Pichet Klunchun and Myself‘ whereever I go…and then the great pleasure of seeing dancer Cédric Andrieux arrive on an empty stage in warm-up clothes with a duffel bag over his shoulder to simply tell (and dance) the story of his life on stage and in the rehearsal studio felt so connected to my interest in dance – which is not about performance, but about practice, not the monumental display of perfection, but the daily ritual or repetition, of daily intentional movement towards something you will never arrive at, and then relaxing into that (like Sundown Schoolhouse movement projects like  ‘Dancing 9 to 5‘ and ‘Practicing Moving‘).

kids in the woods moving into teepee

…is just what every little kid around here needs to escape to – out the back door during those cabin fever winter days – and today I helped assemble one for the little nieces and nephews – just in time for the cold and snow where this white tarp covered construction will disappear into the landscape of flaky drifts to come.

Saint John's University Abbey Church by Marcel Breuer and Richard Bresnahan's pottery studio

…today started with a visit to the studio of Richard Bresnahan, where we drank delicious green tea out of his earthy sumptuous cups and teapot (similar to the one I have at home in LA, which I discussed in this New York Times story a few years ago) around a warm wood hearth-like square filled with a zen garden expanse of sand (that I was happy to be able to rake with a little wood tool on hand), before he took us for a short walk down the hill near the lake for a visit to the massive walk-in wood burning kiln which he only fires up every two years or so (when it is tended 24 hours a day for ten days, next time will be October 2012 when I plan to return to fire something of my own!), then to the center of campus to one of favorite buildings anywhere, Marcel Breuer‘s masterpiece Abbey Church (which I grew up visiting regularly and mentioned in another New York Times story by Susan Morgan), and finally downstairs for a special tour from Richard of the 32 chapels under the Abbey, whose ceilings are lined with warm dark umber colored Swedish cork (whose vivid early childhood memories inspired the dark cork lined den of the Bernardi Residence from 2006) which I was surprised to discover still aromatic with it’s smokey scent after 50 years.

flying over a shopping mall

…from above is my welcome back to the USA!

Lodz International Festival of Design

…is a great collection of displays, shows, and talks filling a half-refurbished modern factory in the middle of town (with beautiful layers of paint in greens and golds pealing from every surface) where I will be following MVRDV with a lecture “Designing the Wild and Cultivating the City” this evening at 5:30.

Łódź tower and market

…oppressive and quaint, global and local, dominating and warm, standing side by side, on the same street, duking it out.

frosty flight to Warsaw

…on the connecting flight from Amsterdam, seated by a drafty exit row window with -53 degrees on the other side, had me all bundled up in almost everything I had packed in my carry on….but looking forward to my first visit to Poland, for the Łódź Design Festival.

'Avian Architecture', 2011

…is the awesome new book – I just borrowed from my brother for some inspiring travel reading – by Peter Goodfellow from Princeton University Press all about the crazy brilliant things that birds build which make even the most sophisticated human architect look pretty primitive in comparison.

'The Joyful Community,' 1971

…the 1971 book by Benjamin Zablocki that just arrived in the mail (along with a pile of others – which will provide perfect plane reading on lots and lots of long long upcoming flights – ordered from a wishlist which gradually grew from sources I no longer recall) recounts his experiences visiting the Bruderhof – the intentional community he admired the most of  hundred-plus he had visited through the years – which migrated from Germany to England to Paraguay and eventually to a few locations in the U.S. where they began to support themselves in the business of selling their handmade wooden toys, Community Playthings.

"Graphic Design: Now in Production" at the Walker Art Center

…is the impending show at the Walker Art Center which I had to read about in my London friend Alice Rawsthorn’s column in the Herald Tribune this morning, even though I am actually here in Minneapolis and visiting the museum today – though too bad I will have to wait until my next visit to see the show after it opens on October 22nd.

The Allotment at Kensington Gardens punctuated endless rolling green fields, viewed through a window

…was a highlight find hidden in the endless fields and lawns of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens – first viewed through a mysterious high window…they have chickens that are regularly invited to wander the gardens, nicely designed wood compost bins, organized raised beds, and a welcoming outdoor conference room. (website)

Brian Eno and Mierle Laderman Ukeles at the Garden Marathon

…were the big hero highlights of the 2nd day of the Serpentine Garden Marathon – Eno giving an inspiring talk that had me scribbling notes for one of the first times since college, arguing for the approach of the bottom-up gardener vs. the top-down architect for the future where the creator/designer/composer/artist “…organizes only in parts…letting the dynamic create the rest…taking you in the direction you want to go…and their life (of the projects) is not exactly what you would envisage for them…” as evidenced in his own ‘generative music’ approach – and Ukeles talking about her time as the nonsalaried artist in residence at the New York Sanitation Department and series of  trash-related projects at the Fresh Kills Landfill for the past 40 years.

hey, I felt right at home in the the geodesic dome that the Serpentine erected just for the Garden Marathon, and interviewing Denise Withers, resident gardener at the London Edible Estate

…(part of a series of annual talks, performances, and interviews masterminded by the indefatigable Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens which has previously taken on maps, interviews, poetry, experiments, and manifestos – for which I contributed a London: A Manifesto from your Animals  in 2008 – with today’s line-up highlights including Elizabeth Diller, Gianfranco Baruchello, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Wolfgang Tillmans, Cerith Wyn Evans, FIELDCLUB, Alice Rawsthorn, Something & Son, and muf architecture) – began with the reading of a short autobiographical garden story (read the text here), followed by an interview with Denise Withers – the Brookwood Estate resident, who has been the resident gardening force at Edible Estate #4: London (at the corner of Lancaster and Weber in the Southwark neighborhood south of the Thames) for the past 4 and a half years since it was planted.

in and out of the Peter Zumthor garden pavillion

…the most elegant, austere, and simple yet in the series – designed this year by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf in London’s Kensington Gardens – is in it’s final days and the inspiration for this years Serpentine Marathon series of talks taking place this weekend organized by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and tomorrow I’ll be talking gardens at 19:40. (website)

Animal Estates London HQ opening

…was the opening event of the Animal Estates London HQ: Urban Wildlife Client Services this evening attracting a group of a few hundred to hear from local bird, bat & bees experts presenting their subjects.

Animal Estates 8.0: London, poster #02 - opening event

…is tomorrow night!

ANIMAL ESTATES LONDON HQ: URBAN WILDLIFE CLIENT SERVICES
at ARUP Phase 2, 8 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 4BJ, October 13th, 2011 – January 20th, 2012

Opening Event…*
MEET THE ANIMAL CLIENTS Part I: Birds, Bees, & Bats, Thursday 13 October 2011, 6.00pm—8.30pm
*Produced in collaboration with the inmidtown Habitats Competition run by the Architecture Foundation and inmidtown

Presentations by local animal experts at 7.00pm…
KELLY GUNNELL will speak on London’s bats. Kelly Gunnell works for the Bat Conservation Trust as the Built Environment Officer with the remit to facilitate solutions for bat conservation in the construction sector and urban areas.
RICHARD JONES will speak on London’s bees. Entomologist Richard Jones has been fascinated by wildlife since a childhood exploring the South Downs and Sussex Weald; he now carries out invertebrate surveys, and writes about insects for BBC Wildlife Magazine and Gardeners’ World.
PETER HOLDEN will speak on London’s Common Swifts and House Sparrows. A senior RSPB manager for over 40 years, ornithologist and wildlife expert Peter Holden has written many books on birds, including the RSPB Handbook of British Birds.

Native London Wildlife…
8.01 Bees (multiple species)
8.02 Stag Beetle (Lucanus cervus)
8.03 Common Frog (Rana temporaria)
8.04 Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus)
8.05 Bats (multiple species)
8.06 House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)
8.07 Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros)
8.08 Common Swift (Apus apus)
8.09 Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)
8.10 Kestrel (Falco sparverius)
8.11 Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)
How did the Animal Client live on the land of London before human habitation?
What can we do or design for the city of London today to welcome them back?

More Information…
email london(at)animalestates(dot)org or visit www.animalestates.org

preview of Animal Estates London HQ, competing reception desks for human and animal clients

…is keeping us (including design collaborator Benjamin from Åbäke) busy morning til night in preparation for the Thursday evening opening event ‘Meet the Animal Clients, Part I: Birds, Bees & Bats‘ organized with the Architecture Foundation.

'Film' by Tacita Dean in the Tate Turbine Hall

…opened this evening with a packed Frieze Fair week art crowd filling the mezzanine overlooking the massive film projection of ‘Film’ created for the space (which is about 20,000 times bigger than last night’s art destination of the White Cubicle Toilet Gallery) by Tacita Dean as the latest edition of the much anticipated annual Unilever series of art commissions for the space.

Tom Dozol at White Cubicle Toilet Gallery

…a favorite art space in town which occupies the 1.40 x 1.40 square meter ladies bathroom of the great George & Dragon (the friendly East End where-everyone-knows-your-name sort of queer-arty hangout) founded and curated by Pablo Leon de la Barra featuring a history of exhibiting artists that would be the envy of any contemporary art museum, opened tonight with a ribbon cutting ceremony (with old friend, Jeremy Shaw aka Circlesquare djing and Michael Stipe making the rounds) to inaugurate the show by Thomas Dozol…

THOMAS DOZOL, I IS NOW
WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY is honoured to present an exhibition by Thomas Dozol. I IS NOW Dozol presents a series of new photographic work which explores the relationship between the body, sign language, abstract geometry and colour codes. For it, Dozol has created a whole alphabet of hand signs screen printed as black light posters. Writing with a non-letter alphabet, images become phrases which become haiku like texts, but which also refer to the silent languages of minorities and subcultures. The back light posters also remind us of propaganda and political posters of the seventies and of the aesthetics of lost utopias. For the exhibition Dozol transforms the White Cubicle into a glow in the dark installation.

THE WHITE CUBICLE TOILET GALLERY measures 1.40 by1.40 metres, is located within the Ladies Toilet of the George and Dragon, and works with no budget, staff or boundaries. White Cubicle presents a discerning programme of local and international manifestations as an antidote to London’s sometimes extremely commodified art scene. Past exhibitions have included the work of Deborah Castillo, Gregorio Magnani, Butt Magazine, Federico Herrero, Terence Koh, i-Cabin, Steven Gontarski, Pixis Fanzine/Princess Julia and Hanah, General Idea and avaf, Basso Magazin, Carl Hopgood, Giles Round, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Superm, (Brian Kenny and Slava Mogutin), Elkin Calderon, Wolfgang Tillmans, Calvin Holbrook/Hate Magazine, Husam el Odeh, Simon Popper, Fur, Dik Fagazine, Rick Castro/Abravanation, Jean Michel Wicker, Noki, Ellen Cantor,Karl Holmqvist, Julie Verhoeven, Aldo Chaparro, Esther Planas, Nikos Pantazopoulos, Luis Venegas, Twinklife, Rocky Alvarez, Benedetto Chirco, STH Magazine, Elmgreen & Dragset, Francesc Ruiz, Sico Carlier, Stefan Benchoam…

landing over London

…this afternoon to Heathrow where I rush through customs, Heathrow Express, Paddington Station, the Bakerloo Tube line, Regent Park Station, the nearby apartment to drop off bags, (all in under 60 minutes) and finally to the Fitzroy Street gallery at Arup where I meet the installation crew and get right to work  preparing for the Thursday opening of Animal Estates London HQ: Urban Wildlife Client Services on Thursday (and then a Saturday talk at the Serpentine Garden Marathon.

Budapest sunset over the Danube and Chain Bridge

…as the sun rose this morning over the Danube crossed by the Chain Bridge was pretty magic-y, making me excited to return again soon to spend more time in this mysterious part of the world…but tonight it is a talk for Budapest Design Week at the new art organization Blood Mountain Foundation which will be hosting me and commissioning the project next year.

Obuda Housing Estate, a residents garden, and view from the hills of Buda

…Soviet Housing blocks, where experimental and innovative residential designs for the masses were tested out during the 1960′s before being constructed across the country, was the destination of our visit today in search of inspirations for the location of next spring’s Edible Estate #12 – and after yesterday’s inspiring Wekerle Telep revelation (a development where rural transplants to the city could grow their own food, though most residents today do not) & today’s visit to an opposing utopian vision (where open green spaces between towers were planned as unoccupied lawns with trees, though we did see a modest homemade garden) – is making me think I’d like to do two Edible Estate Regional Prototype Gardens here next year – in these two neighborhoods on opposite sides of the Danube, one in Buda, the other in Pest.

the colorful facades and leaf bins that line the streets of Wekerle Telep

…the delightful utopian Garden City-inspired suburban development with a rural village-like feel,  featuring a diversity of housing types in a lively mix of regional Hungarian styles and motifs with lots of soft greys and warm ochres, designed and built by a team of visionaries – initiated by architect József Fleischl, supported by then prime minister Sándor Wekerle, with prominent architectural contributions by Károly Kós during the first few decades of the 20th Century – was my very fortunate destination this afternoon on my first day in town, where we were lead by a local landscape architect…and this place seemed exactly like the Hungarian version of Garbatella, my favorite quarter of Rome.

Fifty thousand trees were planted during the construction, mainly along the spacious avenues. The estate had its own gardening service, who not only took care of the many plants, flowers and trees of the community spaces, but also helped renters to groom their own gardens as well. Four fruit trees were planted for each apartment (altogether 16.000), and thanks to the favorable sandy soil and to the care of the new dwellers, various kinds of drupes bloomed. It was noted that in 1917 redcurrant harvest was so rich that renters could earn almost four times the yearly rent just by selling their fruits. (wikipedia)

Bird Sanctuary student project for Composted Constructions workshop, Den Haag

…continued today with the students from the art academy in Den Haag completing their versions of Composted Constructions – transforming scavenged domestic cast-offs into creations that accommodate plants, food, wildlife (best title was ‘Chicken Disco’) – and installing them throughout the site, before heading back to the airport for a late flight to Budapest where I will be doing a talk on Friday and having meetings and visits in preparation for the next Edible Estate edition to be established there in spring 2012.

lunch break at the garden kitchen (left), and a planted Composted Construction (right)

…and student workshopping took over Stroom’s Foodprint Erasmusveld project site today, where I groggily arrived from the airport for a day of planting installations and working with students to create their own Composted Constructions (developing on my initial installations) out of a pile of domestic cast-offs gathered by the folks of Refunc.

autumnal backdrop to mile 25 on Summit avenue, and fall color flyover on my way to Amsterdam

…noises of people shouting words of encouragement to early morning 10 mile Summit Avenue runners, in advance of the marathoners hitting mile 25 out our door, woke me up this morning…so I shuffled down the stairs, grabbed a mug of coffee, and headed to out to watch the rest of them breeze, speed, jog, amble, walk, and eventually shuffle by, making me tired just watching and preparing me for some urgent napping on an eight hour afternoon flight to Amsterdam.

Amy Franceschini (in horse costume) and Gaetano Carboni at the Art + Environment Conference

…of Future Farmers (arriving on stage in a handmade  horse costume) gave presentations here in Reno this morning at the Art + Environment Conference about recent projects including Soil Kitchen in Philadelphia and This is not a Trojan Horse from a recent residency at Carboni’s Pollinaria program based in his family farm in Abruzzo, Italy.

Sundance Books and Music and the Great Basin Community Food Co-op

…came just as I was beginning to think that this town was all casinos and slot machines, just before my talk at the Nevada Museum of Art for the Art + Environment Conference, as I wandered around the corner to find the super cute inviting sophisticated food co-op – The Great Basin Community Food Co-op – and bookstore – Sundance Books and Music – where I bought two favorites: Architecture Without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky and a new edition of Earth-Sheltered House, Revised Edition: An Architect’s Sketchbook by Malcolm Wells.

Reno dome view

…is what I got here in Reno (where I have just arrived for a talk at the Art + Environment Conference at the Nevada Museum of Art) from the 9th floor of a downtown hotel out to the 180 foot composite dome housing an old silver mining rig.

Sam Fairchild’s legendary silver mining rig is a wonder for all guests to behold, a spectacular souvenir from a bygone era of mining wealth and now a fabulous Reno attraction. The unprecedented 120-foot-high, automated mining machine is encased within the world’s largest composite dome making it a Reno site to see. The interior of the unique 180-foot-high composite dome measures an astounding 75,000 square feet. The dome reflects the dramatic skies of Reno and depicts an entire day from sunrise to sunset. With all the things to do in Reno, don’t miss hourly shows seven days a week inside the dome, showcasing Silver Legacy’s incredible mining rig in a wash of color, laser light and sound! (website)

Art + Environment Conference, Nevada Museum of Art

…is why I’m headed to Reno tomorrow, where the Nevada Museum of Art hosts the 2nd edition of the gathering featuring two days of talks and conversations, and if y I’ll be talking at 2pm Friday if …

The Art + Environment Conference^SM at the Nevada Museum of Art reaches across continents, disciplines, and media to unite a dynamic group of thinkers shaping ideas about human interactions with global environments. A flagship program of the Museum’s Center for Art + Environment, the 2011 Conference brings together artists, scholars, designers, and writers for a dialogue that fosters new knowledge in the visual arts. During the Conference, the Museum’s galleries feature exhibitions that question our relationships with natural, built, and virtual environments, while serving as a springboard for Conference sessions and keynote presentations with Diana Al-Hadid, Subhankar Banerjee, David Benjamin, Richard Black, Edward Burtynsky, Gaetano Carboni, John Carty, Pilar Cereceda, William L. Fox, Amy Franceschini, Fritz Haeg, Newton Harrison, Helen Mayer Harrison, Laura Jackson, Patricia Johanson, Chris Jordan, Thomas Kellein, Geoff Manaugh, Mandy Martin, Christie Mazuera-Davis, Paul D. Miller, Gerald Nanson, Jorge Pardo, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, John Reid, Alexander Rose, Sean Shepherd, Mark Smout, Bruce Sterling, Nicola Twilley, Leo Villareal, Stephen G. Wells, Ann M. Wolfe, Liam Young (website)

ivy walls

…discovered around the corner here in Saint Paul is a five story apartment building with a west-facing ground-to-roof wall of ivy – cool.

changing colors on Summit Avenue

…are an occasional sign of looming autumn here on Summit Avenue in the Ramsey Hill neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota.

picking apples on the bluffs above the Mississippi River

…is a tradition for the family this time of year on our Minnesota apple orchard up on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River just south of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and this is the first year I am able to join in the fun, with little kids alternating between putting apples in bags and eating as many apples as they can (or bites out of as many apples as they can).

Sunday afternoon stroll on section 2 of the High Line

…extending north through New York’s east 20′s just opened in June and today was my first chance to take a stroll and check it out – continuing the brilliant experience of rising above the city streets, up in to another dimension where your idea of the city is permanently altered. (website)

'Golden Ghost (The Future Belongs To)' by Surasi Kusolwong at the Living as Form show

…the sprawling exhibition housed in the Historic Essex Street Market of over 100 socially engaged artists, projects, and collectives organized by Creative Time – including The Sundown Salon Unfolding Archive – just happens to open on my one night in town, a good chance to see the show and old friends…

The Living as Form archival exhibition is a vast collection of documentation of 100 socially engaged projects from the last twenty years and from locations around the globe. Invited artists, organizers, and groups include: Ai Weiwei; Ala Plástica; Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla; Lara Almarcegui and Begoña Movellán; Alternate ROOTS; Francis Alÿs; Appalshop; Claire Barclay; Barefoot Artists; Basurama; Marilyn Douala Bell and Didier Schaub; BijaRi; Stephen Biko and partners; Bread and Puppet Theatre; CAMP; Cemeti Art House; Mel Chin; Chto delat? (What is to be done?); Colectivo Cambalache; Phil Collins; Complaints Choir; Céline Condorelli and Gavin Wade; Cornerstone Theater Company; Minerva Cuevas; Cybermohalla Ensemble; Decolonizing Architecture; Jeremy Deller; Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett, and collaborators; Fallen Fruit; Finishing School; Free Class Frankfurt/M.; Frente 3 de Fevereiro; Theaster Gates; Paul Glover; Josh Greene; Federico Guzmán and Alonso Gil; Fritz Haeg; Haha; Harlem (Election Night 2008); Jeanne van Heeswijk; Helena Producciones; Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter; Fran Ilich; Farid Jahangir and Sassan Nassiri, Bita Fayyazi, Ata Hasheminejad, and Khosrow Hassanzedeh; Kein Mensch Ist Illegal (No One Is Illegal); Amal Kenawy; Suzanne Lacy; Steve Lambert, Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men, and collaborators; The Land Foundation; Long March Project; Los Angeles Poverty Department; Rick Lowe; Mammalian Diving; Reflex/Darren O’Donnell; Mardi Gras Indian Community; Eduardo Vázquez Martín; Angela Melitopoulos; Zayd Minty; The Mobile Academy; Mongrel; Anthea Moys and Bronwyn Lace; Mujeres Creando; Vik Muniz; NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst); Nuts Society; John O’Neal; Oda Projesi; Wendelien van Oldenborgh; Marion von Osten and collaborators; Park Fiction, part of the Right to the City Network Hamburg; Pase Usted; Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy); Platforma 9.81; Public Movement; Pulska Grupa; Navin Rawanchaikul; Pedro Reyes; Laurie Jo Reynolds; Athi-Patra Ruga; The San Francisco Cacophony Society; Katerina Šedá; Chemi Rosado Seijo; Michihiro Shimabuku; Andreas Siekmann and Alice Creischer; Buster Simpson; Slanguage; Apolonija Sustersic; Tahrir Square (2011); Taller Popular de Serigrafía (TPS); Mierle Laderman Ukeles; Ultra-red; United Indian Health Services; Urban Bush Women; The U.S. Social Forum; Voina; Peter Watkins; WikiLeaks; Elin Wikström; WochenKlausur; Women on Waves. (website)

poster # 1 announcing Animal Estates #8: London, England

…coming soon to Arup in London:

ANIMAL ESTATES 8.0: LONDON, ENGLAND
Animal Estates London HQ, Urban Wildlife Client Services
at Arup Phase 2, 8 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 4BJ
October 13th, 2011 – Jan 15th, 2012

OPEN CALL!
We are looking for…
- EXPERTS on each of the 11 animal clients, interested in collaborating and advising
- VOLUNTEERS to assist in assembling the archival presentation about the 11 species
- DONATIONS of books and other relevant printed material for the resource library
- PROPOSALS for the space: presentations, seminars, meetings, events, displays…
- STORIES of your experiences with urban wildlife in the city of London for publication

ANIMAL CLIENTS
Native London wildlife species to welcome back into the city, which would benefit from human constructions, interventions, plantings, hosting, and accommodations:
8.01: Bees (multiple species)
8.02: Stag Beetle (Lucanus cervus)
8.03: Common Frog (Rana temporaria)
8.04: Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus)
8.05: Bats (multiple species)
8.06: House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)
8.07: Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros)
8.08: Common Swift (Apus apus)
8.09: Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)
8.10: Kestrel (Falco sparverius)
8.11: Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)

DESCRIPTION
Animal Estates London HQ: Urban Wildlife Client Services opens this autumn in Arup’s ground floor gallery space Phase 2 at 8 Fitzroy St, London. This temporary headquarters will provide a place for activists, architects, artists, city-dwellers, designers, engineers, homeowners, and planners to research, discuss, plan, develop, and present initiatives to accommodate native London ‘animal clients’. Projects may range from simple wood nest-boxes that any local resident could construct and strategically install at home, to broad master planning for urban wildlife corridors throughout the city. The space will feature a front reception desk staffed by a full time director with a team of interns, an open area for the evolving display of estate prototypes, work stations about each of the 11 selected native London species, a conference room for meetings and presentations, a resource library, and a place to consult with local urban wildlife experts.

EVENTS
Confirmed events to date include:
- October 13th: ‘Meet the Clients’ – an opening event in collaboration with the Architecture Foundation
- October 25th: ‘Insect City’ – an all day workshop organised by UCL Urban Laboratory and UCL Environment Institute.

CREDITS
Animal Estates is an on-going project by Fritz Haeg
Graphic design and installation in collaboration with Åbäke
Director of Animal Estates London HQ: Joanne Bristol
Exhibition build: Richard Roberts and Nick Westby

MORE INFORMATION
Contact Joanne Bristol, London Animal Estates HQ director, at: london(at)animalestates(dot)org

webpage

New South Lawn, Princeton University

…will be colonized by a group of students that I (along with architecture professor Dan Wood of Work A.C.) will be working with next term as a professor in the Atelier program – and today I am here to meet with students to talk about the upcoming studio project: “We will colonize and temporarily domesticate a strategic location on the Princeton University campus where we can make ourselves at home and create an evolving lounge/laboratory/stage/platform/headquarters for the presentation and performance of fundamental human activities often ignored by the academic disciplines, such as cooking, composting, dancing, eating, exercising, gathering, gardening, meeting, moving, napping, performing, recycling, socializing, stretching, talking, walking, washing, etc. ”

recreation of an 18th century Philadelphia garden

…volunteers tend the recreated typical 18th century Philadelphia garden that I passed by this afternoon (on my way to the Apple Store for an emergency laptop battery procedure where I felt like a worried parent waiting for my ‘genius’ Apple barman to come through those swinging doors with news on the prognosis) – who along with American Philosophical Society Museum happen to be the hosts of my lecture tonight. (P.H.S. webpage)

amber sunset landing in Detroit

…was what we were treated to as we descended from the boring grey top landscape of clouds, into a thin sandwich of ethereal clouds full of a glowing tint from a sun just about to vanish, that for a moment cast a warm spell over the interior of the plane (and probably making everyone who wasn’t sitting on the westward windows a bit envious) just before landing into Detroit, making my way from Amsterdam to Philadelphia.

Composted Constructions including the Butterfly Feeding Station (to be filled with rotting fruit during certain seasons) and the Duck Drum Estate (for convenient water access)

…ended with a flurry of muddy activity as rains let up, the sun came out, and we installed our two days of creations around the Stroom’s Foodprint Erasmusveld site, including the Butterfly Feeding Station, the Suitcase Bat House, the the Duck Drum Estate, the Buffet Worm Composting Station, the Washing Machine Drum Firepit, and many varieties of garden planters.

shipping container of raw materials, and the chair that became a birdhouse in the fields at the end of the day

…(my project for Stroom’s Foodprint Erasmusveld, an experimental-settlement/ecological-exposition opening September 30th) consisted of a 10am pick-up by the Refunc folks in their cool truck for a ride to the site where we opened up a few shipping containers full of the domestic cast-offs (chairs, sinks, furniture, tires, etc.) they had been collecting for me – to be reconstituted over the next two days into modest constructions for people, animals, plants and food.  (project webpage)

Istanbul mosque out the back window of the taxi on the way to Ataturk Airport

…my kindly taxi driver said as I took a few last pictures of the city from the back seat of his cab on the way to Ataturk Airport and Amsterdam, after another long day up and down the cobblestone streets of Beyoğlu and Karaköy – more biennial, more Ficcin, more running into art-worldy friends on the streets, more SALT Beyoğlu, more hothouse, and goodbye to the garden, where I know it is in good hands.

view from the rooftop of the Marmara Pera hotel

…from the rooftop of the Marmara Pera hotel in the Beyoğlu quarter of Istanbul, was the perk of one of the many parties kicking off the Istanbul Biennial today – but one of only two that I had the steam for after hoofing it around the entirety of the Biennial exhibition filling the endless assemblage of Sanaa-designed white boxes across three vast floors of two Antrepo industrial port buildings, and the personal highlights…?…far and away the most engaging work in the show was Broadband Bulletin Board by Budapest’s Tamás Kaszás and Anikó Lóránt, featuring a simple kiosk-like wood structure presenting videos, sketches, photographs, artifacts, etc. all seeming to suggest some people planning for a thoughtful future while also looking back; plus there was Elmgreen & Dragset’s The Black & White Diary, Fig. 5 (2009), the corner corridor of 364 earnest/homey white-framed photos of the leisure/play time of their queer community – from the strip clubs to the studio – displayed like family portraits along shelves which made me feel right at home seeing so many friends, and even some without their pants on.

homes for cats on Istanbul sidewalk

…some of them lovingly hand-painted and even featuring the name of the cat over the front door, are what I stumbled upon (almost literally) this afternoon, filling a section of sidewalk on a narrow sloping street just up the hill from my hotel and the Antrepo warehouse sites of the Istanbul Biennial (opening for press previews tomorrow morning) in the Karaköy quarter of the Beyoğlu district.

Selva Gürdoğan and Gregers Tang Thomsen of Superpool present at SALT Beyoğlu

…the Istanbul based architecture studio founded by Turkish Selva Gürdoğan and Danish Gregers Tang Thomsen, presented their design of the exhibition ‘Becoming Istanbul‘ (in collaboration with the graphics of Project Projects) which opened at SALT Beyoğlu this evening – kicking off 90 events in 90 days.

collected materials for Mark Dion's upcoming installation at SALT Galata

…is assembling materials for his upcoming installation at the soon to open SALT Galata - and lately when I’m traveling I’m often just missing this inspiring artist, arriving after he’s just left, or departing when he is soon to arrive – so it is a pleasure to cross paths here in Istanbul.

Istanbul children planting seeds for the hothouse workshop

…(the Edible Estates garden headquarters at SALT Beyoglu) gathered for some gardening workshops with Pelin Demereli throughout the afternoon, and since I couldn’t understand anything they were saying, (though at one point a few little boys seemed to be having a really interesting conversation – so I asked someone to translate, but it turns out they were communicating in their own make-up language which no one else could understand either) I just smiled a lot while they were intently focused of planting seeds in egg trays.

Edible Estates garden headquarters at SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul

…today and tomorrow (plus a talk this evening) have brought me back to town to check in on the Edible Estate rooftop hothouse garden headquarters on top of SALT Beyoglu, the ambitious new art institution (just before the Istanbul Biennial opens later this week) – and we have been lucky to find Pelin Demireli to work with on some of these garden activities…

Pelin Demireli leads gardening and cooking workshops for children with organizations including Sulukule Volunteer Association, Şişli Ecological Market, Kuzguncuk Elementary School, Kınalı Summer Camp and Minik Fırın. She is also engaged in a network of local farmers and seed swappers working to make traditional seeds available both within and outside of İstanbul. (SALT website)

corn popping up from the beds of Edible Estate #4: London

…(which was commissioned by Tate Modern in 2007) before heading to the airport for a flight to Istanbul, was a happy diversion (situated at the corner of Webber and Lancaster in Southwark, just around the corner from where I am staying) where I discovered the garden going gang-busters (as my aunt Kay says) with towering sunflowers, laurel bay trees filling out, rosemary plants now a hedge, strawberries trailing everywhere, robust apple trees coming into their own, plus chives, sage, chard, raspberries, and corn stalks popping up making ears lookeing about ready to eat, which I saw a father point out to his young daughter as he was walking her to school down the street. (garden webpage)

Arup headquarters reception, soon to be home to the Animal Estates London HQ

…is the subtitle of the upcoming London Animal Estates HQ project (which I am in town preparing for) coming to the world headquarters of to Arup (the massive global firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants, and technical specialists with 10,000 employees and 92 offices in 37 countries) as a new temporary public division of their operation to be housed in their ground floor gallery from October 13th through January 15th…and official announcement with more information will be coming soon.

Ridley's scaffolding in place for opening night featuring latex curtains, and a single central tricked-out 2nd floor table whose central panel decends with pulleys to the lower level open air kitchen

…opened tonight in the middle of London’s Ridley Road Market in Dalston – which I visited with my London Animal Estates collaborator Benjamin Reichen (of the super design collective Åbäke) whose former students had masterminded the project – alas, we were to early to eat, but were at least able to see the structure, seating, kitchen, coming together for this very cool project…

Ridley’s, a temporary dining experience in Dalston, is a project by The Decorators and Atelier ChanChan. This group of designers-artists-architects have transformed an exposed yet derelict void in Ridley Road market, into a podium for outdoor exhibitionist eating.

For the month of September a two-storey structure will rise above the stalls, housing a new kind of market food initiative. Come and exchange market produce for a meal if you’re having lunch or bring £15 if you’re looking for dinner (includes your dinner and a £5 food shopping voucher for use at the market ).

A lineup of guest chefs will create daily menus from market produce only, whilst diners share a communal table high above the market. Meals prepared in the ground floor kitchen, the hub of exchange and production, will be raised by a mechanical table up to the guests on the first floor. This scenographic journey emphasises the vertical transformation of the raw food at market level to the cooked meals at the elevated podium above.

This temporary summer installation is a means of demonstrating the kind of activities that could be created to make the life of this market sustainable and is an opportunity to re-imagine the possibilities for the regeneration of the area. (website)

welcome lush rainy back garden at friend's Elephant & Castle flat

…is what our flight from Italy descended into this afternoon, arriving into London City airport from Brindisi, and after ten days of constant summer heat and sun with barely a cloud in my memory I have been looking forward to an autumnal rainy chill here (as I settle in for five days to prepare for the October 13th opening of the London Animal Estates HQ) but still feeling the glow of the Puglia sun on my skin as I walk the city streets hunting for my first meal, struggling to locate some decent produce to make a stew – and it is at this moment that I am snapped back to reality of large northern contemporary metropolis life, where real food is not a basic pleasure and right, freely/simply/cheaply available around you, but a rare luxury – though what really did me in, and made me really miss Italy on my first hours out, was a display of figs – which once eaten off the trees around you, at the very moment they are ripe, during the few weeks they are in season, as a part of your daily life and landscape…you are ruined for good and never look at a shipped-in crate of them the same, did a tear come to my eye there in that supermarket? yes, maybe it did.

late night dance and puppet shows on the streets of Ostuni

…which seems to be a very tranquil town during the day, surprised me last night when the very designy chic bars and lounges spilled out on the the ancient whitewashed pedestrian streets, and the whole town (crying babies, rambunctious kids, cool teens, strolling couples, shuffling elderly) turned out to fill the Piazza San Oronzo and surrounding streets which were punctuated by a range of performances and activities like puppet shows, break-dancing, cooking presentations, and a peculiar panel discussion up on a stage hosted by the local TV news anchor woman that featured a sparkling-costumed horse and rider and a group of folk dancers lead by a young man we later found out was the local meteorologist – whom after finishing his dance gave us the weather outlook for the rest of the week.

the white hilltop town of Ostuni (where I lucked out with a cozy last minute mini-apartment rental with a view of the sea from a tiny window seen here on the upper right) and nearby trulli

…was the order of the day, as I finally departed Lecce, continuing my Puglian journeys gradually making my way west then north on the slow side roads through countryside and small towns with no final destination in mind, stopping off in the ceramics center of Grottaglie, the pretty hilltop town of Locorotondo, the trulli village of Alberobello, but especially interested in the shift in landscape to soft rolling hills, rows of vineyards, layers of lovely farm structures into the distance, and finally arriving towards the end of the day in Ostuni, the most enchanting place yet, (which I had first glimpsed from a speeding train to Brindisi ten days ago) where the view from the whitewashed hilltop historic center to the plains and Adriatic has been preserved thanks to the isolation of it’s sprawl to it’s back and south.

Lecce baroque: graffitti alley and San Giovanni Battista, 1691

…in super baroque style are intricately carved into local honey Lecce limestone covering every available square millimeter of each billboard-like neighborhood church facade, and parts of almost all of the pallazzi, announcing the style, taste and riches of the local sponsoring noble family – is the visual pleasure of the city to be enjoyed at every turn – but the sharp turn I took off Piazza San Oronzo this morning on a wandering derive brought me to a narrow isolated otherwise forgotten passage covered entirely in brightly colored amateur graffiti, and what would seem reckless elsewhere, here feels like a gorgeous collective contemporary baroque decoration where modern residents can announce their own messages.

suburban housing blocks surrounding a paiara framed by four stone pines outside of Nardo'

…are what have drawn me to this place more than anything, such as the dry-stone conical domes of the trulli, modest shelters or residences found mostly in the central Valle D’Itria (around Locorotondo, Alberbello, Martina Franca, Ceglie Messapica); the fortified farmhouse complexes of the masserie; and the primitive storehouses and temporary shelters dotting the landscape known as paiara (though locals here call them something else which escapes my memory at the moment) built with mortar-less stone construction (just like the walls that divide up the countryside all over the region) which are slightly domed but with flat roofs you can often access with a stair or two wrapping around the perimeter – though what I was most unprepared for here in Puglia was the vivid contrast between the evidence of a picturesque primitive agrarian past, and beautiful historic town centers surrounded – and at times strangled by – more recent sprawling development, much of it the legacy of a 1960′s housing and building boom (the most egregious of which were built with no official approvals and against any codes, known all over Italy as ‘abusivismo’) – but after getting my eyes re-adjusted to this first impression of an ugly mess, I started to feel like there was a meaningful ‘edge’ here – a reality of 21st century life and conflict (not seen in Umbria or Tuscany where restrictive building codes and wealthy foreigners have mostly frozen the place in time) which actually reminded me a bit of L.A. – stimulating me in similar ways.

Masseria courtyard over a massive ancient subterranean olive mill (frantoio ipogeo)

…is something I have had an intense architectural crush on since first reading about them last year (a fortified farmhouse unique to Puglia, often with a series of connecting vaulted spaces made of local stone on the ground level for animals and farm workers around a central protected courtyard overseen by more comfortable castle-like quarters on an upper level for the noble landowners, some featuring their own chapel and underground mill – frantoio ipogeo – for processing olive oil) – and today I went to visit a dreamy abandoned masseria from the 1600′s – with a massive 800 year old frantoio beneath the courtyard, a chapel at the front gate, and extensive local dry stone walls enclosing fruit orchards and gardens – for sale just north of Lecce where I was entertaining fantasies of retreating with friends who could come and go to a quiet life in the country, living and working and creating and gardening on ancient land – so I am now realizing that my unexplained deep interest is in part related to their village-like nature, originally created to protect it’s community of inhabitants from invading warriors, but maybe today offering protection from invasions of other sorts – like the toxic aspects of contemporary society which could use an oppositional model – the courtyard becoming the possible focus for a group of people turning in to create their own community, a place that is consciously quieter and slower, being connected to centuries of the past might change your perception of the future, and now I’m thinking about what my ideal life in one of these ancient ready-made villages might look like today?

returning fisherman set up shop at the docks

…this evening were just pulling back into the docks where crowds of locals were waiting to receive them…and why I wondered, was it their families? was it a ritual? had they been away for weeks? but no, they were just waiting to inspect the day’s catch and pick up something fresh for dinner.

a 'dovecote tower' for roosting pigeons, vic. Nardo'

…at the masseria I visited late this afternoon near Nardo’ must be the coolest thing I have seen on my Puglia adventures so far – an Animal Estate of the most sophisticated and monumental sort, which from the outside seems to be a fortified castle tower, only to reveal a surprising very contemporary-seeming interior lined entirely in a gridded pattern of cubical cavities for pigeons (a variety known as ‘colombi’ in Italian – before the pesky  sort we are familiar with today whose eggs would make us sick from all of the toxic urban crap they eat) to make themselves at home (up to 1000 couples!) and lay eggs to be harvested by humans by way of cleverly designed stairs wrapping the perimeter at various intervals.

Nardo' at night

…with a dreamy baroque historic center where old men bike around aimlessly and gather on benches with friends you imagine they grew up with on that same block, was once a rival to Lecce, it’s larger neighbor to the north, is the general area of Puglia (or Salento, as locals would hastily/testily correct you, referring to the lower part of Puglia) where I have contentedly  been for a couple days and have decided to remain for a few more – but having only experienced the historic center in blazing summer sun I was shocked to turn the corner into the central piazza as the sun was setting tonight to see everything lit up like a crazy Hollywood fairytale land.

neo-classical masseria near Porto Selvaggio now home to B&B Santa Chiara

…the beautiful beach cove, I had read about and dreamt about while researching Puglia last winter, which is isolated in a nature preserve just north of Galipoli and west of Nardo’ – is where I just happened upon a small B&B sign (Villa Chiara) that was the happy serendipitous answer to the 3pm question ‘where will I stay tonight?’ – and more lucky still was a cancellation that day in their nicest though really inexpensive room (an austere vaulted space, furnished in a matching set of super fancy dark stained baroque furniture, with a view out to the olive groves and picturesquely abandoned vintage farm equipment) of this neoclassical masseria presided over by the a Roman family: the proprietress born and raised in the house, in whose family it has been for generations, along with her marmalade-making husband who also fills a big container of freshly picked Villa Chiara fruit (grapes, melons, ficchi di India, and figs, which I eat off the trees on my way in and out of the property) each morning to get me through the day after a big family breakfast feast in the courtyard of coffees and teas; said marmalades and fruits; and fresh-baked breads and torts I don’t eat but enjoy smelling and watching others enjoy, all presided over by a big dog and a tiny puppy they just found on the street. (watch their cute video)

masseria surrounded by unharvested watermelons

…never happened this year since it would cost the farmers more to harvest them than they could then sell them for – leading to some sad but beautiful fields of rotting watermelons as far as you can see – one of many local agricultural anecdotes, aspects, stories, visions which have brought me here to the Salento region of Puglia.

a taste of Liguria at the market

…is a pleasure the way all Italian markets are, where you are given an instant taste of the precise season, climate, weather, landscape, culture, economy, history, habits, and personalities of the region, and this morning it was mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms – all gorgeous varieties – being cleaned and prepared by expert knife-wielding hands at my favorite stand where I chose to gather huge dark grapes and tiny light figs for the upcoming 10 hour train ride south to Puglia.

Palazzo San Giorgio, Genova, 1260

…the Italian town I have been curious about and yet to visit was conveniently on my way from Aix-en-Provence to Brindisi, so after a long windy scenic train ride along the French Riviera with front row seats to the late August bikini-clad bathing French masses, I arrived in this pretty but rough around the edges port town last night which is full of elaborately painted building facades – typical of Liguria – which comes to a crecscendo in the port at this great 1260 palazzo – now a neighbor of the new Eataly shop where I stocked up on some delicious supplies for tomorrow’s train ride south – like some amazing polenta bread and rich olive pate’.(wikipedia)

La Fontaine d’eau Chaude, Aix-en-Provence, 1734

…the 1734 mossy mossy mossy green fountain on Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence where everyone is welcome to enjoy a peaceful primitive moment (despite it’s unfortunate current circumstance as the center of a miniature traffic circle), makes you feel fresh just looking at it, even though it is fed by hot springs – cool, I really want one of those.

La Place d’Albertas, Aix-en-Provence

…my next stop this afternoon as I gradually make my way by train south from meetings in the Netherlands to a long awaited pilgrimage to Italy’s mysterious heel of Puglia (before continuing on to autumn obligations for projects and talks in Istanbul, London, Den Haag, Reno, Philadelphia, Princeton, New York, Budapest, Sofia, Lodz) – and having never been to Aix – and since the TGV comes here non-stop from Paris – and being curious about the local landscape, and agriculture, and food – here I am – and the first place I happen upon is the pretty lovely La Place d’Albertas, mostly because it is paved entirely in big rough round rocks, like the wilderness has come into the center of town unrefined, a little quiet glimmer of what I was hoping for here amongst the otherwise bourgeois filled boutiques and well heeled end of season tourist mobs.

Grand Appetit, Paris

…the simple casual homey delicious macrobiotic Marais cafe established in 1980, where you feel like you are dropping by your very cool exotic earthy French aunt and uncle’s place for a fresh vegan homemade lunch (bus your own dishes!) – is my Parisian culinary salvation at whose front door I was hungrily waiting at noon today for them to finally re-open from the August holiday – to dine on a nourishing plate of beans and grains and fresh vegetables – yum – now to be my Paris Souen, the place I have a hard time not eating every meal at when in NYC.

Artazart Design Bookstore, Paris

…on Canal St. Martin in my new favorite Paris neighborhood of Bellevue is a welcome find this afternoon – again biking my way to all corners of town – where contemporary art, design, photography materials are a welcome jolt of inspiration in a town otherwise shuttered for the month, and I wish every neighborhood had such a relaxed booky arty place to drop into any time. (website)

people enjoying the lawns of Place des Vosges

…in the Marais is just around the corner from where I’m staying, so I like to bike (having subscribed to the Vélib’ bikeshare program I am spending all of my Parisian street time on two wheels) through the majestic/hidden portal off Rue de Rivoli no matter which way I’m headed to enjoy this grand outdoor room – and today seeing the sprawling mass of humanity making themselves at home on a Sunday afternoon is the best case for a bright green carpet of lawn in just right place.

Paris Plage picnic on the Seine

…is the ambitious summer civic project involving sandy beaches, colorful umbrellas, a swimming pool, striped cabanas, exotic palm trees, lounge chairs, and all of the August seaside pleasures of the Riviera delivered to the middle of the city for the beach-hungry Parisians stuck in town, and the fun part was seeing how seriously they received and participated in the illusion with elaborate picnics, suntan oil, tiny bikinis…

what you can't see in this ideal picture is the constant swarm of wasps, and the one that just stung me

…on this little lake in the woods nearby, where we are spending our days in the sun and water, are each big enough for one – maybe two people – and I’m starting to think that this is all I could ever need – and what more could we want for a quiet August retreat?

little purple mushroom sitting in the French woods

…which we are later told might perhaps be edible, stops me on my afternoon hike from the lake, down the hill, through the woods, a shock of subtle but extravagant color in the relentless green around us here.

escargot

…this morning is slowly making it’s way from one side of the boardwalk to the other and catching my eye – as I am drawn to smaller and slower things here in the woods.

Gare de L'Est and a view from my regional train car into the eastern French wilderness

…took me from Amsterdam to Paris Gare du Nord in a speedy comfy fancy wified Thalys ride, then to a quaint modest pokey regional car out of Gare de L’Est to this hilly wooded region of Eastern France where I’ll be quietly retreating, doing yoga, reading, and checking out.

Amsterdam harbor sunset view from a friend's guest bed

…from my a friend’s colorful apartment in MVDRV’s ship-like Silodam sitting over the water on concrete piers – is what I am lucky enough to be enjoying tonight as the sun goes down on a long invigorating day that started with yoga at one of my favorite studios anywhere, an endless afternoon bike ride all over town (Vondelpark, Westerpark, De Negen Straatjes…), and finally to the market to get some minestrone supplies for an early homemade dinner with friends on what locals tell me was the first summery day of the season (which might explain why everyone was super happy, friendly, smiley, and helpful – like when I biked back and forth and back and forth on Bloemstraat looking for the place to return my bike, when a friendly family sitting out on the street getting some sun took notice, asked me what I was looking for, and directed me one canal over to BloemGRACHT).

Amsterdam green stuff - starring climbing grape vines and towering hollyhocks

…is allowed to go wild and have it’s way sprouting out of the corner between the sidewalk and the house facades all over town – the best part of the spring and summer urban landscape here.

a small corner of a Refunc storage space

…are the handy recyclrey designery arty folks I’ll be working with on an upcoming project here in the fall produced by Stroom – so this afternoon in a jet-laggy daze I went to visit their two vast storage/studio spaces to select some materials for my upcoming project Composted Constructions from the amazing collections of industrial, commercial and domestic materials awaiting a new life. (website)

Saint Paul's 'Free Little Library'

…is the name of this diminutive wood structure on a post which I happened upon this afternoon gracing the front yard of the cutest house on our St. Paul street – with faux thatch roof, a favorite local domestic feature since childhood – where you can take a book or leave a book. (website)

the central open kitchen at Minneapolis' Tao Foods

…the wood-lined, screen-doored, toybox-equiped, homey health food store and cafe dating from the early 1970′s on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis is often our place of choice for morning nephew meetings and this morning it is the divine simple vegetable rice plate made freshly in front of me in the sunny central open kitchen by nice guys in cool hats and white aprons.

Lake of the Isles

…is but one of many gorgeous urban lakes circling the city of Minneapolis – it’s greatest gift and constituting part of it’s “green necklace” of parks and parkways – where robust Minneapolitans can be found jogging, and canoeing, and swimming, and strolling, and roller-blading, and dog-walking, and even fishing and skating in the winter – but this is probably the most picturesque, and how amazing to discover an up-north-like-lake in the middle of the city.

St. Paul sidewalk ant colony

…is admired this afternoon, now back in the city, covering the St. Paul concrete with moving brown carpet only revealed to be ants upon closer inspection.

Bay Lake sunset through pines

…is my biggest news headline of the day up here.

old family Bay Lake cabin

…brown, modest, hidden, built in the 1920′s, and located the next bay over from us here on Bay Lake was the location of today’s boat pilgrimage with mother and uncle to see their childhood cabin from over 45 years ago.

sunrise over lake viewed from bed

…is what’s going on out the window as eyes open this morning – sure to be one of many sunrise sunset stories from up north, since it seems to be the main news on lazy days up here.

Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle'

…the influential 2007 familial account of eating products grown close to home for a year by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, is one of the books I’m dusting off from my ‘to read’ list, finally able to finish with this lazy week on my hands up at the lake – and though it echoes everything I think I know and already believe and feel (especially after our luxurious Roman year of seasonal and local eating), this friendly home-spun activist no-nonsense series of personal stories got me fired up and inspired – ‘yes’ to cheese & bread making, and neighborly crop-sharing, and forever ‘no’ to industrial jet-setting bananas and winter tomatoes! (website)

in trees and lakes

…everywhere you look and making lots of noise.

view from Bay Lake boathouse

…is where I have come home to retreat for the week, but continuing on a hybrid continental schedule involving going to bed with the sun at 9pm and then up at the uncontrollable crazy hour of 3am to read, work, write, and wait for the sun to show itself for what turned out to be about 15 minutes of glorious lavender sunrise before disappearing for the day behind welcome rain clouds providing a perfect guilt-free excuse to stay cozy in the porch and on the laptop for the better part of the morning before heading to the kitchen to prepare a soup of bounty from The Wedge and St. Paul’s Farmer’s Market – tomato/zucchini/onion/cauliflower/bean/kale/potatoes/spelt/parsley/carrot/lentil – that is smelling the place up in a good way and making the cozy cabin cozier.

downtown Minneapolis framed by the new and old Walker Art Center

…(the city where I grew up but never lived as an adult, though with frequent trips back I am slowly discovering what’s here) is becoming clear this afternoon as I realize that my recent regular treasured hang-outs which I would have been super delighted to find in Rome, or Los Angeles, or New York City – Yoga One (the welcoming non-corporate, non-profit community yoga center that even has plants and skylights in the studio), Ecopolitan (super raw cleansing vegan food served in the warm woody parlor of a typical old Lyndale Avenue house), Tao Foods (featuring an olden-timey screen door and bar where I hang out drinking chai with little nephews), The Wedge Community Coop, (where you go into food paralysis when you enter because you just want everything, everything, everything, and where my friend Gaby has a good story about stopping on a coast to coast road trip dying for a decent meal after so much highway junk, gathering up a cart full of favorite things like hummus and carrots, getting to the cash register only to have her credit card rejected, at which point the ‘Minnesota Nice‘ Wedge employee just pushed the bags her way, and told her to go on with her trip, but she went back to the car to make a mixed c.d. for him – which actually brought him to tears when she returned to present him with it), Yoga One (the welcoming non-corporate, non-profit community yoga center that even has plants and skylights in the studio), Ecopolitan (super raw cleansing vegan food served in the warm woody parlor of a typical old Lyndale Avenue house), Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (one of my favorite places in city for anything picnic-y, opened in 1992 and later featuring a Meg Webster sculpture that made an early impression on me, consisting of a terraced inverted garden cone full of flowering plants you could enter through cor-ten steel panels through berms of earth and lose yourself in), and The Walker Art Center (my cultural mecca where I was turned on to new art and architecture at an early age) – are all contained within a golden triangle where I would probably live most of my life were I to live here, mostly contained by Lyndale, Hennepin, and W. 22nd Street – plus since I was last here I see everyone riding around on these pretty bright lime green bikes – ‘NEAT’, as we say.

zucchini and onions at the very neat & organized St. Paul Farmers Market

…was founded in 1853 back when streets where dirt in these parts and has since been relocated a few times before landing at it’s current downtown location which we visited early this morning in preparation for a week ‘up north’ at the lake cabin – and my first impression is that in comparison to the slightly wild, loose and casual presentations at the Italian and Roman farmer’s markets – these displays were super neat and organized with bowls of prearranged produce displayed in perfect grids – thanks to that Germanic love of order which I happen to grudgingly share.

Emily Lacy performing in the Walker's glass corridor facing Hennepin Avenue

…was the happy surprise of the day – as I caught my folk-singing friend‘s last performance (involving layers of gorgeous vocals live and delayed echoing through the cold cavernous corridor of the 2005 Herzog & de Meuron designed addition, accompanied by a painted steamer trunk full of costumes such as pioneer bonnets and equipment like cassette recorders from the 1980′s) in a series of daily appearances throughout the public spaces of the museum as a part of the summer series of projects and events organized by my long-lost favorite community cultural center: L.A.’s Machine Project.

leaving Fiumicino and flying up the Lazian coast

…was sad to say this morning at 10:15am as we took off from Fiumicino, USA bound for a couple of weeks before returning to bounce around Europe for projects, talks, research, and even a little recreation for most of the rest of the year.

streets of Rome, on our way to the last interview and handmade street signs proclaiming that 'we have all become Americans'

…were savored today on this, my last day living in the city, with last bike rides to last interviews – today near Piramide – for the Roma Mangia Roma book, and a last day biking by the crazy elaborate hand lettered signs of rant/protest which I finally took the time to read today, starting with it’s headline proclaiming/lamenting that “we have all become Americans”.

a happy new home on the ground at the Ex-SNIA community center for the Roman rooftop garden

…on the ground of the former parking lot at the Ex-SNIA community center – a vast abandoned industrial complex east of Termini being reclaimed by trees and meadows and groups like Ciclofficina where you can get your bike fixed for free, also known in the 90′s for it’s raves, but now more frequently offering a place for the local unemployed and immigrant communities to gather, meet and hold events – so yesterday a big truck showed up at the Academy on the West side of town to haul the entirety of the Roman Rooftop garden to Ex-SNIA on the east side of town where local organizer installed it in a smart new arrangement working around a few existing plantings (such as a few small fruit trees and zucchini in bathtubs) and integrating locally scavenged materials in the spirit of the original garden (like wood palettes for enclosure and to lift the planting beds off the ground since this is highly contaminated soil), which was born and raised in high isolation on top of a building on top of a hill on the other side of the river, and will now continue to thrive down on the ground as the center of meals and community activities.

farewell Roman Rooftop dinner party

…last night, cooking for my local Roman friends, was the best way to say goodbye – to them, to the city, and to the garden, which was picked up this morning – after a final harvest – by a local community center this morning at 6:30am.

homemade pasta at a dinner party in the Sabina

…near Rieti in the Sabine hills north of Rome is the location of the country house that our artist friend Emiliano Maggi partly grew up in – and where his mother prepared a feast for about 20 Roman friends this evening – so up we headed to conduct interview #26 for Roma Mangia Roma with Marcella while she was serenely and lovingly preparing the approximately 15 or 20 dishes that would be served (handmade pastas of varying sorts, pasta fagioli, cicoria, maiale, coniglio, abbacchio arrosto, fresh figs from the garden, torts and roasts from the wood oven are those that immediately come to mind) and immediately followed – as apparently is common here, but unheard of in my more mild-mannered Minnesotan upbringing – by raucous music with impromptu a cappaella songs both solo and sing-along plus dancing that went on well after I retired upstairs to bed at midnight.

an old family house hidden in the woods and fields off Rome's Via Appia

…for the Roma Mangia Roma book take us this morning to a house in the most remarkable location on extensive grounds covered with thick woods, picturesque meadows, modest fruit orchards, and casual vegetable gardens, right off the ancient Roman road, where our thirty-something Roman subject grew up, where her parents continue to live on the top floor, where her brother lives downstairs, and where she shares the neighboring quarters with her Japanese boyfriend who used to work in an Italian restaurant in Tokyo (but has now lived in Rome for 7 years, the first few months of which he tried to make Japanese food, but when he realized that the proper ingredients just couldn’t be found, he surrendered and eats a typical contemporary Roman diet now, starting every day with a cornetto and cappuccino) – all of which made for some good talks about food, cities, culture, Rome, Tokyo, and what it means to share a house with your family, grow your own food in the city, and be dislocated from your homeland.

lawn and laterns in the MAXXI courtyard by local architects stARTT

…is the Young Architects Program originated at NYC’s PS1 and now a new summer fixture at Rome’s MAXXI, where young Roman architects have created rolling mounds of lawn, punctuated by red tulip-like lanterns, where this evening people are lounging, dogs are running, kids are playing (one in particular seeming to be around six who is consumed with creating what would seem to be a stop-motion video animation with a doll that he will pose, run to the top of a near-by mound, take a photo, then run back to slightly change the pose – maybe the hope for the future of Italian cinema?), and other like us have come to listen to the final installment of an evening of music organized my Roman friends – the amazing boys of Nero.

the old Pigneto man and his domestic street art

…is the working class but now newly cool-ish youthful-ish (for this city at least) neighborhood of Rome, just beyond Termini and Porta Maggiore, where word is that things are happening, but I never seem to make it there – since it is a bike ride to the other side of town for me – but today we went to visit a possible home for the rooftop garden (to be donated to a local organization when I leave town) which happily happens to be in Pigneto, leading us to a tranquil walk through it’s streets, culminating in the acquaintance of an old man making himself comfortable on a chair out his front door next to his domestic street art creations that involve intricate paintings on his post box, gas meter panel, front gate, door…where we struck up an impromptu conversation.

the old rambling structures of Agriturismo Acquaranda

…is the village overlooking Lake Bracciano north of Rome where we traveled this afternoon to interview Massimo at Agriturismo Acquaranda, for the Roma Mangia Roma book, to hear about his experiences with food, in particular with making cheese on the land where his father made cheese (which it turns out that he doesn’t even eat), his recent shift from cows to sheep, his discovery of traditional processes to make artisanal cheeses no longer found, leading him to the slow food movement, kilometer zero, and other ways of approaching food production he had not previously considered.

road trip with Gilda and Lorenzo to Scangrilia, Lazio for a special lunch with Oretta at her country house

…in the Sabina of Lazio was the destination of our morning road trip to visit Oretta Zanini de Vita (the font of inspiration and information regarding cucina Italiana and staunch advocate for taking food seriously as culture at the highest level) at her house in the country – built in the 70′s with found windows of all sizes, salvaged wood beams, medieval stone fireplace mantels, and other assembled pre-used materials – for a special lunch straight from her garden, a continuation of our March 14th interview for the Roma Mangia Roma book (coming out in the fall in English and Italian from Nero Publications with editor Lorenzo Gigotti), and the opportunity for Gilda Aloisi to take some casual analog photos of Oretta at home and in the kitchen to accompany the story.

the family home on the ground floor of this newish apartment building with underground parking also features a vast hidden orto

…took us to a family of three generations living in a newish housing development about 8 km south of central Rome – still within the Grande Raccordo Anulare, bordered by a few other housing developments, a few isolated farms, and to the east by the Parco Regionale dell’Appia Antica (the vast greenbelt flowing from the countryside into Rome and terminating at the Circo Massimo) – where they are lucky enough to have the space for a big orto (too bad we don’t have such a specific word in English for the homegrown kitchen/vegetable garden) tended by the definitive cook and oldest member of the family (who grew up Bagheria, Sicily – the picturesque coastal town where the 1988 film Cinema Paradiso was set – in the 1930′s and 40′s in a completely self-sufficient household where they even ate the bread made with wheat grown on their own land) where he is playing out his nostalgic memories of his childhood garden with mammoth Cucuzza Sicilian squash and Sicilian tomato varieties, and at his own family table he is adamant that all are seated together each night at the precise moment that his culinary creations are ready – which his 18 year old son tolerates less and less, as he is out most nights with his his friends (sometimes enjoying quick fast food, that he even convinved his father to try once when they were on a road trip) and his girlfriend of Veneto decent, though in a separate interview acknowledging his appreciation for that one occasion each day that the whole family is together and grudgingly admitting that he will likely require the same of his own family in the future.

circuitous white-washed passageways of Sperlonga

…was my last minute destination of choice this morning to escape the city for a day, biking to Termini and hopping on a train to take me to the ancient and current Roman beach resort town, and yes there are picturesque beaches, and yes there are Roman ruins, but most enchanting is the historic hill town itself seeming like a singular organism of white-washed construction and cavernous stepped passageways festooned with colorful laundry following the topography of the promontory cliff over looking the sea – all very intoxicating until the harsh reality of a packed standing room only weekend train delivering sun-burnt Romans back to their city sets in.

protests in Rome at Palazzo di Montecitorio

…and financial woes are making international news, with austerity plans in the works (here is an Guardian editorial by my political hero from Puglia, Nichi Vendola), and this afternoon as I’m biking by Palazzo di Montecitorio – the Italian Chamber of Deputies – I pay special attention to the usual modest assemblage of protests and encampments out front.

Huddle, 1961/2010, Simone Forti

…the 1961 piece consisting of a small group of dancers assembled into a huddle upon which one dancer will occasionally climb in different ways, was casually but energetically performed in front of rows of seated serious looking German journalists at the press preview for the show Move: Art and Dance since the 1960s originally presented by, and co-organized with, the Hayward Gallery in London – where I was sad to have just missed it last year – but this morning I’m lucky to get a sneak preview of the installation at it’s latest venue here in Dusseldorf at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (including works by Janine Antoni, Pablo Bronstein, Trisha Brown, Boris Charmatz, Lygia Clark, William Forsythe, Simone Forti, Dan Graham, Christian Jankowski, Isaac Julien, Mike Kelley, Maria La Ribot, Xavier Le Roy & Mårten Spångberg, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, João Penalva, Tino Sehgal, Franz Erhard Walther, and Franz West plus an amazing video and film database for public viewing including special favorites like Helio Oiticica’s Parnagole, Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A, and the super Michael Clark films by Charles Atlas) right before I head back to Rome – and a special pleasure was the opportunity to meet most of the local and international dancers in town for the show at my Schmela Haus Soup Salon & Talk last night.

Schmela Haus, 1971

…the marvelous Dusseldorf puzzle-like brutalist modernist masonry vertical structure from 1971 well known as the site of Joseph Beuys projects from the 70′s and early 80′s, designed by Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck as an experimental residence/gallery, and recently re-opened as an art venue by the neighboring Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, is where I am comfortably camped out on the top floor – playing with all of the fun ways to open and close windows and doors – for a few days in anticipation of my Soup Salon & Talk which will be held tonight at 19:00 in the kitchen – where we will be shelling beans, mincing parsley, sauteing onions, chopping potatoes, slicing tomatoes, and other vegetable treasures from the local farmers’ markets for a big hearty soup to feed all while I talk about some recent work related to communities, food, and cities.

the baked bounty in the Hinkel Backerai window

…is the best bread in Düsseldorf according to a few of the market farmers I have asked (in a country where people take their bread very very seriously), so this afternoon I wander around the corner from my temporary home of the Schmela Haus to check out the place (for possible baked goods to accompany tomorrow’s Soup Salon & Talk), where the warm inviting street view of stacked loaves in a variety of ovoid shapes and a spectrum of deep German browns lining the street window into a modest-sized shop where eager bodies of all ages are pushing up against a counter of jovial smiling Hinkel workers presenting a wall of other gorgeous loaves more beautiful than any sculptures I’ve seen – does nothing to prepare me for the intoxicating aroma and good vibes as soon as I open the door (even though I’m vegan and don’t eat processed flour, preferring delicious ancient grains like farro and kamut – they point me to a few beautiful egg and butter free loaves) – on this dreary Wednesday afternoon, bread is warming and cheering us up, and everyone is super happy to be there. (website)

landing over the fields of Nordrhein-Westfalen

…with welcome chilly drizzly weather – after enduring a few sweltering days rubbing up against sweaty sun-burnt tourists in the sticky blazing Venetian sun – is where I landed this afternoon over the fields of Nordrhein-Westfalen for an event on Thursday evening at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.

gardens of Fondazione Cini, Palladian courtyard (left), Cypress courtyard (center), Jorge Luis Borges labyrinth (right)

…on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore is where I have come to visit an Italian designer friend (working with Michele de Lucchi on one of his many design projects for the foundation, whom we had the pleasure of sharing a dinner with tonight at a neighborhood trattoria in San Marco), exploring the ex-monastery now home to the foundation’s cultural center – featuring an impressive sequence of outdoor green spaces, including the original monastic formal garden courtyard with facades designed by Palladio, a spare cypress courtyard which today is carpeted with pretty purple flowers, a just-opened labyrinth garden to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Jorge Luis Borges, and finally the comparatively hidden and overlooked modest kitchen garden tended by the monks who have moved next door into smaller quarters, but still seem to be growing some of their own food.

Elad Lassry at the Arsenale with "Untitled (Ghost)", 2011. 35 mm color film (1.33 full frame), 18', silent.

…is mostly my reason for stopping off on my way north to Germany – to my old island home (from 1990-91 while studying at I.U.A.V. – though it sure has changed in that short time – with the tourist mobs now seeming to run the place) since I avoided the stresses and crowds of the June opening in favor of a later viewing con calma – and despite some rather pessimistic informal anecdotal reviews from friends, I was happy to have some time spent with a few personal highlights, such as Mike Nelson’s dream-like Istanbul-like other-world-within-a-British-Pavilion-world installation, Gelitin’s Gelitin Pavillion which seemed like the only place in the Biennial where I’d really like to spend some time and hang out, though I’m really sorry to have missed the glass-blowing, performances, music, fire-tending, and requisite public nudity from the opening; Urs Fischer’s really cool half-melted baroque sculpture candles boasting their own full time Vigili del Fuoce attendants in case something goes wrong; the mountian of houseplants in front of the Dutch pavilion; the amazing crowds of black tadpoles trying to find shade in the stagnent giardini reflecting pools (but I don’t think that was ‘art’); but especially Elad Lassry’s silent dance film”Untitled (Ghost)” which had me transfixed and truly happy for the first time that day – one of many great folks representin’ L.A. like Shannon Ebner and Frances Stark. (website)

ochres of Garbatella (left) and grey of Corviale (right)

…was the story of the day as we made long anticipated pilgrimages to both planned communities just outside of the Roman center, starting with the 11-story 1 kilometer-long crazy Corviale housing block of 1200 apartments and 6000 people in this endless concrete Le Corbusier Unités-d’Habitation-gone-wild folly designed by a team of Italian architects headed by Mario Fiorentino – and a 1 km long building in the middle of the Roman countryside might sound like a neat idea, and it might look amazing from a distance, but of course the closer you get, the sadder it is, and the best that one might be able to say about it now is that the otherwise penned-in tenants enjoy either views of Rome out one side or else they get to look at rolling fields and cows out the other…and from the grey it was on to the ochre baroque rococo fascist Garden City (Borgata Giardino) inspired delights of Garbatella, the working class fantasy land designed and built through the 20′s and 30′s by many hands to suggest the intimate small town rural living environment which many of the original residents where moving from, which you can still feel as you catch glimpses down certain streets when the sun is low, the sense of being in a small Lazian farming village, but in a sophisticated Roman baroquey sort of way – but the treasures are the variety of garden courtyards that each of the blocks face in to, originally meant to be vegetable gardens, they are now untended (I just want to get my hands on one of those big empty round ones) – but I suppose that just adds to it’s rough romantic patinaed lived-in state which, wow, really feels charged and magic. (some Corviale videos here and here)

Gianfranco Baruchello show (left) and AAR children show (right)

…were back to back engagements this evening – with the former smartly titled “Calma al Caos (e Vice Versa): Gli Artisti Emergenti da 5B” or “Calm to Chaos (and Vice Versa): The Emerging Artists of 5B” featuring an exciting and visually stimulating range of adult curated works by the children of the fellows and staff of the American Academy living in the family apartment building known as 5B (including Atia Bjornlie, Sofia Dulzaides, Allegra Brennan, Nicholas Brennan, Samuel Brennan, Sicile Gjergji, Giorgio Guerrera, Giulia Guerrera, Claire Hodge, Esther Meck, and Willard Standiford) which struck me as the best show of the year! and then it was off to Chinese food in Trastevere (yes – plus I also forgot that vegetarian in a Chinese menu just means that vegetables can be found in the dish, not that meat won’t be) to celebrate with Baruchello and friends the opening of his storefront installation around the corner at Edicola Notte.

Levanto biking and walking paths

…along the stunning coastline of the Italian Riviera in Levanto just north of Cinque Terre is made possible thanks to the re-routing of the train line inland, which made it’s previous path through a series of cool grotto-like cavernous tunnels available for dedicated paths for people moving on foot or two wheels.

the view over Vernazza, Cinque Terre from the top of its medieval tower

…or ‘five lands’ are the colorful Ligurian villages hugging the rugged coastline of the Italian Riviera which have maintained their precious antiquated state, partially due to their inaccessibility by cars, prompting a 1997 UNESCO World Heritage Site designation, which resulted in recent ramped up tourist activity – evidenced by our Italian friend and host who grew up near by and remembers not too long ago when you had to sneak through a fence to get to the path connecting the five towns – but today we paid our 5 Euro and enjoyed a hike from Vernazza to Corniglia.

a common painted Levanto street facade

…is the Ligurian beach town where my friend, and before that her her mother, grew up spending summers in a cute yellow house on the main street of town which her grandparents bought decades ago, and here is what we like about this place: almost all of the buildings have elaborate hand-painted trompe-l’oeil architectural details covering the street facades; the place is a hot sunny ghost town during the afternoon siesta from about 1-4pm when people smartly retreat to interior shade or cool sea water; the global tourists are distracted by the drama of nearby Cinque Terre and don’t seem to make it this far so you only tend to hear Italian spoken in these parts; the beach is a scene for all ages from the babies, to the teenagers, to the parents, and the elderly, though they mostly seem content to gather on benches in the park and watch the people walk by; there is a new walking path on the old train line which allows you to walk to actually walk through tunnels to the neighboring towns through a rugged coastal landscape; and hey, the Agnelli family has a villa (and fancy gardens which can be viewed through gates) here just on the edge of town, so I guess that says something. (more on wikipedia)

cutting of the American Academy 4th of July cake & 'Le Cercle Rouge' at Villa Medici

…American Academy-style involved an Americanissimo coleslaw, homemade potato chips, grilled hamburger with fixins, potato salad, and watermelon lunch (making for a strange greeting for newly arrived guests who heard so much about the amazing seasonal local Roman RSFP cuisine) followed by the dramatic arrival of an elaborate patriotic blueberry and strawberry decorated American flag cake – but for the evening we defected to the French Academy – Villa Medici - overlooking the city for a firework-free evening for the first night of their outdoor summer film series – kicking off with the stylish but seemingly endless (2’20″ – including a half hour heist scene that would be hard to imagine coming out of any a.d.d. Hollywood editing room today) 1970 crime thriller ‘Le Cercle Rouge‘ directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and starring Alain Delon, Gian Maria Volonté and Yves Montand.

Saturday night at Trajan's Forum

…on a Saturday night all lit up in lavenders and yellows looked a little Roman-themed Vegas Strip mixed with gladiator-themed gay disco – but I’m not complaining, it’s fun to see the Italians really occupy their cities in the summer, when every public park, villa, ruin, sanctuary, etc. can boast it’s own summer stage with scaffolding and black velvet – and even the lungotevere is temporarily occupied, by an endless chain of circus-like white tents housing trattorie and bars creating a line of wild nightlife where there is typically a refuge of tranquility -the birds down there must be confused.

wild morning bouquet on the table

…of lavender, yarrow, and other colorful back garden finds was assembled this morning in anticipation of old friends arriving from the other side of the planet for their first visit to Italy.

bamboo bean pole wigwam dramatically on axis with top floor AAR corridor

…I placed on axis with the top floor Academy corridor – where I live and work – is providing some drama in the distance this morning as I wake up and head down the hall for coffee and morning garden watering.

the mysterious couple from the show, and Villa Medici with St. Peter's in the background

…which I arrived to from an earlier opening at Unosunove this magical warm summer evening by bicycle – locked up below at Piazza di Spagna to hoof it up the 132 Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti steps for shows presented by the French Academy fellows incluing films, a wandering bassoonist, an installation in the magnificent Islamic room on top of one of the towers, carefully arranged and spotlit plaster statues and period furniture in studio windows, (ugh, we missed the naked hula hooping performance from the Monday show) the highlight being an elaborate performance by Rémy Yadan in the formal salone overlooking the city where a cast of around ten formally dressed performers arrived – the rest remaining impossible to describe, but involving standing around for a long time making subtle tsking noises, moving a piano around, walking hurriedly across the room, operatic singing, energetic dancing, monologs directed face to face at particular audience members in French, opening of windows and then closing of windows, mooing, crying with backs to us, and towards the end, the doors to the terrace overlooking the city opened and in walked a mysterious couple who proceeded to walk out of the room onto the the back loggia where they stood still for the rest of the evening – so people looked at them and took pictures – some were mystified, especially those who hadn’t even seen the show.

night portrait of Roman rooftop cucumber

…cetrioli, (two of them) are busting out, pumping up daily, from those vines creeping up the rebar structures that I installed months ago – finally, finally being put to use by those lazy climbers.

fans for sale on Via Portuense

…are a sure sign that Roman summer heat has arrived (though locals tell me it is just getting warmed up – wait til August they say) near Porta Portese – where I have come to visit the super sweet guys at Manzo Cicli on the medieval-seeming narrow cobblestone side street just above Via Portuense which is the moto/bici epicenter of Rome – to have my bicycle brakes fixed after a sudden cable-snap while braking and speeding down the Gianicolo yesterday.

borlotti garden harvest

…beans have arrived to the rooftop garden, with harvest day for the speckled magenta pods hiding everywhere I look.

#40: Old People Everywhere, from 'A Pattern Language'

…the iconic influential book by Christopher Alexander is standard issue to architecture students since it emerged out of the Berkeley in the 1970′s, which we were introduced to in our first year design studio, but I don’t recall ever actually reading it at the time (perhaps it seemed old fashioned, folksy, retrograde, and even conservative to my youthful architecty spirit besotted by flashy theory and cool shapes) but yesterday I stumbled upon it in the Academy library, immediately swept away into the staggering radical visionary breadth of it’s 253 patterns detailed in decending order from big to small over it’s 1171 pages of brilliant pragmatic idealism, seeming to be as appropriate, urgent, and relevant today as ever – perhaps more so – my neck getting sore from nodding vigorously in agreement with so many of the proposed patterns, like ripping up the pavement on local roads and creating 51 GREEN STREETS, encouraging a diversity of ages in our communities with 40 OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, designing a realm for 84 TEENAGE SOCIETY within the city for those between childhood and adulthood to establish their independence, making formal education a part of everyone’s daily life with 43 UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE, making safe and accessible places for 57 CHILDREN IN THE CITY, limiting high-rise construction with 21 FOUR-STORY LIMIT, planting 170 FRUIT TREES and 177 VEGETABLE GARDENS where we live, designing a place at home for making 178 COMPOST, leaving places for drama anywhere with 133 STAIRCASE AS A STAGE, planning for a 5 LACE OF COUNTRY STREETS that leave large expanses of open countryside between them, prioritizing places for 63 DANCING IN THE STREET, consciously welcoming 74 ANIMALS into the city, letting kids create their own play spaces like 73 ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND, encouraging the 172 GARDEN GROWING WILD, letting plants invade the built environment with 247 PAVING WITH CRACKS BETWEEN THE STONES, getting rid of conventional space-wasting and isolating bedrooms in favor of 186 COMMUNAL SLEEPING, and my favorite – leaving comfortable public places for 94 SLEEPING IN PUBLIC, and here is the complete list of all 253, which in Alexander’s words “…allow anyone, and any group of people, to create beautiful, functional, meaningful places. At the core… is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea… comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people.”

yellow plums caught with flash in midday sun

…known as susine around here, in clustered abundance are bending tree branches out back with their weight while sneakily ripening to sweet perfection undetected as they remain yellowy green – but I see them and have filled a backpack to gorge on this weekend – and maybe a sugarless compote?

Baruchello in his studio surrounded by framed photos and drawings, including a portrait with his old friend and hero Marcel Duchamp

…conducted yesterday just blocks from my studio on the top floor of a modern Monteverde apartment building was with Gianfranco Baruchello (b. 1924) – the Roman artist whose book “How to Imagine” and 1970′s farm as art project Agricola Cornelia have been a recent inspiration – and we got comfortable in the living area of his studio while unraveling tales of his youth, war years, counter-cultural bohemian days, early art works (time lapse images of a pizza the shape of Italy slowly being devoured) and up to his present daily life as described through food.

Carolyn Steel and Mona Talbott (left) digging into desert on a fig leaf at the end of the Hungry City: Wild Rome dinner for 120 with oily bread bag menus (center) and garden scavenged table goods

…was the loose title for this evening’s marathon of activities that I organized at the Academy – kicking off with a rousing talk by “Hungry City” author Carolyn Steel (narrowly arriving in time from London) about the relationship between food and cities – specifically Rome (wheat mills floating on the Tiber – license for a stone slab fish counter at the market worth more than a house – fake food fed to not quite distinguished enough feasting dinner guests only there to fill seats – Monte Testaccio mountain of discarded terra cotta amphorae…) taking us all the way up to present day Roman and global food and city circumstances (20% of meals in America are consumed in a car, one billion people are overweight and one billion are malnourished globally…), and happily ending at her vision of the future which she refers to as ‘sitopia‘ – after that it was responses from members of the Academy community including scholar fellow Michael Waters, architect advisor Carlo Vigevano, and RSFP chef Mona Talbott – followed by a casual reception in the vegetable garden under ripe apricot and susine laden trees – and culminating in a feast for 120 in the courtyard on one long L-shaped table under the arcade covered with coffee-dyed cast-off Academy bedsheets cum table-clothes upon which were scrawled handwritten food-related quotes from Roman residents excerpted from the upcoming Roma Mangia Roma book, then generously sprinkled and piled (like a forest floor) with all of the various random garden and kitchen detritus I had been gathering all year (pine cones; bean pods and leaves; fruits and seeds; dried sage, bay and rosemary cuttings; tufa rocks; all of my empty glass jars full of dirt and candles), plus big hunks of Roscioli bread (which looked remarkably like the lightweight tufa rocks – in a good way) and various courses served on fig leaves and grape leaf lined terra cotta roof tiles scavenged from out back – all enjoyed to the amplified sounds coordinated to the courses by Paul Rudy, and the lighting and central hanging plant branch daisy-chain chandelier by Giovanna Latis – under which the kitchen staff piled all of the goods related to the meal including a controversial lambs head which I – though vegan – was ultimately all for, since it showed those meat-eaters where their meat was coming from. (plus super big thanks to Ben Barron, Walker Williams-Smith, Sarah Ripple, and Eleonora Recupero, the classy, eager, and efficient foursome of local youth who assisted)

Il Vascello propietors Angelo and Dorina

…is the friendly, local, slightly hidden, Monteverde trattoria – just outside of the Aurelian wall from us – presided over since the early 80′s by gregarious hostess Dorina and Sardegnian chef Angelo, whom we have come to visit this afternoon for interview #14 for the upcoming Roma Mangia Roma book (featuring interviews with five generation of people living in Rome about food, how they eat, earliest culinary memories, etc…), to hear their stories of growing up in rural areas, coming to Rome, working in a restaurant under a nurturing father-like mentor prankster chef next to the Pantheon, and finally establishing  Il Vascello – by now a familial hang-out for friends, regulars, locals, the film crowd (such as Gianni de Gregorio) and foreign residents like us – Dorina loves America and has memorized the U.S. state capitals by heart, reciting them in alphabetical order when she can’t fall asleep.

from the top of Villa D'Este looking towards Rome

…is up against the Sabine Hills – which I am always staring at while tapping away at the keyboard or watering the plants since I have a direct view of them from the studio and garden – just east of Rome, but this morning we went west, north, east, south and then finally east to go due east, taking the Grande Raccordo Anulare again to short circuit the congested city center on what seemed like the hottest day of the year to visit the town‘s three treasures of Villa Adriana, Villa Gregoriana and, Villa D’Este. (nothing like showy Renaissance waterworks and mossy dark grottoes on a hot Italian afternoon).

solstice light on the north facade of the American Academy in Rome (my studio and garden terrace on the upper left corner)

…is not something I happen to give much thought to, but I have been noticing the early morning and late evening sun creeping around to visit my north facing windows over the past few days, plus the fact that our neo-classical faux Roman villa Academy facade is lighting up orange in a way that is shocking – since we have only seen it in shadow the entire year – with this photo taken as a record, only later thinking to look up solstice and realizing it is tomorrow – and now the only reasonable headline for the day.

Palazzo Farnese (left) overlooking the village of Caprola (right)

…is the most idyllic and purely conceived of hilltop Lazian towns which we have made a Sunday pilgrimage to, around Monti Cimini and dominated by the great pentagonal Renaissance genius of Villa Farnese (where upon entry into its hollow cylindrical central courtyard we were drawn by sounds of  Mozart into the first great painted room of many where a chamber ensemble was playing, and later into room after chamber after room after anti-chamber of intimate though grand purely geometric rooms – paul tested out the cubic room with rhythmic sounds brought back to our ears with shocking delayed effect – each painted entirely in awesome golden, azure and green scenes of people and animals, paganism and Catholicism, power and domination, myth and allegory, and a drop-dead map room that would made you feel really in charge of things, and finally out to the formal gardens fed by the quintessential grotto of my dreams cooling us with simulated rain on a warm afternoon – all which making us ask ourselves what happened to people with lots and lots of money at least knowing what to do with it? thinking about the future? building for the ages? giving us something we can at least enjoy today, hundreds of years later? what about Berlusconi pleasure palaces? will we ever visit those in 500 years?) at the head of the one main road, making no mistake of who was in charge, leading to it’s pair of symmetrical curving ramps – today delightfully framing the local Boy Scout Troops temporary camping quarters of a tent hoisted up surprisingly high on timbers, where just inside I discover a vast vaulted subterranean hall where the former Caprarola Boy Scouts of previous generations are watching vintage footage of themselves Boy Scouting in town decades ago.

AAR studio 309

…has been home for almost a year, things move around everyday, people get confused when the desk is in a new place on each of three consecutive daily visits, things come in and out, a pile of pine cones gathers in one corner, bay leaf branches dry out, piles of glass jars accumulate and collect all of the homey kitcheny things like teas and beans and sugars and salts, work on the Roma Mangia Roma book starts to fill the walls with excerpts from the interviews in Italian and English accompanied by portraits, and even the Wikidiary you are reading is printed out and posted to mark time.

the wheat fields of Agricola Cornelia

…the storied piece of hilly agricultural land within a nature reserve, north of town, off the Via Cassia, and just outside of the Grande Raccordo Anulare, is where I surprisingly find myself wandering the fields of wheat today – after having written about my inspiring read of the 1984 book “How to Imagine: a Narrative on Art, Agriculture, and Creativity” about the Italian artist Gianfranco Baruchello’s experience of farming this very piece of land in the 1970′s as an art project, now home his Fondazione Baruchello – where I hope to return and hang out when I can, now that I have the pleasure of knowing him – and looking forward to our upcoming interview for the “Roma Mangia Roma” book.

Puglia's common agricultural buidling types of the Trullo and Masseria for which I hunt daily on real estate websites

…is what I have been up to (as any Italian friend who I have bored with endless Puglia talk and questions over the past six months knows well), becoming increasingly fascinated by and fixated on this most southeastern region of Italy (heel of the boot) the more I learn – like their gay green anti-mafia president Nichi Vendola who writes poetry, did his dissertation on Pasolini, seeming to be the best and most unlikely hope for unseating the Berlusconi monster – like their mortar-less local stone domed Trulli, and fortified farmhouse Masserie, mystical and pragmatic rural agricultural building types unique to the region – like all of the cool young kids from the region who seem to be sticking around to do their thing – like the fact that it is still cheap and not quite as tourist-laden as the rest of the country – leading me to daily hunts on real estate websites for my dream piece of Puglia land with trullo or masseria to cultivate, to gradually ease into, hands in the land, a new project, living experiment, open door policy sort of place where all are welcome to spend any amount of time – and I can’t wait to head south for a visit.

the view of Rome from the rear loggia at Villa Lante al Gianicolo

…the 16th century hill top residence designed by Giulio Romano, now owned by the Republic of Finland, was the site of the first day of the conference History and Environment in the  Ancient Mediterranean “…bringing together scholars and scientists from a broad range of disciplines to discuss the effects of climate, urbanization, and the use of natural resources on the ancient Mediterranean environment and their relevance to contemporary environmental problems.” – and wow, what a view out the back loggia! (wikipedia)

Hungry City: Rome

…that I am organizing at the American Academy in Rome for June 23rd has just been announced – spread the word to Roman friends….

HUNGRY CITY: ROME – an evening with CAROLYN STEEL, British architect, lecturer, and author of ‘Hungry City’ on Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 at the AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME at Via Angelo Masina, 5

18:00 LECTURE introduced by: FRITZ HAEG, Garden Club of America Rome Prize Fellow – with responses from: MONA TALBOTT, Rome Sustainable Food Project Executive Chef; CARLO VIGEVANO, Abbate e Vigevano Architetti principal; MICHAEL WATERS, Donald and Maria Cox Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow – presentation in English, followed by garden reception – 20:30 DINNER – by ROME SUSTAINABLE FOOD PROJECT (SOLD OUT)

On June 23rd, 2011 Carolyn Steel will give a public lecture at the American Academy in Rome related to her best selling 2008 book “Hungry Cities: How Food Shapes our Lives,” which depended heavily upon early research in Rome, and how the ancient city fed itself. She will discuss the ways in which cities evolve around food, and in particular how the city of Rome has been shaped by these influences over time. Responses and questions from selected members of Academy community including chef Mona Talbott, architect Carlo Vigevano, scholar Michael Waters, and moderated by Academy fellow Fritz Haeg, will lead to an open discussion to be followed by a garden reception and a special Rome Sustainable Food Project dinner al fresco.

Carolyn Steel is an architect, lecturer and writer whose chief interest is exploring the inner lives of cities, focused on developing a lateral approach to urban design that looks at the everyday routines that shape cities and the way we inhabit them. She has run design studios at the London School of Economics, London Metropolitan University and at Cambridge University, where her lecture course ‘Food and the City’ is an established part of the degree program. Her 2008 book “Hungry City: How Food Shapes our Lives” follows food’s journey from land to city, through market and supermarket, kitchen and table, waste-dump and back again, to show how food affects all our lives, and impacts on the planet. Check out Carolyn’s book, the review in the Guardian, and TED talk.

The Conscience of the Eye, 1990

…is the obliquely titled and themed 1990 book by Richard Sennett that I just finished reading which is about the divides between inner experiences and outer lives in urban spaces through time – continuing my on-going year of ‘stewing’ on a general constellation of loosely connected ideas – an expanding series of topics – an intentional sense of direction towards a territory I’m interested in, and want to do something about – not yet sure what that is – maybe leaving the city to understand the city, in the country with friends to understand what it is like to start your own little version of a society – but here were some thoughts to chew on…

“…it is curious how the designers of parking lots, malls, and public plazas seem to be endowed with a positive genius for sterility, in the use of materials and in details, as well as in overall planning. The compulsive neutralizing of the environment is rooted in part in an old unhappiness, the fear of pleasure, which lead people to treat their surroundings as neutrally as possible. The modern urbanist is in the grip of a Protestant ethic of space.”

“The first settlers were ravaged human beings. They suffered the dual need to “get away from it all” in order to attempt to “Get control of their lives.” It was an early sign of a duality in modern society: flight from others occurs for the sake of self-mastery.”

a hazy June morning in the Roman rooftop Edible Estate

…is needing a good watering every morning (that nearby Lago Bracciano is happy to oblige, providing Rome with the abundant local clean water that is the pride of this city and celebrated in it’s generous bounty of public fountains) which I am happy to offer every morning, wandering with a hose from planter to planter, getting my head eased into the day, pondering the big picture of the sprawling city framed by the volcanic mountains beyond, and paying attention to each member of the wild assortment of ambitious little plants making the most of their shallow beds and cramped roots, reaching as far up and out of the dirt as they can manage – and today the real troopers seem to be the barlotti, zucchini, and pomodorini all setting fruit, but taking their time. (Roman rooftop Edible Estate webpage)

Circo Massimo crowds anticipate Gaga

…filled Circo Massimo (where ancient Romans raced chariots, staged mock ship battles, and held religious festivals) with a reported million people – for a speech and a couple of songs on piano tonight – concluding the parade that started at Piazza della Repubblica, marched through the city, down Via dei Fori Imperiali, around the Coliseum – stopping periodically for impromptu dance parties in the streets to the deep pulsing bass of mega-speaker laden trucks – but the best part by far was watching the beaming relieved Italian faces (otherwise burdened by the daily spectacle of an embarrassing political and cultural environment in a gradual 17 year – Berlusconi took national office May 10, 1994 – dispiriting downward spiral making international headlines) of all ages and walks of life witnessing a rare display of diversity celebration on their streets.

the new Southbank Centre roof garden at Queen Elizabeth Hall

…newly installed on top of Queen Elizabeth Hall, in partnership with the Eden Project in Cornwall, is what I am admiring out the window on this alternately warm sunny/cool rainy typical London day from a neighboring conference room where we are planning an upcoming 2012 project at the Hayward Gallery.

Denise Withers, the force behind Edible Estate #4: London

…is what I am always most keen to visit whenever I find myself back in town, and this morning on my way to meetings at the Hayward Gallery I make my garden pilgrimage to the corner of Webber and Lancaster in Southwark to check on it’s current status, where I immediately find Denise Withers – the Brookwood Estate resident who has been the great nurturing, cultivating, and protecting force behind the continuing life of the project since it was first planted and commissioned by Tate Modern in Spring 2007 – who was out of work and suffering from depression at the time (having never previously gardened she is now proudly employed by the project partner Bankside Open Spaces Trust), is now a passionate gardener at the Edible Estate just below her balcony – currently featuring a mini-hothouse for starting seeds, an extensive composting system, a green roof over an existing shed that collects rainwater, and a collection of little fruit trees really starting to produce. (garden webpage)

Michael Clark at Tate Modern

…presenting their first public performance of new work in Tate Modern‘s Turbine Hall tonight was a lucky stroke for me, having just arrived in town this morning, and being such a super big Michael Clark fan (by way of his films with Charles Atlas - who did the lighting for tonight’s show, and who we had the pleasure of sharing late-night post-show drinks and felafel – especially ‘Hail the New Puritan 6‘ from 1985-86, but also the other editions like this and this) – and from the smart seating position at the far end of the hall we enjoyed a long view towards the distant vertical stripe industrial windows – reflected in the black stripes painted on the dance floor – on the custom made bleachers next to dear old NYC artist friends I happened upon – to watch the evening of new work, entitled th, to the tunes of David Bowie, and Kraftwerk, Pulp, featuring a corp de ballet of 48 non-professionals of all shapes, sizes, ages, and abilities clad in black terry bath towel togas, plus his own company of stunning movers with amazing bodies encased in geometric patterns of tight lycra graduating from black/white, to silver, to radiant red with snappy stripped sport coats for the finale, was an ideal mix of the pleasure from watching amazing dancers perform gorgeous sequences of precise movements across the stage together and alone AND the delight in seeing our 48 surrogates sharing the stage, in a way that we could all imagine sharing the stage, while performing simple mechanical synchronized movements in a grid, turning, running, laying on the ground…though my favorite sequences involved the company of 12 – each a dream to watch in their own way – occupying the stage like a meadow, where movements come and go, in unison, and then apart, close-up and in the deep background, fast and then slow, migrations and herds, alone and in a group – never sure if you were the only person who actually witnessed a particular moment, was that just for me?

About Academia by Antoni Muntadas

…the New York based Spanish artist gave a talk about his work this evening – including the pioneering 1994 internet art project The File Room created back in the olden timey days before most people even knew what www was – and inaugurated exhibitions at the American Academy in Rome and down the hill at Real Academia de España en Roma.

Umbrian rainbow as viewed from train

…as enjoyed from the window of a speeding train from Perugia to Rome lasted for about five seconds yesterday.

Aldo Rossi's La Nuova Piazza, Fontivegge, Perugia, 1988

…the sad deserted wastelandish no-mans-land 1988 iconic civic center with town hall, theater, housing project, and modern piazza elevated on a parking podium by renowned Italian architect Aldo Rossi (with whom I did my thesis project at the I.U.A.V. in 1991) is what I happened upon on my way out of town today – while contemplating two shockingly out-of-touch and retrograde lectures (that really stood out in an otherwise sophisticated series of Festarch talks and conversations comfortably hosted in this lovely Umbrian hill town) by Peter Eisenman (whose only interest seems to be in making his mark – that tired old ‘architect-against-the-world’ sort of thing – complaining about sustainability, apparently resenting the pressure on architects to pay attention to the health and well-being of the people, places, animals, plants, land, air and water they impact because it prevents him from sharing his full creative genius with the world – instead of understanding the possible enrichment of his work by attention to all of that lively complexity) and his wife Cynthia Davidson (who actually said “…sustainability doesn’t need to be done, it needs to be theorized…” and “…to give in to it is to capitulate to the marketplace…” huh?), both of whom seem to be realizing that the narrow territory – namely style and theory – that their work concerned itself with during it’s formative years – is no longer enough, and now feeling left behind they seem threatened, hostile and from another time – which is especially unfortunate given the real respect that I had for Eisenman while in college, where I spent a great deal of time reading his texts, writing a paper on his work, and even making a pilgrimage to Columbus in 1989 for the opening of the Wexner Center.

a Festarch lecture at Perugia's Teatro Morlacchi

…a massive architects gathering in it’s first year in Perugia – is where I headed this morning to hear from a few of the endless  list of design world personalities partaking in a four day series of talks, events and conversations including Aaron Betsky, Petra Blaisse (who described some recent garden and curtain projects), Stefano Boeri (the Milanese architect, teacher, and magazine editor previously mentioned here who organized the conference), Andrea Branzi (who I was sorry didn’t make it at the last minute), Pippo Ciorra, Xavier Costa, Cynthia Davidson, Odile Decq+Paola Maugini, Elizabeth Diller, Peter Eisenman, Kurt Forster, Yona Friedman+Emmanuele Lo Giudice, Joseph Grima (of Domus who was carrying around his cute 10 month old), Bjarke Ingels (packing Teatro Morlacchi at 9pm with a talk on recent mega projects which was both super impressive for some of the ideas – and the shear amount this young architect is getting built – but also gave me pause with some ambivalence about the next generation of architects perpetuating this notion of ‘bigger-the-better’ top-down architect as all knowing dictator, continuing many of the implicit problems with with post-war planning no matter how cool and innovative and smart and sensitive some of the work is – but hey, finally some wit and sense of humor – plus the young students seemed to love it – especially the cool videos and graphics), Rem Koolhaas (who really impressed with a teacherly talk on his new interest in the problems with preservation and ‘thinning’), Michael Maltzan (showing work from LA – making me feel both at home and very far away), Enzo Mari (the white-bearded grand Italian design figure in his 80′s who gave an irreverent preacher like talk on the perils of contemporary design culture), Jasper Morrison, Hans Ulrich Obrist, François Roche, Italo Rota (delivering an inspiring, if staid, talk on recent work and thoughts related to plants, animals, ecologies, and the environment – gleaning what I could from the back row of the gorgeous Sala della Vaccara of Perugia’s Palazzo dei Priori through his mumbled Italian), Benedetta Tagliabue among many others.

places set for a sunset rooftop garden dinner party

…last night, just after an errant storm passed over delivering a bit of cooling rain,  was enjoyed on long rooftop garden-side peony-centered table set in the colorful vintage linens laid out by Academy friend Siena – who acquired them Porta Portese (defying my assumption that everything there was junkie) – and to eat we made the most of what is to be had in the garden right now, like squash blossoms, basil, mint, and the last of the fava beans (which I am ashamed to admit I am getting a little tired of).

military parade arriving at Piazza Venezia

…is the spectacle I was greeted to after racing down the Gianicolo on my bike – with 80 heads of state in attendance (including U.S. V.P. Biden whose motorcade I had to avoid after Carabinieri were yelling at me to pull off to the side of Corso Emanuelle II – later finding out he was on his way up to the American Academy for lunch with our ambassador at Villa Aurelia) celebrating 65 years of the republic on the year of it’s 150th anniversary of unification – and after the crowds gathered at the parade terminus of Piazza Venezia and the distant equestrian squad arriving from Via Dei Fori Imperiali signaled the arrival of the parade, hundreds of Italian children were suddenly hoisted on to parents shoulders for a better view of what would turn out to be a rather frightening military display of tanks, troops, drones, missiles, boats, planes, cavalry, and best of all: an amazing runway-like presentation of fit soldiers in an array of very fabulous vintage uniforms – and finally, just when we thought it was all over, Frecce Tricolori, the deafening blast of nine military jets in formation leaving trails of green, white and, red directly overhead. (more at Corriere della Sera)

Calcata floating in the valley of the Treja River

…is the medieval hill town we have traveled an hour north of Rome to visit this morning – having been on the top of my list of obscure places to visit in Italy for years – which was the supposed home of the Holy Prepuce (foreskin of Jesus) and later condemned and vacated in the 1930′s for fear it would collapse (the original inhabitants relocated to a neighboring modern town built for them) then gradually settled by hippy new-agey artists in the 1970′s – one of whom we were lucky enough to meet on the streets who invited us into the cavernous series spaces that comprise his studio and home – the lowest level going down to the original raw Etruscan stone floors – with occasional tiny windows framing views out to the Treja River Vally that the town seems to float above. (more from the New York Times and Wikipedia)

exotic veggies at Roman market

…near Termini is a destination this morning after tours of the playground of a nearby elementary school and the roof of an institution for the mentally handicapped – possible future homes for my Roman rooftop garden which will have to be relocated when I leave at the end of July.

Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century, 1977

…is the illuminating well-written 1977 book of this well-trodden utopian territory by Robert Fishman – which gives a super great overview of the political and philosophical underpinnings of Howard’s Garden City, Wright’s Broadacre City, and Corbusier’s Radient City – continuing my recent reading list of titles growing out of my fascination with the way in which people self-organize and plan new ways of living together when there is a desire to abandon a current arrangement that is deemed unacceptable or doomed. (from MIT)

critical mass bikers hanging out at Villa Doria Pamfilj

…is what I happened upon this afternoon – just when I thought there was no real alternative culture of resistance in this city – under the canopy of the Roman stone pines at Villa Doria Pamfilj where the landscape was covered with bikes and their riders enjoying the stellar Sunday afternoon after a weekend of Roman Critical Mass bicycle events.

view of Roman Rooftop this morning

…includes reports on recently planted loquat seeds; sad bean plants that are still refusing to climb up the bamboo wigwam structure that was made for them months ago; some eggplants, zucchini, and tomatoes that are starting to flower and set fruit; lots of pretty lettuce plants that are being left to bolt up like mad and make pretty purple flowers; favas that are still producing; and a bin full of ever multiplying worms that keep eating and eating.

rose arbor at Villa Doria Pamfilj

…is full of red at the big neighboring park of Villa Doria Pamfilj where the turning weather of hot summer days is sending me for daily bike rides and to lounge on blankets with books under trees.

contrails over rooftop bean wigwam

…over the rooftop garden were lit up by a Roman sunset tonight.

open William Kentridge studio

…is the brilliant South African artist brightening up the Academy while in residence this month – today welcoming us into his studio and sharing stories of his working process and methods – specifically in relation to a big wall collage that is a collaborative/interactive planning timeline for a new show coming up in France.

making the trap nests for Roman bees

…or trap nest – similar to the more massive, monolithic version that I made for the Mason Bees in New York City in 2008 – is my Roman rooftop homestead project for the day – having found a big long log out back which I am now drilling a series of holes into, which female bees will hopefully find, fill with nectar, lay eggs inside, cover with mud – in hopes that new bee life will emerge later…

the table waiting for another RSFP dinner in the AAR cortile

…have happily moved back outside – after almost seven months of meals in the formal dining room – with the warm weather to the central cortile where we gather around one super long table intoxicated by the blossoming jasmine.

spring strawberry arrival

…brings good news of the most regular and welcome daily fruiting arrivals in my Roman rooftop garden these days – with always a few to be found hiding in a planter – but never enough to do more than the occasional nibbling and grazing.

a duck couple cooling off in the Aqua Paola

…or ‘Fontanone‘ just down the hill from us on top of the Gianicolo – were spotted cooling off this afternoon – frolicking on a hot afternoon in the shady pool of fresh water arriving from the Acqua Paola Roman Acquaduct.

Roma Mangia Roma interview #11, off Via Cassia

…this afternoon was a follow up to the interview with 15 year old ragazza Romana last month who recounted her early interest in cooking and cucina Italiana inspired by her grandmother, who is starting to let her into the kitchen when preparing the big holiday meals – so this afternoon we heard her story, tasted her marmalade, got a few of her special recipes, many of which she grew up learning from her mother and grandmother – but she has given each of them her own twist.

hidden statuary garden

…of statuary is something I happened upon for the first time this afternoon as the sun was low while visiting a French friend in residence at the famous villa and gardens – that I still remember studying in architecture school – later acquired by Napoleon in 1803 as the new home for the French Academy.

visit to Roman farm off Via Cassia with photographer Gilda Aloisi and Nero editor Lorenzo Gigotti

…this afternoon was with the amazing urban farmer Matteo Amati who presides over an enormous tract of city land where unemployed youth are put to work on the cultivation of the fruit tree orchard, the groves of olive trees, and the rotating fields of strawberries, fava beans, potatoes, tomatoes, etc….and this is giving me some sense of what much of the land just outside the Aurelian Walls must have looked like not so long ago. (Roma Mangia Roma)

endless line of Lido di Ostia beach clubs and cabanas

…is a welcome way to return to Italy this afternoon and the promise of a coming summer, making our approach to Fiumicino from the south in a straight line over the coastline of private beach clubs.

Living the Good Life, 1954 by Helen Nearing

…from cover to cover on the nine hour plane ride from Portland back to Europe is blowing my mind because it seems so fresh, like it could have been written today, but instead dates from 1954 – about Helen and Scott Nearing’s radical 1932 pioneering escape from the the modern ills and materialistic distractions of New York City to the remote rural Vermont land where they homesteaded for 20 years with an open door policy to any strangers or friends who might want to join them for any period of time; meticulously building their own stone homes and out-buildings; earning a minimal income from maple syrup harvest; growing most of the food they consumed throughout the year during a very short growing season; keeping no animals; living on a strictly whole food vegan diet free of sugar, refined flour, coffee, and alcohol; and trying their best to engage and involve their immediate local community in a cash-free system of bartering and sharing – which has me all excited for my own personal ‘back to the land’ fantasies which I have been plotting for the past few months.

“Many a modern worker, dependent on wage or salary, lodged in city flat or closely built-up suburb and held in the daily grind by family demands or other complicating circumstances, has watched for the chance to escape the cramping limitations of his surroundings, to take life into his own hands and live it in the country, in a decent, simple, and kindly way.”

farming artist Nolan of Wealth Underground Farm reveals the colorful speckled lettuce coming up under crop covers in the still chilly hills of north Portland

…hosted a conversation about art & agriculture this afternoon, with Danny Percich, Tim Donovan, Harrell Fletcher, and myself, as part of the Open Engagement conference, on their Portland adjacent small CSA organic farm – which some of the of the hardcore student bikers arrived at on two wheels up a steep hill – and what a pleasure to spend time in this little Pacific Northwest nirvana of farming in the scenic hilly woods next to the city, so well known for it’s fixation on slow local organic radical foody bikey composty feministy ethos that there is even a TV show about it called Portlandia – which happened to film the farm scene at Wealth Underground in the episode where the couple ordering dinner at a restaurant is concerned about how local their food is and goes to inspect the home of the chicken named Colin that they are planning on eating.

Free Range Humans

…was the title of my talk at the PSU Open Engagement conference this afternoon, which I began with these three quotes:
“The performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor of society, of how we want society to be. Though we are not now living in a society which we consider good, we could make a piece of music in which we would be willing to live. I don’t mean that literally, I mean it metaphorically. You can think of the piece of music as a representation of a society in which you would be willing to live.”
“Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.”
- John Cage

“But specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the ‘expert’ is fooled into accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially and culturally preferred, ergo, highly secure, lifelong position”
- R. Buckminster Fuller

“I always like a plaza where there are benches—but I like it more when people decide to sit on the steps, which is sort of like the first radical act. The first act of revolution: a bench has told me to sit down, so I’m not going to sit there, I’m going to sit where I will bother people walking up the stairs.”
- Vito Acconci