Alyn Carlson has been fixing up this old Massachussetts church up for 28 years. That worries me for myself – is that how long it takes? Oh god, I hope not; I’m on Year 7. I love her place, though. I’d copy Alyn and hang the ribs of a boat in my place too, if the whole thing didn’t already look like an upside down boat. As you can see here, converting churches doesn’t always work out very well, but I really like this one – in fact this is one of the first ones I’ve really liked. The solution of dividing the space vertically by adding a floor often causes problems because it interfers with windows, but Alyn’s solution of cutting out around the 2-story windows is very clever. And I really like the plywood wall and the firepole. I think one reason this place works is that she has the knack of combining older features with modernist elements – the modern makes the place feel less like a vintage wooden schoolhouse (as I found out myself). Because there’s just something forbidding about living in school – everything becomes homework by definition. Alyn’s also a graphic designer and painter and I really appreciate her permission to reprint these excellent photos, all taken by her boyfriend Paul Clancy.

Deformscape is by Faulders Studio, the San Francisco office of architect Thom Faulders. This post is for Paul, who misses posts with mathematical content, and @jennifergardy, who first pointed it out.

“Deformscape is an outdoor extension to a private dwelling in San Francisco. Situated in a tightly packed urban neighborhood, this limited space outdoor sculpture garden inherits a large tree, and uses this sole arboreal presence to establish a gravitational pattern of grooves that are focused towards the tree’s centroid. This asserts the valued presence of the carbon-absorbing tree and its green canopy overhead, while allowing for a maximum of usable surface area below free of other vegetation. To generate the resultant pattern, a 3-dimensional bulge is formed around the tree, and its distorted wire-grid projected onto a 2-dimensional surface. Taking into account appearance effects created by perspective views from inside, the resultant planar surface appears sink around the tree.”

The above location is about 2 blocks north of where I live and work, and if you walk down to the water another 7 or 8 blocks to the northwest, you’re standing on the birthplace of Vancouver. The Hastings Mill was built there in the late 19th century. Lumbermen skidded their logs to the mill along a “corduroy” road made of timbers and logs greased with fish oil. That road traveled along the stretch of Hastings Street that you see here and then down Dunlevy Street, as it’s known today. The road was lined with cheap shacks and hotels and is the origin of the term “skid row,” a distinction that I’m sure must give Vancouverites a sense of civic pride. Today Hastings Street frightens visitors from New York, but it’s not particularly unsafe as long as you’re uninvolved in its local economies; it just looks disturbing because it’s the headquarters of drug use, homelessness and prostitution. The city has continued to try to contain and concentrate those things here since the early 60s, so it’s just getting worse. That’s the Astoria Hotel there in the photo, with its relatively traumatizing beer-and-wine store and a bar that’s suddenly gone hipster and one of the best neon signs in the city and you can’t cross Hastings to buy a cheap bottle of wine there without getting propositioned by johns. I mean if you’re a girl. The empty lot to the right of the hotel has been sitting unused for years and is now, amazingly, going to the be the site of United We Can’s “SOLEfood” Urban Farm, below. It’s an excellent project and I’m volunteering to dig. Come by on Saturday! More info here, news story here and in the Globe and Mail.

You can see downtown Vancouver in the semi-distance at left. If you just keep walking west along Hastings for 15 minutes, you’re there. The mountains that you can see are north and northwest. Thank goodness for Google Street View, because it’s raining and I didn’t want to walk over and taken my own photos of this corner.

Karikomi – Japanese abstract topiary – from the ever-interesting ii-ne-kore blog out of Australia by way of Japan. “ii ne kore is a shorthand version of kore wa ii desu ne, an expression of appreciation or delight in japanese.” That is how I feel when I look at these.

Things for your garden, from right to left: Roman column, military dictator’s bird of prey, mass-produced standing stone with Chinese inscription, birdbath/fountain with peeing cupid and his parents, cartoon meteorite.

In actual fact, this is neither a meteorite nor a fake. It’s a real rock of some kind, but I have no idea what its name is (does anyone?). It rusts so it must have iron in it, and it’s hard. I would love to have it in the garden, if there were room.

Of course the High Line park didn’t open on time for our New York trip – the first phase now opens June 15 - but at least we got to see all the frantic final activity from our hotel window. UPDATE June 6: This had seemed like a great urban park idea, and it would have made a very beautiful promenade for New York, but as it turns out its use is semi-private. Apparently when full public funding couldn’t be secured to produce a fully public park, private funders stepped in and this has meant that the park, a new design on the top of the old elevated railway, will sometimes be reserved for private use. You’ll need a wristband to enter, apparently, and sections can be arbitrarily closed off. (See discussion on gothamist, who also used our photos.) The park’s controlled use is unfortunate because politics aside, the design looks good. [End update.] It seems there’s been only minimal intervention on the el; the tracks remain, and only gravel, pavers and benches have been added. Some of the plants in the final design are the same indigenous species that have been occupying the long-overgrown line for decades. The benches are nicely designed – they ramp up from walkway level. It rained this morning but now it’s sunny and men are painting over graffiti on the adjacent buildings. There are more photos on the High Line website (including the black and white photo below). The Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District actually straddles the High Line, and from there you get a very good view of a portion of the new park. There’s a beautiful view of what it used to look like here and one by Timothy Schenk on Flickr: