This building in Brugge, Belguim was built sometime in the 1500s (yeah, I know – that may have been the date of construction but those windows are new; and lovely). The panels above the three windows on the second story show scenes of everyday life.The one on the far right shows a kitchen scene. I […]
Natural light. There really isn’t any substitute. Here is a building that we stumbled into in Budapest, I believe, in which the entire ceiling was a skylight.And here is the auditorium of the public house in Prague, where natural light rules, despite the prevalence of available electric illumination: Before we get to the SoMoToHo, I […]
The pics above show bamboo scaffolding on a building under construction in Hong Kong. No metal. No wood. Just bamboo. Construction methods in the SoMoToHo are not so exotic. Wood framing; sheet rock; tape, bed and texture; PVC pipe. The destruction is by no means over. But there has been a turn toward construction. You […]
That’s not our kitchen. It’s pretty much the way our kitchen feels right now, but it’s not our kitchen. It’s El Born – an archaeological dig in Barcelona commemorating the time three hundred years ago (just yesterday, really) when Spain conquered Catalonia. If you’ve been to Barcelona, you know that the Catalans still are not […]
Demolishing existing structures is a necessary step in remodeling. It can be kind of fun and cathartic but after a couple of days, you begin to feel as if you’re living in ruins – and not lovely and romantic ruins like the old Holyrood Castle Abbey in Edinburgh, shown above. The only way the SoMoToHo […]
Historically, fire considerations dictated that the kitchen be separated from living quarters. The picture above shows cooking facilities in the Valley of the Kings, Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey. Here is another shot: Primitive though these facilities may be, the food that came out of them was fantastic, proving that cosmetics is not everything. For the SoMoToHo, […]
