Farnsworth House opens April 1st, 2012

Signature Shot

Today is Mies’ 126th birthday, and as my reader knows, we are a bit obsessed with the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe.

Please take your shoes off...

We visited the house three years ago with a group from work, and it is amazing. Tours of the Farnsworth House begin on April 1st, and I would suggest going with a group of your friends, especially on weekdays where you are allowed to take photos inside. Be warned that the Fox River tends to overflow its banks, causing occasional flooding of the Farnsworth House.

Living

Also, take some time to eat in Plano, where there is a great greasy spoon and drive around rural Illinois – it is beautiful.

See also: Farnsworth House photos.

Laws That Shaped LA

LA City Hall

The Laws That Shaped L.A. will spotlight regulations that have played a significant role in the development of contemporary Los Angeles. These laws – as nominated early on by a variety of experts we’ve been polling – may be considered by readers and nominators to have either been beneficial to the city or malevolent.

via Laws That Shaped LA | Land of Sunshine | KCET.

Home Genome Project

Home Genome Project

Home Genome Project:

The home is becoming a center for preventative health care, energy production, distributed work, and new forms of learning, entertainment, and communication. We are developing techniques for capturing and encoding concepts related to human needs, activities, values, and practices. We are investigating solutions built from an expanding set of building blocks, or “genes,” which can be combined and recombined in various ways to create a unique assembly of spaces and systems.

Urban Architects

The new Urban Architects:

These and many others are our new urban architects. I am not suggesting that the traditional roles of urban planning and architecture aren’t still important to our cities.