Here's a quick rendering of a new house we're designing - on a mountaintop in New Hampshire. These images help us and the folks we work with to imagine the building we're creating together. Our drafting program, Revit, does the magic.

The new roof is framed for this double-gambrel house in Brookline. It required a lot of delicate surgery for everything to come together perfectly - shame to cover it up.

The magical city of Cusco, Peru, from the Incan ruin Sacsayhuaman. The city lies in the valley and crawls up the mountainsides. There is a calm beauty to the consistancy of the red tile roofs, that makes the city read as a single form as well as a collection of buildings.


Further down, the city spreads out below steep narrow streets, sometimes steep enough to require stairs - how the poor access their houses. Clay tiles shed the rain well, age beautifully, and are easily replaced.


Managing water shapes the buildings - here a row of entry stepping stones span the waterways that edge each street. The streets themselves are skillfully paved with pebbles, stones, and pavers, and the occasional boulder. Note the gleam of the plastered wall above its rough stone base.
Next time: Machu Picchu!

The brick pattern at the gable top is wonderful in this dutch-style brick house in Albany, New York. It's a style of masonry that takes focus on the part of the mason, and results in a smooth clean top edge. The main body of the brickwork is alternating rows of stretcher (the long way) and header (the short way) brick courses, giving the wall another layer of texture. Via Andrew Cusack Netherlands.

Folks are moving into their new house in Roxbury in time for Christmas - you can see the workmen installing solar panels on the roof. It was a complex process getting the layout right for these two women and their mother, especially since the lot was unusually long and narrow, but we have a good time working with people as they become clear about what they want. Energy efficiency was high on the list from the first.

I stumbled into this really great little shop in Cambridge, and righted myself before crashing into any of the lovely lamps or tables. Beyt is an organization taking pieces of buildings destroyed in the war in Lebanon, then hiring and training marginalized and disabled Lebanese to create these gorgeous pieces. Read their story: 2bdesign.biz

Celebrating the opening of JP Centre Yoga, our latest project on Centre Street and already a great spot for folks to gather and connect. Kudos to Sejal Shah and Daniel Max, intrepid yogis and visionaries, for making this place happen. Photo of Sejal and a yoga teacher via JP Centre Yoga Facebook Page.

The second house is our Greek Revival on Martha's Vineyard.

Here's the winner of the Architectural Record Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest. Via Architectural Record. Hand-done drawings are so beautiful and evocative - so much is conveyed by a gesture.

This Brookline house was so structurally compromised - splayed walls, wobbly foundation, and wonky floors, that we are lifting the whole house off it's foundations, straightening everything up, and setting it back down on a newly capped foundation wall. Here's the house up about 8", resting on three I-beams.


The I beams are jacked up and leveled from the inside.


You can see the chains running diagonally, dragging the walls back into square.


These turnbuckles are tightening the chains.

When the builder, Justin Keyes, opened up the floor of this 19th century house, he found some over-enthusiastic carpentry had been done over the years. New beams required throughout.

Our cool software Revit lets us model the structure in excruciating detail.

Same Dorchester house - the mad russian painstakingly installing this very cool tile from Ann Sacks.

The new 'ribbon stair' in an old Dorchester house, mid-way in. Trimitsis Woodworking built this using previously unheard of joinery and installation techniques. The slot running up near the outside edge will receive the glass railing.

This remarkable bar is constructed of lashed bamboo 'bents', allowing breezes to filter in and up through the roof opening. Most beautiful as a skeleton, before it gets it's shaggy skin. Via Archdaily , where all the world's crazy and wondrous buldings can be seen.