Peter Behrens's Blog, page 539
March 15, 2013
Garagenatalier by Peter Kunz Architects
BB found this on iGnant: a very cool garage in Switzerland, by
Peter Kunz Architects
"The volume preserves space for eight cars. The cubes, embedded in the terrain serve as directed lighting for the parking area in the back. The cube at the end has a sliding door and acts as the entrance. The beton cubes remind of a ‘Minimal Art’ installation, promoting the unique expression as well as the juxtaposition of nature and the geometric structures made of concrete..."
I wonder how much this work was inspired by the Judd boxes, in Marfa...and if they have a problem in Switzerland with defiant juvenile delinquent trespassers...
March 13, 2013
Travelling Light, Clayton New Mexico
I drove an International grainer just like this one, working on the wheat harvest in central Alberta. Learned to split-shift and drive down the windrows, staying in tandem with the combines. Keeping the truck just close enough so that the combine could spew grain into the truck box. The worst thing would have been to collide with a combine. Never happened to me, though cornering in tandem was tricky. We'd start threshing at 10 or 11am, as soon as the sun burnt the dew off the crop. We'd keep going until 1 or 2 am, whenever the moisture settled. Sometimes we'd finish one field and move to another in the middle of the night. Those huge wheat fields of Alberta...starting on a new field in the dark I'd sometimes get lost on my first run, rushing back to the storage bin or elevator. Nothing to navigate by, out there late at night. Though I suppose celestial navigation would have worked. Lots of coyotes for company. CKRD out of Red Deer.
The first story I published in the United States,"Vulcan", in The Atlantic Monthly in 1985, was based on my experiences on the wheat harvest. That story was optioned in Hollywood and jump-started my career as a screenwriter. It will be reprinted in my upcoming story collection Travelling Light (Canadian spelling, eh?) which comes out in May.
If you're looking for used farm equipment--like an old pickup truck!--
check out American Ag. My experience has been that farmers tend to maintain their equipment. And out there in the high-and-dry Western grain belt, rust is less of an issue.
March 12, 2013
The Tattered Cover
March 11, 2013
1965 F100 for sale
I saw it last week in southern Colorado. Texas plates. Looked like a survivor. Now's the time.
The Way We Live Now: American Houses, Colo Springs
My tiresome preoccuption with the ordinary continues. I aim to focus this series, which will appear intermittently on AL, on the houses Americans actually live in. The theme is not the House Sublime, but the House Vernacular. Contributors very welcome
March 10, 2013
The Grapes of Wrath: Oklahoma
From my tour of the Hi-Lo country. Boise City is the county seat of Cimarron County, the westernmost end of the Oklahoma panhandle. This was the heart of the Dustbowl of the Thirties, and it is looking pretty dry these days. The only water I saw was in the Arkansas River and that was a trickle. Of course in this season most of the year's moisture is still locked up in mountain snow. But there is not a lot up there. The West may be in for another dry summer.The handsome bank building and the courthouse were both built in the late 1920s. Within a couple of years the grapes of wrath were being stomped around here, and people were hitting the road for California, where Merle Haggard was born (Oildale, Calif., 1937)
March 9, 2013
Racing in the Street. The Olds Dynamic 88 wagon
Needs work but I love the lines of this wagon, a survivor. I'd like to see it go fast. Early Sixties were the cleanest period in US car design.
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