How Harlow offers a very English image of Platonic perfection

I suppose from this sprung A Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language and probably has gone on to S,M,X,XL.  While definitely influenced by Alexander et al, my favorite builder has an interesting experiment in Martha's Vineyard.  http://somoco.com/pdfs/FHB-ICoHo.pdf

Sounds like a nice place to me, I have been invited to see and will make it one of these trips to the cape.

My dad studied the Oneida Community and was a tour guide at the Mansion House till he lost his sight.  Beautiful things these utopian communities.

I've often wondered what drunken monkey designed the streets in my hometown.  Aren't the streets around normal city blocks supposed to be straight?

Those 90 degree angles are a bitch, eh?

Yeah, please lecture me on how difficult laying out streets are..I driven them and I've designed them.

"Sure, Brook Farm ceased to exist, but I'm not willing to say it was a failure. We all cease to exist."

Whit Stillman's Metropolitan (1990).

Somehow I was afraid this was not going to be about Jean Harlow...

Unhinged,

Nice piece.
Thanks
S

Click and Clack are on right now, so I only skimmed (another name for an ex-husband: a was-band-- funny guys).
The thing that stands out to me:

"platonic perfection"

A bit oxy-moronic, no?

I prefer your standard North-South, East-West avenues if I'm running late and can't afford to not be focused. Although GPS is now easing the pressure from those situations with a nice soothing voice that does all the worrying for you.

But if I'm just taking a drive, mostly for the sake of the drive, then it's curves and clover leafs, cul-de-sacs and dead ends that make me happy.

As my dear friend Bilbo Baggins said:

It's a dangerous business, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

And....

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
and I must follow it if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Anyroads, I'm long overdue for an adventure without a destination ‘cos it's the getting there that would be all the fun.

Gotta go "step into the road" Have a fine Sunday.

Peace out!

Stoney,

Did you folks get to enjoy last night's thunder and lightening show?  Don't forget your umbrella today.

Be well

MissI,

I think their use of Platonic is an older one than yours, assuming you think(as I do ) that chaste perfection is definitely an oxymoron. Look back to Tracy Lord, once again... I think Plato talked about ideals in ways that didn't connote chastity, even though we tend to think first these days of "non-sexual" when we see, for instance, Platonic friendship.

I wnt to the Co Housing article, Un H, and enjoyed it, but two things stick in my mind.

Island retreats are SUPPOSED to be expensive and exclusive. I lived in a similar place, where "down the road" was eventually too nice to waste on worker bees like me. In the old days, of course, worker bees had a room over the garage, etc, or worse.  Some of them came with the householder from his primary residence . It is a sign of the change in resorts from family-owned and occupied places to more commercial enterprises that summer places need housing for quite so many people who are NOT on vacation. It was the only way I got to be there, though, and I was grateful for both the chance to work and the place to live.

The second thing that works out pretty darned quickly is that many of the "affordable" places are occupied not by earnest, honest worker bees, but by enterprising cheapskates who like to vacation with rich folks without paying for amenities they can't afford.  It is no difficult task to build something more efficient than a 5000 square foot shingle style cottage, but making sure the new house stays out of the hands of the big house builder's grandchildren is more tricky. Of course, more than one robber baron's descendant is mowing and rowing for the nouveau riche these days.  New England, especially Faux rural New England, has been fascinated by this kind of social engineering for a while.   Most of the people I know aren't too excited about the "maintenance" involved with a Clivus Multrum.

Let's see- a bunch of little houses really close together where you can't get a car in, without flushing toilets... No, make that a bunch of more or less identical "affordable housing units" packed densely. Around here they call those trailer parks.

Chacun a son gout, I reckon.

England's roundabouts show more thought than most of our cloverleafs (cloverleaves?) on interstate highways. Slightly off-tppoc, I know, but...

However, the premise reminds of Seaside, Florida, and similar communities where all we've learned about hurricanes, for example (it's smack-dab on the water), and other things that plague cities, was included in plans -- as well as a deliberate mix of houses small and large, and shops 'twixt and among them.  On one of my visits (writers' conference), a hurricane had flattened everything for miles around, including PNAMA cITY, WHERE NORMALLY ONE LANDS oops sorry font changed.  But developers and planners were thrilled because not ne board -- even on houses-in-progress, in Seaside was damaged in the least. A South Carolina town is building one, and I've heard of a few elsewhere.

Peter Lake, I know another song about the road, not as old as Bilbo's, but not so bad:

...It's Main Street after midnight, just like it was before

21 months later at the local grocery store

Sherry buys a paper and a cold six pack of beer

The headlines read that Sonny is goin to the chair

She pulls back into Main Street in her new Mercedes Benz

The road goes on forever and the party never ends

(Robert Earl Keen, the road goes on forever [and  the party never ends] )

The rest of it is a little more uplifting and less nasty about who wins and who loses, but, hey, it's just a song...

The moment is still right to kick trailer parks again...

Most of the people who retire in Florida
Are wrinkled and they lean on a crutch
And mobile homes are covering the Keys
I hate those bastards so much
I wish a summer squall would blow them all
Away back to fantasy land
They're ugly and square
They don't belong there
They were much better as beer cans. James Buffett

Greetings Ya'll:  How are a Texas Tornado And A Tennessee divorce the same?

Either way, somebody's gonna lose a trailer.

Trailer life:  You've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.

Trask, while I would hardly call the cohousing project a trailer park, I could laud my friend Abrams but wont here now, his publications could afford him any number of places on the Vineyard.  But you touch on something which has been problematic to planners and founders of utopian communities for years.  What does one do with the shit?  The clivus is a problem to certain owners.  A few years ago I was working on a house on Canadaigua Lake in NY, where lakefront property values are second only to Lake Tahoe.  One portion of the project involved a ridiculously expensive septic system which pumped up to a series of leachfields protected by plantings and retaining walls.  One had to keep the waste out of the lake, where the water system was.  Ironically the house is occupied about 5 weeks a year, or was at that point.  Up the road, I worked on another house, in the midst of what is nicely known as Cottage City, little lots, cottages and a few trailers on the upper lots, now monster houses on the lakefront lots.  No tornadoes yet, and last I checked you can still get a lot in Cottage City for less than 10 grand, just not sure you can build on it, but if you move your trailer on at night....

The crazy part is there is a Mennonite community living between the two lakes and they just add to the color. 

Un H,

You know I was just kidding about trailers.  I can't speak for the rest of those commentators, though. Of course, family compounds often resemble the co-housing project- several sleeping cabins, but one big house for meals, parties, etc.  Even if Compound is too grand a word ( not in Kennedy and Bush territory) you sometimes will have a big house and then a bunkhouse for the grandchildren, etc.  But these things tend to be vacation houses- like the pricey project you referred to above.

The funny thing is, you can build a lake if you really want one, but the OCEAN, now that is another story. I am just old enough and where I live is just backward enough, that people I know actually did own beachfront houses ( cracker boxes, mostly) that sat vacant three quarters of the year and had light showing through gaps in the floor. I still know a few folks with beach houses, though more and more share one and it is likely to be "at" the beach, but not on it.  If there is an urban area anywhere close, you can bet they have neighbors who live there all of the time.  And forget about shabby chic architecture. The property values just won't accommodate it any more.

 When it comes down to living in  a place all of the time, my own prejudice is in favor of plain old single-family-residential, preferably with more land than I need and more space than I ought to want.  I could manage with 800 square feet, so long as I got a warehouse, a studio and an attic... Oh, yeah. and a couple of garage spaces. That is why I am not likely to become an urban dweller any time soon.

 By the way, Fine Homebuilding, just like Fine Woodworking, is only a half step away from porn, it's so pretty. 

Oh, and about the shite, I have friends who refer to the Sterling Silver and Privy Years in these parts.   Mercifully THAT was before my time...

We just got back from delivering the last of our holiday guests to the airport.

It is very quiet here- too quiet.

Peter Lake,

We missed the donder & blitz, settling for a treacherous layer of ice that has made everything flat very risky and screwed up the dog park until further notice.

Certainly has been a quiet day at Lake Woebegon. Did someone mention porn?

Stoney, in my household if you're shopping for boats then you're surfing the "boat porn". I love boat porn. So many shapely hulls to oogle, and just look at those transoms, and I swear that's a working jib. WORKING.

Laughing Trask, yes, FH, FWW and all the rest fo the Taunton publications are porn for those of us only somewhat talented with our hands.  Part of my inheritence is a complete set of Fine Woodworking from issue one till....I have orders to get them out of the garage at the folks house but they wont fit in our little condo here.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a summer home with an outhouse and well house.  It was adirondack life at its best or so it seemed.  That changed at some point with indoor plumbing being installed.  There may be a picture of the place in the photo section.  It was a good southern adirondack camp, unlike a friend's high peaks place, but still a series of buildings, just a different sequence.  The garages (which held the outhouse) were the biggest building with and oil house and then the main house.  My brothers and I put up a few adjunct structures to escape in.  The tree house, the sleeping house etc.  A firetruck from 1930 kept us safe from forest fires and the creek threw out trout.

I went back up there a few years ago and saw a trailer pretty much sitting where it was towed, door open and a tv lighting the place and winter was a commin in.  This summer I took my parents back to the camp and fortunately the trailer was gone.  We have earthquakes and serious snow in the Adirondacks, no hurricanes.

OK Ok, I was just trying to add some humor...just kidding about the trailers.  Boats:  boats are kind of like floating trailers.

Boats. Risk. Bah!!! The Old One counted out my days long ago and worrying about when they'll end won't add a single one to their number.

There are lots of boats that seem to adhere to a "trailer" ethic. They are called "Clorox Bottles" and other derisive names. Hateful things, plastic boats with all the soul and breeding of a dixie cup. Blech.

Ahh, but there are works of art to be found. I''m hunting down one of those.

Isles:  I'm treading lightly over the boat topic.  We will have to discuss that at another time.  Check out Pacific Seacraft.  Built here in NC.  Double enders.  37'  Bluewater.

Got one already! But from when they were built in Ventura.

Yeh, I thought that's what your photo was.  Very nice.  Boats, could not live without one (or a few).

Willie T., you've just described to perfection the beach houses we rented every summer of my growing up years: Wooden, up high on stilts (you were allowed to play under the house in the hottest hours).  Screened porch wrapped-around, with cots and lounges everywhere inside and out. Almost always a family's beach cottage, rented out when they weren't using it. 

If you know where to look you find them still, but in too many places those cottages have been replaced by sky-high condos in front of which people (from far away; observe license plates) DRIVE ON THE BEACH!  In fairness, for that's against the law in my and neighboring states, I should say I've seen that only in Florida; no higher up the coast.  Tiretread-marks erase delicate sandpiper tracings; designer-"playsuited" women with golf-tan-wrinkled skin and hair so coifed and sprayed it is unmoving in the beach wind stroll. 

Certain residents got smart early, declaring the old sections 'historic," forbidding signboards; I'm told the Vineyard and like places have done the same, and I hope it's true.  Hereabouts, one can still cross the road from the houses left by the last hurricane, and walk out on the beach even at high tide: On many beaches sand was hauled in following bad hurricanes (such as Hugo, which nigh destroyed Charleston-area islands' beaches), and some stout souls have rebuilt their wooden houses on the beach side (where allowed; cutting down erosion is topmost) of the dunes; houses across the road inland weren't as badly ravaged. 

Pawley's Island SC is a fine example of looking ahead, and it has also barrier islands protecting it to a degree: As you leave the causeway and drive onto Pawley's the first thing you see amongst heavy vegetation is a subtle sign indicating the island is a national historic landmark. 

Where barrier islands are located has much to do with damage sustained -- or not -- by a coastline, and Folly Beach, which suffered badly, is the barrier for that part of Charleston -- of which, a singular thing: Enormous centuries-old houses right on The Battery in downtown Charleston have much less damage than newer subdivision houses, out from the city, near the ocean and not.  Clearly, our ancestors knew a little something about the ocean's potential wrath; knew, too, to build Widows' Walks atop those houses.

Soon after Hurricane Hugo, I walked Folly Beach, which I've long known well, writing an essay.  In the aftermath of such devastation you might expect to see few people, but everyone was out, working on his house; hauling away in trucks pieces no longer usable, having been tossed four house-lengths, say, down the beach.  Helping each other, cheerful, talkative, asking why I was scribbling in a notebook.  Senses of humor intact.... 

Whistling "The Merry Widow Waltz" as he worked in his yard, which contained shards of glass, soaked furniture, broken wood, not even the shell of his house, erected a sign:  "Yard of the Month."

PS oops, my final sentence should read "...the shell of his house, A MAN HAD erected a sign: "Yard of the Month."  Now, that makes better sense.  Sorry

Willie Trask, you've again touched my mind: Among my favorite contemporary writers is John Updike, among whose wonderful, wise words is, "...all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds."

Coyotemike, my town is full of the sort of intersections you describe. Not in my field atall, but I've observed it especially in very old towns and cities:  This city was laid out in neat squares by George Oglethorpe (he obviously loved squares, for so did he design all the Queen sent him here to build).  The way of people, though is often happenstance or convenience, so the city grows, with oddities that bedevil you and me. I love the drunken monkey part, by the way: most original phrase in today's comments....

we have several such puzzles, including five streets bearing the same name, all in the same neighborhood and none connects to another.

Savannah was also laid out so (oglethorpe again), and three centuries later a wealthy banker saw Tourist Possibilities, and spent millions re-making downtown as originally it was.