Scantlings

I just watched the most amazing TV show about what the folks on Fogo Island are doing to rebuild their island. A woman from my industry came from this tiny island (pop 2,700), she made a bundle and is now trying to rebuild the place. We were really impressed and may add it to the list of places we want to visit.

BeauV wrote:I just watched the most amazing TV show about what the folks on Fogo Island are doing to rebuild their island. A woman from my industry came from this tiny island (pop 2,700), she made a bundle and is now trying to rebuild the place. We were really impressed and may add it to the list of places we want to visit.

Would that be Zita Cobb? She was our CFO at JDS Uniphase. Smart lady.

Charlie wrote:

BeauV wrote:I just watched the most amazing TV show about what the folks on Fogo Island are doing to rebuild their island. A woman from my industry came from this tiny island (pop 2,700), she made a bundle and is now trying to rebuild the place. We were really impressed and may add it to the list of places we want to visit.

Would that be Zita Cobb? She was our CFO at JDS Uniphase. Smart lady.

Yup, Zita Cobb it is. I have never bumped into her; but have a number of friends and x-partners who think the world of her. She certainly comes off great in the documentary about Fogo and what she's doing to help rebuild her home island. Quite the project!

I’ll have to check out the doc.

Zita was a big part of why JDS Fitel was a success. She was the business mind amidst the bunch of (very eccentric) engineers who were the leadership team. I first met her when we did due diligence on them for the merger, and she was very credible. Fit in well with us Uniphase folks.

Charlie wrote:I’ll have to check out the doc.

Zita was a big part of why JDS Fitel was a success. She was the business mind amidst the bunch of (very eccentric) engineers who were the leadership team. I first met her when we did due diligence on them for the merger, and she was very credible. Fit in well with us Uniphase folks.

I'm not at all surprised judging by the way she presented herself in this video. My Admiral and I are all pumped up to go visit Fogo Island

I read a few article about this a few years ago when she got started on this. Just Google her name you quite a few links will come up, such as this:

https://www.nationalgeographiclodges.co ... ucelKQvyUl

Yes, we've been googling since seeing the article. What I was most impressed by in the mini-documentary is that she has set up a scholarship program and a micro-finance organization. She is basically re-building this island's culture after the crash of the Cod fishing industry. My best wishes are with her, and I think it's a wonderful thing to do once you have enough money that you want to use it for "good stuff".

Our neighbors Paul and Debi Brainerd (he was the founder of Aldus) bought an entire small town on the South Island of New Zealand saving it from collapse.
Good people who are doing great things with their cyber-wealth. (Nice people too.)

So we hired a new VP of sales and I saw on his resume he went to university in the Maritimes. Turns out he's Newfie who's father was ran a big cod fisher.

It was an ugly day when he told his dad that he wasn't going to take over the boat and was going to go away to school instead. But even when the fishing was going on, those outports felt really, really, remote. No place a motivated teenager would want to stay.

I don't see why they can't just start supplying the Japanese with Fogo fish instead of cod.


(sorry)

Architectural rant....man...I dunno about that inn. I guess it's supposed to in some way "channel" the outport stage? I get the cantilever and poles. But it has absolutely zero intrinsic connection to the overall cultural look and feel of Newfoundland. Unless it's supposed to be a cross between a stage and an iceberg. That, I can see. Maybe.

In any case, not a fan.

"Humans live here."

Tim,

I'm not a fan of that sort of architecture either - it really does NOT fit in with the surroundings or anything I like. My understanding is that she is trying to shake the place up, make the locals as well as the guests feel that the little island is moving into the current century. Her idea of "preservation" doesn't mean building stuff that looks like the old stuff.

That said, I hate almost all modern architecture since the brutalist and Bauhaus folks showed up. Obviously, I live in a 1850s style home and sail a 1925 style boat.

BeauV wrote:Tim,

I'm not a fan of that sort of architecture either - it really does NOT fit in with the surroundings or anything I like. My understanding is that she is trying to shake the place up, make the locals as well as the guests feel that the little island is moving into the current century. Her idea of "preservation" doesn't mean building stuff that looks like the old stuff.

That said, I hate almost all modern architecture since the brutalist and Bauhaus folks showed up. Obviously, I live in a 1850s style home and sail a 1925 style boat.

Our mid-century modern.

Keith, I like Eichler's work in CA (I don't know who did your place) and the sort of architecture your place reflects. What I don't like are the brutal boxes like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Trellick_Tower2.jpg/1024px-Trellick_Tower2.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Boston_city_hall.jpg/2560px-Boston_city_hall.jpg

And I really find the Bauhaus stuff to be silly and nonfictional in many ways. I have about half a dozen friends who live in these sorts of places and every single one of them reports water leaks.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Bauhaus-Dessau_Wohnheim_Balkone.jpg/1280px-Bauhaus-Dessau_Wohnheim_Balkone.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Bauhaus_Chemnitz_hb.JPG

Beau, I agree with you. I studied math in a building like that on the UMass campus that was built and designed in the 70s.

Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus founder, is well known around here as he moved from Germany to teach at Harvard. Here's the house he designed and lived in located in the town next to mine.



Not inspiring to my eye. Our house is one of the better designs by Henry Hoover, whose designs in this area actually predated Gropius though Gropius got all the glory for "popularizing mid-century modern design."

With our place I like use of natural materials and its extreme sensitivity to the site. It faces south and has an innovative "passive solar" design. Really effective. Basically an overhang that together with leaf-bearing trees shade the sun in the summer and not in the winter when the sun is low and the leaves fall. Here's a bit about the house.

https://www.flavinarchitects.com/residential/sculpted-land

Keith,

I love the way you house flows and fits on the site. Due to site restrictions (no footprint expansion or change) we are stuck with how to keep to a budget without ending up with a basic mid-Atlantic colonial look. So far, attempts to get a study set of drawings we like have not been successful. We have pushed back the house part for a year while we work it. Limited base of architects locally and DC/Annapolis based ones serve a more well heeled market that would make us the highest priced house in the neighborhood by far. Not our desired outcome from neighborhood or budget considerations.

Keith, those pictures of your house are just: WOW!! In the Palo Alto area there is an ocean of Eichler houses that some folks have put back the way he designed them. I think you'd really enjoy them. They are clean design, easy to live in, and well engineered (which I obviously don't think the Bauhaus places are). I hadn't realized until recently that he wasn't primarily an architect. He was a land developer. (History Here) I do like his stuff, and it's perfect for the benign climate of Palo Alto, CA.



The other "mid-century modern designer I really love is Cliff May. He did the headquarters of Saga Foods (if you went to a college in the US in the 70s and 80s you probably got fed by Saga). He also did the headquarters buildings for Sunset Magazine. Really an amazing feel of modern, warm, and livable.






Larry, I hear you about fitting in with the neighborhood. One of our goals with our old house is to return it to "fitting in". We also don't want to look like we're wearing our back account balance on the outside of the home. We're lucky here. Within reason, we can do most anything we want to the place without needing approval from the government. That said, treating the house like it is an antique from 1929 and returning it to the original "feel" has allowed us to do whatever else we wanted without complaints. They've even given us a plaque that'll tell the world that this is some sort of old and "important" house. (face-in-palm)

Thanks for the compliment, Larry.

Beau, until we lived in our place I never spoke of "modern" and "warm and livable" in the same breath but it can happen.