Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

The Irish Times - Monday, July 23, 2012

FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor

A FIRM of Scottish architects has picked up the top prize in a competition for the design of a new 1,000-student post-primary school in Dublin, beating some of Irelands leading architects.

The contest, organised by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, attracted the highest number of entries for a design competition here, with 154 submissions including 43 international entries from 14 countries.

The winning scheme by Ayr-based ARPL Architects is to be developed on a site owned by the Department of Education in Kingswood, Tallaght.

The Scottish firm will manage its construction with a view to the school opening in late August 2017.

Minister for Education Ruair Quinn said the wide interest in the competition is a reflection of the importance of quality design of schools. But the high number of entries also reflects the desperate need of Irish architects for new work to keep going.

Joint second place was shared by Dublin-based de Blacam and Meagher Architects and the Coady Partnership.

It is expected that they will be commissioned to design other schools for sites owned by the department as funding becomes available.

Others shortlisted to take part in the second and final stage of the competition were all Dublin-based: Grafton Architects, Michael Kelly Architect and BDP.

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Scottish firm's design chosen for 1,000-pupil Tallaght school

Restaurant owners and diners are calling on the City of Edmonton to make it easier for businesses to set up outdoor patios.

A little bit over a year now that we've tried to get the patio, said Daniel Braun, owner of Tres Carnales Taqueria on Rice Howard Way.

We were really hopeful that we would get it for this summer but unfortunately it didn't.

Braun said he was originally supposed to get a decision on putting a patio on the sidewalk outside his restaurant in May. That date was pushed back to June and then eventually into September.

Its a frustration that is shared by other business owners.

Gill Tataev, who opened his Crepe Symphony Cafe on the same street, was well aware of the difficulties in getting a patio when he opened his business four months ago.

After I heard what they went through it kind of discouraged me to even try, he said.

Customers are also complaining about the long wait for patios.

Friday night, some of Brauns regulars set up lawn chairs on Rice Howard Way, creating their own patios outside the restaurant to protest the citys approach.

We'd really just like to bring this issue to the forefront. Strike while the iron is hot, said Leslie Bush, who helped organize the protest.

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Restaurants fed up with patio process

Written by The Herald Saturday, 21 July 2012 00:00

Summertime presents the return of several seasonal fire hazards as activities shifting outdoors, according to Ted Pisciotta, assistant chief of Shelton Fire Prevention. Among the most common involve cooking grills, wooden decks, and use of gasoline and other flammable liquids.

Here are some fire prevention tips:

Locate grills and any propane tanks/cylinders a safe distance from buildings, wooden decks and other combustibles. Never store propane indoors.

Check propane gas hose connection is tight and check hoses carefully for leaks. Applying soapy water to the hoses will easily and safely reveal any leaks.

Inspect and clean tubes and burner of gas grills where spiders and small insects may make nests or webs. This could lead to a fire. Frequent inspection and cleaning is typically necessary before use.

Only use charcoal starter fluids designed for grills and do not add fluid after coals have been lit.

Eliminate dry leaves, combustible storage or other debris from beneath wood or plastic constructed decks. Avoid putting trash and other combustible materials on the deck.

Avoid smoking on a wood deck. If you permit smoking, use suitable disposal containers/ashtrays. Never use paper or plastic cups, napkins etc.

Store gasoline and other flammable liquids in a building separate from the house or place of residence, such as a secured shed located a distance from the main structure. Never store such liquids or propane cylinders within and attached garage or basement. Always keep out of reach from children.

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Fire safety tips for the summer

FLORENCE, Ala. (WAAY)- Annette Floyd and Wanda Mullins sit on their front porches and visit every day. Thursday night during their visit, they heard something they never expected to hear in their usually quiet neighborhood.

"I said he had a gun, but I didn't see the gun," said Mullins. "I just had a gut feeling that, that's what he was reaching for. He pulled something out and there was a pop pop and that's all I heard."

"When she hollered he's got a gun, we started running for inside," said Floyd. "It was very scary."

Shortly after, Florence police responded to the call at the corner of Central Avenue and Conner Street. When officers arrived, they found 50 year old Jerry Ivey shot to death in his truck in the middle of the road.

Ivey's sister was a passenger in the truck with him but was not injured.

Police said that less than hour later, Ivey's first cousin 42 year old Raymond Clemmons turned himself in for shooting Ivey in the chest.

Clemmons has since been charged with murder.

"These two were good friends for many years and had grown up around each other, so it's a troubling time for both of these families," said Florence Police Chief Ron Tyler.

"It's certainly a tragedy for the Clemmons and the Ivey family," said Tyler. "All of them being related as they are, you would hope that family members could sit down in a calm and rational manner and settle those differences in a different way. We certainly wouldn't want it to lead to this type of violence."

Clemmons is being held in the Lauderdale County Jail.

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Muscle Shoals man behind bars after late night shooting

LOS ANGELES After living in what they had thought was their dream house six bedrooms, five bathrooms, 3,900 square feet in Ojai, Calif., complete with orange orchard and pool Wanda Weller Sakai and Kurtis Sakai found themselves wanting something different. Something less.

"We realized we'd rather downsize to something smaller and more humble and use whatever money we had left over to make something nice for ourselves," Kurtis said.

"One of the wake-up calls was seeing how much time and money I had to spend on water, property taxes, utilities and landscaping," he said, adding that the monthly water bill in summer was $700. "I started to think that, for the long haul, it didn't make sense to be in a house that big."

So they sold the house in Southern California and bought a 1,700-square-foot, 1971 ranch-house fixer nearby at the foot of Los Padres National Forest.

Working with architect Darwin McCredie, the couple created what McCredie calls "a transparent house" by adding 6-foot-wide glass sliders to every room. McCredie also added a master suite and office and rearranged rooms inside the home's original footprint.

The gabled roof of the garage was altered into a streamlined box, the bookend to the new office for Kurtis Sakai at the other end of the house.

Covered porches in front and in back, added to combat the Ojai sun, play out as a sort of Modernist take on the hacienda.

"That is what connects all the rooms in the house and creates outdoor rooms," McCredie said. "If you have a boring house, or even an ugly house, then the porch and the columns become the architecture."

A new retaining wall in the front yard "gives the house a strong base," McCredie said, and provides more flat, functional land. Sakai installed drought-tolerant plants that he said take just about 30 minutes a week to maintain.

Inside, the home's warm Modernism is courtesy of Wanda Weller Sakai, formerly director of design for Patagonia, now a fashion instructor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and owner of the Modern Folk Living boutique in Ojai.

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Less home closer to nature is more

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A monarch butterfly samples a flowering plant in Joey Cresta's yard.Joey Cresta photo

The countertops are finally here; we'll be installing them today. But I'll write about that adventure after we get it done.

This week, I wanted to step outside our home and highlight our wonderful yard. Our house sits on 0.6 acres of land, which feels like plenty to me, especially when I have to mow the grass.

Our yard is one of the things that makes me feel most fortunate about where we live. The previous owner conceded to us he was never much of a handyman around the house, but he clearly had some of the greenest thumbs known to man. After moving in during the cold, bleak days of late March and early April, we slowly watched our property blossom into a display of nature's delicate beauty.

It is the "delicate" part that has me a bit worried, to be honest. On more than one occasion, I've thought to myself, "Am I going to ruin this?" I don't know much about caring for flora, and I'd be devastated if next spring the plant life didn't come back because of something we neglected to do.

But for now, I continue to marvel at and be surprised by what grows up during the year. We always knew we had the massive rhododendron bushes surrounding our house; you couldn't miss those. Their pink flowers bloomed earlier this year and have since passed us by. We really want to trim the bushes back now, because at around 13 feet high, they have sort of taken over the front of the house.

As time passed, more flowers continued to sprout up in the multiple gardens scattered around the property: orange day lilies, exquisite pink peonies, hydrangeas, lilacs and all sorts of other flowers I couldn't possibly identify without doing some research. The life they bring to our yard is palpable.

Even better than the flowers are some of the other surprises we've come across in our four short months here. First, we found the rhubarb patch out back. My fiancee has already tried her hand at making some delicious strawberry rhubarb jam. Then came the strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. As time passes, we find new treats all the time.

I feel really fortunate to have these plants growing in my backyard. What a serendipitous thing that, through no effort of my own, my gardens produce a delicious bounty for us to enjoy and share with family and friends.

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Former owner's green thumb appreciated

The graceful, undulating design of London's Aquatic Center has a backbone of steel weighing more than 3,000 tons.

Zaha Hadid Architects

Inside, is a pool. *The* pool, really, the London Aquatic Center, where, beginning next Saturday, the best swimmers in the world will compete for those life-defining demarcations: gold, silver, and bronze.

Outside, it's an undulating wave of aluminum, supported by a structure of Red Lauro timber and more than 3,000 tons of steel. The shape -- "inspired by the fluid geometry of water in motion," according to Zaha Hadid Architects -- arches over three pools (one for diving, one for racing, and one for training) and some 2,500 seats. Two structural appendages will provide an additional 15,000 seats for the summer's games, and will then be dismantled, leaving behind the "legacy building" -- the permanent structure whose un-Olympic size should prove easier for London to maintain. It is the highest-capacity of the venues during the Olympics; it will reduce to the lowest.

The Olympic set-up:

Legacy mode:

The building's construction required the demolition of 11 industrial building and the removal of 160,000 metric tons of soil. (Also, strange but awesome factlet: According to ZHA, four skeletons from a pre-historical settlement were discovered during the excavation for the building's foundation.)

But what makes the building iconic is the roof, whose graceful, swooping curves belies the rugged interior, the massive frame of steel, held together with some 70,000 bolts. The whole thing is supported on only three points -- a wall at the south end and two concrete pillars at the north, and shaped by 10 north-south steel trusses. "The steelwork itself describes the architectural geometry -- loosely," Glenn Moorley, Zaha Hadid's project leader for the center explained to me.

Zaha Hadid Architects

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Smooth as Water, Strong as Steel: The Undulating Roof of London's Olympic Pool

Sutter Roofing exec to head state group

SARASOTA -- Brad Sutter, executive vice president of Sutter Roofing, has been inducted as the 91st president of the Florida Roofing, Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors Association.

The ceremony took place during the organizations's 90th convention in Orlando. Stephen Sutter, Brad's father and 80th president of the Florida roofing group, officiated his son's installation as an officer.

During his term, Brad Sutter will be focusing on industry specific building code, governmental, and regulatory issues that will affect roofing contractors.

Big Jim Self Storage sold to Storage Quest

BRADENTON -- Big Jim Self Storage, a 90,964-square foot self-storage facility at 6403 State Road 64 E. in Bradenton, was sold by Big Jim III, LLC to Storage Quest, LLC. Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services handled the sale.

The property, located on 6.03 acres of land, consists of 626 storage units.

Star2Star Communications debuts new devices

SARASOTA -- Star2Star Communications is offering three new StarBox Internet Communications Appliances, a new call recording feature, and a new call recording archive service.

For long-term storage of call recordings, Star2Star also is offering a recording archive service. The cloud-based service provides secure archival storage of call recordings.

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Sutter Roofing official named as president of state group

KUANTAN: The Kuantan Municipal Council (MPK) will have to look for alternative sources of funding to build more retaining walls along Sungai Galing.

Councillor Andy Chiew said he had been informed by the state Irrigation and Drainage Department (JPS) that it did not have the allocation to build additional walls to stop erosion by the river bank.

We have received numerous complaints from the public who are quite upset with the state of the river bank. Unfortunately, the department is short of funds to continue building morewalls. Therefore, we will try to come up with the allocation through otherchannels, he said after inspecting a completed retention wall near Jalan Selamat here recently.

Chiew added that the problem would hopefully be settled by this year.

Also present were his fellow councillors Ngoh Tian Meng, Choo Kay Boon, Tan Kee Sung and Pang Ching Chay.

The MPK officials later inspected the overgrown under brush in the drains at Lorong Tok Sira 70 and Lorong Air Putih 115.

Ngoh said JPS had been given a month to clear up the undergrowth in both areas.

Trimming the bushes will be a temporary measure while we work out a budget to put in U-drains, he said.

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Funding needed to build retaining wall

For the architects working on Braseltons proposed town green, the possibilities of mixing leisure with business in a new downtown park will come at the guidance of public comments.

Wed like to know the things and types of improvements that you would like to see and let us figure out how to make those things work because thats what we do best, said Steve Provost of the planning and landscape architectural firm jB+a.

Braselton plans to build a new park called its town green in the heart of downtown in front of the Braselton Brothers Store. The town green will be located in the former roadbed of Ga. Hwy. 124 (Davis Street), which was recently shifted to the rear of the town-owned store.

At this point, there is no design for the town green and architects told the Braselton Downtown Development Authority on Thursday that it isnt presenting any plans yet. Instead, the two firms are seeking public comments on what folks want in the space before design work starts.

We want this to become a central point, a gathering point (and) a nice focal point for the community to gather and to have festivals and meet in small groups or big groups, Provost said. But also, its critical that it be a place that Braselton can do business.

In the near decade since the town green concept was initially proposed, Braselton officials have generally looked to Suwanee Town Center Park as a model. That park features an interactive water fountain that has been a big draw for families, along with an amphitheater and nearby shops.

The Atlanta-based firm jB+a designed the Suwanee Town Center Park and its interactive water fountain.

Provost said in his experience, he has learned that the most successful public places allow people to stroll, play, sit, dine, shop and play games. They may also feature facilities for public showings of movies, concerts and festivals.

If we can provide 10 different things to do for people in that space, then youre going to have a variety people who are coming in and out of the space all of the time, he said. And the more people you have in and out, the safer your space is because youve got eyes out seeing whats going on.

However, the challenge for the architects will be designing a town green that not only draws visitors to its park, but also allows the surrounding businesses to function.

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Architects start initial work on town green