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Architecture - Blog Posts
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Cranberry Pavilion in Camps Bay by @wright_architects
Get Inspired, visit www.myhouseidea.com
i feel like we don't appreciate these days how much the twin towers sucked, like, design-wise
they were contemporarily hated for just being these giant grey monoliths
like there probably could've been an easier way to get rid of them, but they probably needed to go either way
I visited this beautiful cathedral today
''Music conveys feelings that words are not enough to the heart...:)🎶
“Kindness is like snow. If beautifies everything it covers.”
惠山古镇 huishan guzhen, wuxi, jiangsu province by ooooooops202002
New years in Stephansplatz🥂
Vienna, Austria | evgeniya_datukishvili
The amount of stress I would live with daily if this was my bed would be astronomical.
GOOD MORNING LIFE 🌲🌴🌿☀️
Stormy is way too dramatic lol 😂💕
Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta detta I Gesuiti, one of Venice’s hidden treasures
Architecture academia vibes
My name is Aisha,
a mother of eight children. I write to you as I struggle to protect them from hunger, cold, and the death that follows us every moment. We are living in the heart of hell—under relentless bombing, without shelter, without food, without medicine. War has taken everything from us, even our dreams.
My daughter lost her husband—he was martyred before her eyes by the Israeli army, leaving her child an orphan before he could even speak his first words. Our home, the only place that once gave us safety, has been completely destroyed. Now, we have nothing but the sky raining fire upon us and the ground that can barely bear our pain.
My youngest child has a sebaceous cyst near his ear and needs urgent surgery, but how can I provide him with treatment when we don’t even have food to eat? How can I save my children from hunger and illness when I have nothing left but my voice to plead for help?
Help us… Save my children… Do not leave us to die.
Please, do not leave us alone in this suffering. Any help, no matter how small, could save my children’s lives. Your donation could give them a chance to survive this nightmare we live in every day.
#Donat my babey
#Help_Us
Druid Heights: Northern California Legacy
Go north of San Francisco, through the woods of Marin, up the southern side of Mount Tam, and you may find what remains of Druid Heights. This is the name of the bohemian community that settled there in 1954, led by poet Elsa Gidlow. Gidlow was best known for On a Grey Thread, thought to be the first book of openly lesbian love poetry published in North America. Initially envisioned as a secluded retreat, Druid Heights quickly attracted other trailblazers: Beats like Allen Ginsburg, queer radicals, women’s liberation activists who came to socialize or get away from socializing. For many, it was a place to party and listen to music: The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and the Eagles all played there. A few made it their home, like philosopher Alan Watts who moved there in 1971, had a library built, and died soon after. The countercultural figures who visited this fabled five acres remain in popular memory. The buildings they stayed in have had a more precarious history.
These were designed by Roger Somers, a carpenter-turned-architect who with his white beard and maharishi clothing looked somewhat like a druid himself. A Somers house is wooden and seemingly inspired by Indonesian batak houses, Japanese stone gardens, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian fancies, and The Hobbit. They made perfect sense, but probably only if you were on any number of drugs at any number of parties that made the retreat infamous.
The party lasted long after Druid Heights’ heyday—lasted probably until 2001, when Somers died in his hot tub on site. It was definitely over by 2006 after the National Parks Service, which had used eminent domain to seize the land in 1977, evicted all residents who did not have permanent leases. Since then, the forest has slowly reclaimed its territory, and only the occupied buildings are in sound condition.
The Parks Service has shown little interest in maintaining what is left. In 2017, a campaign was launched to save the Heights, to little effect; and the few remaining residents are in their 80s. Is this a fitting end? Watts once wrote: "What makes this world a beautiful experience is the impermanence and mutability of all things.“ Druid Heights was based on spontaneity, anarchism, improvisation—a preservation society is the opposite of this. In a culture of constant growth and productivity, one in which we expect all things to remain available at all times, to let the Heights decay into the past is perhaps the most countercultural action to take. But the Heights also represents an authenticity rare in a radically changed Bay Area that has allowed its cultural heritage to vanish or corporatize; perhaps then the most subversive act is to save it, and to save it for the same reasons we want to save the redwoods that surround it: because it is unique, because it is there, because places like it can’t grow just anywhere and might never come again.
Elsa Gidlow in her shoji room.
Gidlow and Watts in the gardens of Druid Heights.
Gidlow in her bedroom surrounded by her books.
The bird cries,
it sails through the skies as its flock demands,
and skims the seas bustling with life,
The bird flies,
it whisks past windows as whimsy commands,
and holds the suns hands,
when she reaches high up above all lands,
The bird stands,
it will lay with its feather,
when it finds the promised land it will rest forever,
The bird lands,
It understands,
It lays down in man-made sand,
The bird cries.
The guiding light is gone
Torii gates are very beautiful and interesting. Like this one which at high tide can be called the floating Torii gate and is centuries old. People knew their stuff back then.
As you sit behind your screen, frustrated with boredom or slow contact, 😶😐
My child and I in Gaza are trying to survive.
But my child and I need the necessary medicines because my child was born with a caesarean section.
My child and I need the necessary treatment 💉💊
Especially my child needs healthy milk 🍼
My friend, I can't move because of the caesarean section with which I gave birth to my child while she was in a tent ⛺️
We live under a relentless bombardment, and we sleep in fear, 😰
And we wake up counting who is still alive. For a year and a half, we were killed, displaced and forgotten. Please - don't look away. Share our story.
Donate if you can.
Helping you can mean survival for a family like mine.
I’ve never heard of this place before, but it is gorgeous!!
Far too many pics of the Palais Garnier (Part Two!)
In October of 2022, I had the extraordinary experience of getting to complete an 15+ year old dream of mine to visit the Palais Garnier. I took a metric fuckton of pictures and now I want to share them with you all, the PotO community!
Before I start dumping, a few things:
Please reblog this post. I usually don’t post a lot, therefore I don’t have a big following. I’d really appreciate people sharing these as much as they can. When I was a dumb kid in ye olden days of the internet, finding a post like this was the sort of thing I would have been hyped up on for weeks. Help spread that kind of joy!
Feel free to use these photos for any sorts of graphics, artistic reference or any other fandom related projects, as long as it’s not for profit. Please just credit me in some way. In fact, I'd love to be tagged to see whatever creations come from sharing all this!
This is part two, which will be photos of the interior. While there, I also took a tour, Mysteries of the Palais Garnier. I'll share a lot of the things I learned throughout the post and try to provide as much context as I can.
Part one, the exterior images can be found HERE.
Upon leaving the designated tour office area, we entered this large, circular room where our tour began. Giant mirrors lined the walls and one of my companions immediately remarked that she felt as though someone was watching her from behind them.
On the ceiling there was this intricate pattern. We learned that this was Charles Garnier's "signature". He was concerned that at some point in time, his name would be forgotten and he would no longer be remembered as the architect of the Opera. If you look closely, his name is intertwined in the design, as well as the years of the building's construction.
There are salamanders hidden throughout the building as they were said to ward off devastating fires. It was very common for theaters to burn down, then. In fact, the construction of the Garnier was somewhat rushed in the last few years because the company's previous theater, Salle le Peletier burned to the ground in 1873. The Garnier opened in 1875.
We learned in our tour that these cracks on the steps were the result of a great tragedy. A group of ballerinas had been exploring the roof when the glass on the large window above cracked. One ballerina fell through the window and met her demise on the steps below.
With all these pictures of doors to the private boxes, you're probably wondering, "Hey Lotus, what about the most important one?" I got you, boo.
PART 1 (exterior) | PART 2 (here!) | PART 3 (foyer) | PART 4 (soon!)
