… or how to get around the McMansion ordinance and its hatred towards much needed duplexes and still have cool design.Notice how the articulation makes the building seem to move and how the shared wall and the front are broken up and shifted to prevent a massive look.

I know you’ve been dying to see the Wolfe Den and get a tour… well… this weekend is the AIA Homes tour and the Wolfe Den is one of the selected homes. MJ and many gorgeous, young, and talented docents will be available all weekend to answer your burning questions about this fabulous home that has already won all local and state awards. It has been published in Dwell and reviewed in the contemporist.

To find out all about it go to the AIA homes Tour site; this site, the brochure, poster and all other marketing materials have been designed this year by our incomparable friends at FODA studio.
 

Our slideshow is in the front page of Dwell. On the print version, we are in the “Houses we Love” section. Coolness. I love, love Dwell… and they are awesome to deal with, on top of it.

We have the best neighbors, here’s a few pics I took at their house on July 4th, 2009.

Lucia Rodriguez, the incredible, beautiful, sweet, and talented dancer from Austin, Texas who died tragically by driving into the lake when her car reached the ramp at the end of Quinlan road. This ramp lacks proper signage or proper lighting. A terrible loss of a wonderful artist for all of us. Please join us in asking the City of Austin to make changes to this road (and other similar roads who end in the lake with no sufficient lighting or warning…) so no one has another senseless accident.

Toni Bravo is the choreographer of a new show and is also performing again, this time at the Long Center. Her new show is called “A Glimpse of Heaven–With Eyes Closed” it will benefit Life Works and I took the pictures and designed the posters again. I love collaborating with Toni! I’m very proud of these photos and these two posters to be hung side-by-side. The Austin Chronicle printed up a nice spread with my pics and put them up on their website.

What do you think? Here’s the slide show of the main selections 
 

The full session is at this link

Go see the show!!!! 

July 24, 25, and 26  at the Long Center. Click on the link for hours and tickets.

Ok better late than never. If you missed the article on MJ and the Wolfe Den and green design by Austin’s Rare Magazine last month, you can find it here. It was written by Tolly Moseley. I know Tolly in personal life and she’s a most delightful person, and a fantastic writer.

It was fun for MJ to talk about his concept of “vernacular” and to show off the Wolfe Den’s green features like the geothermal A/C and the photovoltaic readiness by Meridian Solar.

I can’t believe this. The odds of winning the Palo Alto competition were pretty slim, just because of sheer numbers at these types of contests… but the odds of winning BOTH competitions, I mean, what are they? Myartspace.com has 55,000 members. I don’t know how many artists entered these competitions, but it couldn’t be just a few. What attracted me to the London competition was the jury.

Artists from our network of over 55,000 in 116 countries submitted work reviewed by a jury of curators Vanessa DesClaux from the Tate Modern, Tom Morton from The Hayward Gallery and Francesco Manacorda from the Barbican Gallery for consideration. The top 20 winners will be shown at the Scream London Gallery, 34 Bruton Street, Mayfair, London.

And I am one of the twenty! In any case, I entered these just for fun, not in a million years I expected to win, much less both competitions…  I stood out, twice in a row, among large numbers of entries, it makes me happy. Two different sets of juries liked my work! Today, my work is exhibited in London and some people who don’t know me from Adam are looking at my hard worked photos on both continents. Fun. Art. Yes.

Catherine McCormack-Skiba, the Company founder of myartspace noted (…) “We’ve got a great venue in the heart of Mayfair in London.  (…)  We think this is an ideal venue for our best community members to have their work on exhibit.”
Brian Sherwin, senior editor at myartspace notes “The Scream London gallery, (…) known for its edgy and progressive atmosphere, is located in the heart of the West London art district. Notable gallery guests have included Claire Danes, Beverly Knight, Cilla Black, and Tracey Emin. Scream London is co-owned by Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones.”

Ok. It’s all very silly, but hey, I hope the Rolling Stones, all of them, fall in love with my work and buy oodles of it.

Here’s the invite, go if you can, you’ll see Natalie’s neck flashing in the background on some screen. Do get drunk for me. I need it badly.

MYARTSPACE London Calling Exhibition!
Opening Night — Thursday 25 June

MYARTSPACE

the premier online network for contemporary art
Opening Reception and Cocktails
Thursday, 25 June 2009, 6 to 9PM
Location:
Scream London Gallery
34 Bruton Street
Mayfair, London

…If there were a “mistake,” we would work on it until it became intentional. Basically, there were no mistakes and no erasers. I discovered the relationship between freedom and fear.

Throughout the entire process, I was interested in my son’s ideas, which I knew would be fresh and radical, due to his inexperience. Not limited by prior knowledge, he would say things that I would not even have allowed myself to think. Working with a young, growing person showed me how we limit ourselves as we get more experienced. I began to remember things I had once known and ways I used to be. I rediscovered, in him, the deep intelligence of innocence. “Beginner’s mind” believes that anything imaginable is possible. Shunryu Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”

“Dad, can my bedroom be like a treehouse? Dad, can the entire front wall of the room be glass and slide out of the way so I am sleeping out of doors? Dad, can we put a big opening in the roof and make a big telescope so I can see the stars at night when I am lying down, like the stars of my birthday constellation? Dad, can we make the concrete walls look like your photographs of the desert from the airplane?”

My first thought was always “that’s not possible,” but I would keep it to myself and, with some patience and drawing, I discovered that it was possible to accomplish what he suggested. Next, I would have to confront my ego, realizing once again that these were his ideas and I wanted them to be mine. How absurd was my need to be first and original? Who had given me that imprint? What better teacher to have and what better time to let go? Things began to change for me. I learned a lot from him and still do. He made me a better teacher.

from Freedom and Structure in Verona and Los Angeles by Michael Rotondi, FAIA

MJ Neal Architects and Barcelona Films collaborated in helping this magical production come to life with set design and visual materials. Renown contemporary dancer and choreographer Toni Bravo put together this touching piece on how we treat the earth and its consequences. In addition, we also did their photography and their promotional materials.

El vino bueno: a Prado Enea Muga 1982 a Rioja Gran Reserva

THAT is a bottle of Prado Enea Muga 1982 a Rioja Gran Reserva that we’ve had for years. We had very good reasons to open it. We just won our fifth TSA design award! It was GREAT, both the wine and the winning:-)

Thanks, Texas Society of Architects. Jurors were Philip Freelon, FAIA, president of the Freelon Group in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Mary Margaret Jones, FASLA, president of San Francisco-based landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates; and Rick Joy, AIA, founding principal of Rick Joy Architects in Tucson, Ariz. (Rick Joy, oh man!)

The awarded project was, again, the Wolfe Den.

Only two Austin projects were awarded at this state level this year… what a tough, tough jury! It can really be a lottery… the rest of the awarded firms/projects were in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Let me tell you, we were not counting on this one. The Austin design awards were tough competition already and we saw oodles of nice work there, so we were not counting on a TSA award this year, especially with MR Joy in the jury, we know just how demanding he is! Because he can.

So we’re opening wine bottles and other things:-) We were also celebrating my upcoming exhibition in Palo Alto.

And we have great news on the horizon, I think. So stay tuned! Time to celebrate and smile after all the hard work and paltry times.

back when I smoked…

Photo: Magda Bonet

Stopping smoking is the best thing I’ve ever done for my son, the second, I think, is taking him to the KPM Institute’s SAM School

I was elated at this TED conference video on education, besides being allowed to be free and self-initiate his education at SAMS, Kilean goes to ballet 3 times a week and is in two bands. He wrote a Haiku yesterday, though he has completely forgotten it today. I love you more than anything in the world, Kilean. My wish for you is total freedom.

And since I’m posting videos and talking about creativity, see Leonard Cohen in concert. The most fun I’ve had in a decade was on April 1 at the first Austin concert by the sexiest 70 yr old to ever live and the greatest poet of our time. I’ve been reading and listening to him since I was fifteen. It was me yelling “I love you Leonard” as explained in this review. A magic night alright. You can’t describe it with words. Go see the man if he comes by your town… To make this post a full circle, my friend, the writer Magda Bonet, who took my picture way back when and just sent it to me a million years later and a thousand kisses deep, is very good friends with the virtuoso guitarist Javier Mas who is from my home town.

Just perfect. MJ will like this one when he comes back from Texas Tech.

The American Institute of Architects in Austin has awarded MJ Neal Architects a 2009 Design Award for the Wolfe Den. We started competing for these city design awards in 2003 and we’ve won every year except for 2006, when we didn’t enter. 

You can see the winners for the last three years at the AIA site. 

Please enjoy the new slide show below. It’s the selection that I’ve put together for the upcoming publication in Dwell and Dwell.com. There are shots that have already been posted here and there are brand new ones!

If you want to see the images bigger, just click on the image below and it will take you to the picasa album where you can hit “slideshow” for a full page experience. Be patient and get to the new pictures. Alex and Jamie look like movie stars:-)

We, us, MJ Neal, AIA and Viviane Vives, taught a graduate advanced design studio at the University of Texas, Arlington.

This video explores how the use of film as a research tool in architecture informed the students’ projects and changed them. The students achieved a completely different relationship to the site by the use of documentary filmmaking.

Film was also used as a creative expression medium and a presentation element but the emphasis was on it’s use as a knowledge base tool. All self-consciousness was left at the door. We wanted truth, passion, we particularly fought any “architect’s preciousness.”  Focus was on obliterating mythologies and keeping it real, to open them up and to make them reach the bottom of the reality of the site and the people that inhabited it.

All students shared a pool of footage and learned from each other, sharing their findings and drawing their own conclusions.