RANDOM THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING

This post was inspired by the pictures in a miscellaneous file that I keep adding to. Just for the heck of it, I think I'll free associate on some of them and see if anything useful comes of it. Don't expect anything practical. Free associating means you jot down the first thing that comes to your mind, practical or no.

Okay, the two pictures above for example.....I like low, slanted, beam roofs. I'll bet everybody does. So why don't we see more of them?

This (above) would be an almost ideal work place for somebody like me. I'm impulsive so I could use lots of table space with different projects going on at different locations around the room.  It would be nice to have my books handy, too. I'd probably arrange for awnings to regulate the sunlight.

I like to see touches of bas relief sculpture (above) on homes and offices.  Modern materials and casting techniques make this cheaper and easier to do than it's ever been.

Here (above) stairs are shunned in favor of a steep, carpeted, curving ramp. That's kinda neat. Maybe ramps and stairs should be side by side.

What the heck is going on in the background of this picture (above)? It looks like a conference table is sitting on a pile of dirt. Whatever it is, it makes me wonder if it a large living room might contain a section of small, carpeted hills and valleys.

I continue to believe in using the Disneyland Express (above) as a model for real urban transportation.

Maybe moderately tall buildings (above) should be designed to be scalable by the public on one side. 

I've always liked the idea of letting kids (above) drive kid-size cars. I can think of a bunch of reasons why that wouldn't work, but we're free associating, remember? What if there were special roads just for kid cars? What if the only kids who could drive on them were mechanically-inclined kids who built or maintained their own funky cars? That's one way to nudge kids into engineering careers.

We need to figure out how to reward kids for being smart or handy with their hands. We need to make the idea of being skilled look like fun.

 Should we train animals to drive cars? No, that's silly.

We should ask the skilled engineers what they think should be done to encourage kids to go into technical careers. We should take what they say seriously.

I wish private philanthropy would pay more attention to rewarding talented kids. Why not make a sail boat and crew available for the members of kid science, engineering and agricultural clubs? It doesn't have to be as big and impressive as the ship in the photo above. Bill Gates, are you reading this?

Believe it or not, an awful lot of homes sit on ground that used to be a pond or a small lake. A 24-hour a day pump under each building keeps the land so dry that lots of people who live in the area don't realize how potentially wet the place is. Maybe we should allow some of those ponds to reassert themselves. If the soil has a lot of clay to retain the water, and the water could be kept moving (to keep mosquitoes out) we might get a first class pond. Maybe we could stock it with fish.

Aaaargh! Everything here is probably impractical. Well, like I said, we're free associating.