Harold and Maude

This past weekend I was able to see a classic cult film, Harold and Maude (1971). While I loved the movie, what really caught my eye was the house of Harold's mother, Mrs. Chasen. The house really reminds me of the work of John Woolf: mainly because of that canopy over the front door. (Read this great article from Vanity Fair about Woolf by Matt Tyrnauer HERE). Classic Woolf, don't you think? From what I could find HERE though, the house is actually the The Rose Court Mansion in Hillsborough and many of the scenes were shot inside, even using the actual butler from the house in the movie!

The home is extremely eclectic inside, but French styles dominate. This study, seen above was off the main living room where all of the dates Harold takes, set up by his mother, take place.

1971....but this could be a home today for the most part, don't you agree? The classic white lenox lamps, the beautiful chair in the background, simple drapes, big windows. I just loved this room!

The classic lenox lamp is used throughout the room as are potted orchids. The couch is a bit dated but still stylish: simple white linen with an interesting trim. My poor pictures don't capture the beautiful painted paneling in this room either.

Here you see that chair again...the clothes are definitely dated even if the room is not...

I loved the pelmets over the curtains - so perfect for a mansion of this caliber.

Yes, the yellow ragweed flowers are dated as is the victorian style table but you catch a better glimpse of the beautiful paneling in this room and the chinoiserie statue. Check out the checked B&W marble tiled hallway! classic!

From the next room over, you get a better glimpse of the living room. I love the 2 stylish 20's era portrait as well as the game-table in the corner; Another great white chair as well! Just ignore Harold's fake suicide attempt here in this photo with his feet up in the air.....just like his mother did!

To end with , maybe not a really great interior shot, but I loved the gallery wall in the master bedroom hallway. Ideas just keep being recyled: Whats old is new again!

Please excuse the poor quality of the photos are they are my own of my tv!

Pretty Lovely Things

Last week I met Samantha from the blog 'Pretty Lovely Things' here in DC for coffee and to chat about design and blogging. She's a local interior design student and has recently started a really great blog about her many interests: fashion, art and design included. Read about our conversation online at her blog HERE
Thanks, Sam!

Barry Dixon at Timothy Paul

This past thursday I attended the DC launch party of Barry Dixon's rug collection at Timothy Paul. I had been in the bedding and home store of Timothy Paul up the street but had never been into the carpet showroom so I was excited to see it! I had always admired their throw pillows they had in the window, I was happy to see them up close -so beautiful!!

We got there really early, straight from work, and got to take some pictures before the party started and talked to Barry Dixon a bit about his inspiration behind most of the collection. All of the different designs are very personal to Barry, picked up from his travels. Ideas came from pieces of tooled leather picked up in bazaars and the pattern of leaves on a forest floor.

The colors are all beautiful, muted tones without being bland. Many of the rugs are available in different color-ways as well.

His beautiful book was also on display: I was at the book launch party for that and blogged about it HERE.

While Dixon's were the primary focus, a few others not by the designer were also featured. I loved this deep rich reddish-orange rug.

If you're ever in DC, visit Timothy Paul -the rug showroom is only a block away from the bedding and home store. Visit them online HERE.

The Immersive Edge

Starting just a few hours from now down at SCI-Arc, on a cloudless 73º day, "seven distinguished architects and theorists" whose designs straddle "the intersection of physical and virtual worlds" will be presenting their work at the Mediascapes Symposium, led by Ed Keller.

The bulk of the afternoon's discussion will encompass "the practice of immersive and virtual architecture, which spans animation and 3D technologies, digital environments, and questions of materiality... asking how these classifications will define our understanding of the relationships between tangible and intangible worlds."
One of today's speakers, Benjamin Bratton, who will also be presenting next week at Postopolis! LA, describes his talk: "Pervasive computing will make inanimate objects see, hear, and comment on our interactions with them. This experience will, in many cases, be indistinguishable from a psychotic break, or from the rituals of classical Animism." That, or it will feel like The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
If you're in LA, be sure to stop by.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend planned! These pictures were taken yesterday by a friend at work and I just loved how they turned out. We had lots of fog yesterday morning which is always thicker near the river and canal here in Georgetown. I love how you can see the fog lift in these photos when the sun comes out, all taken within a minute. So dramatic!

Media Facades and Newscocoons

[Image: A rendering of a "media facade" in action, in Melbourne's Federation Square; image via Swissnex].

Tonight at 6:30pm here in San Francisco, the fantastic local gallery Swissnex is hosting an event called Media Facades and Newscocoons, "featuring three guests from Switzerland and a Bay Area counterpart."
The participants are:

—Barbara Kummler, a Swiss media specialist with ag4, a "mediatecture company" based in Köln, Germany
—media artist Muriel Waldvogel
—Jeffrey Huang, Director of the Media and Design Laboratory at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland
—Patrick Keller of fabric | ch (and speaker at next week's Postopolis! LA)
—Scott Minneman, interdisciplinary designer and co-founder of Onomy Labs

At the same time, Swissnex will be kicking off an exhibition of Newscocoons designed by Waldvogel and Huang. The Newscocoons are "room-compatible media art pieces of inflatable 'media furniture' that mirror the topics discussed in a subtle but powerful manner." Waldvogel and Huang have also developed the amazing Sentient Ecologies project, "an algorithmically generated housing structure that follows phototropic behaviors of plants and produces instead of consumes energy."
After their presentations, BLDGBLOG will be on hand to moderate a 40-minute roundtable discussion about the implications and future applications of their work.
Here is a map. You are meant to email before attending; if you want to stop by – and please do, as I think it will be quite interesting (and it's free) – please send a note to "media-facades" at "swissnexsanfrancisco" dot org.

Soak it Up

I'm currently working away on an upcoming presentation for a conference happening next week down at the beautiful Oregon Garden. Sponsored by Sprout (Sustainable Plant Research and Outreach), the conference "Soak It Up: Phytotechnology Solutions for Water Challenges" focuses on some fo the functional aspects of plants as vital components in addressing small and large-scale site issues.

Monday, March 30, 2009 - Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Location: The Oregon Garden Resort, Silverton, Oregon


:: image via Colorado State

From the conference site:
"The conference will raise awareness and provide education about plant based solutions for wastewater and stormwater challenges. The conference will provide practical information about implementing the latest technologies and designs such as constructed wetlands, greenroofs, and rain gardens that will enhance ecology in our managed landscapes. Scientists and engineers will present research and case studies of real problems and solutions. By facilitating conversation and connection across industries we are providing the opportunity to stay at the leading edge of learning and research in this dynamic and growing field. Come help us put plants to work for environmental sustainability and economic development."

The conference will feature leaders in the fields of phytoremediation, using plants to treat a range of issues - with a focus on water. Highlights include Gerould Wilhelm, PhD and Principal Botanist/Ecologist from Conservation Design Inc.; Eli Cohen, Founder and Principal Engineer of Ayala Water and Ecology; Dave Maciolek, Principal Engineer from Worrell Water Technologies; and Paul Stamets, Founder and President of Fungi Perfecti, LLC.

Two days of presentations will be followed by a day of workshops and tours of local facilities.

:: Living Machine - image via Worrell Water Technologies

I am honored to be giving a talk on Monday entitled: "Connecting Landscape Function to Ecological Function Through Design" which will look broadly at the concept of expanding the potential for science to better inform design solutions, as well as the need to frame ecological solutions within aesthetic and cultural expectations... and my presentation is right before the cocktail hour... convenient.

If you are in the region, it's an event worth checking out.

33 Blogs

One of the L+U favorites, A Daily Dose of Architecture (archidose) recently posted a list of their 33 Favorite blogs, and we happily find ourselves amidst the chosen few. This is some good company, and good reading - so check all of these out for your responsive, thoughtful, and visually stunning inspiration.

:: Arch Daily :: Archinect :: Architect's Newspaper :: ArchitectureMNP :: ArchNewsNow :: [the belly of an architect] :: BLDGBLOG :: Brand Avenue :: BUILD Blog :: City of Sound :: Coudal :: Design Observer :: dezain.net :: Edificial :: Fantastic Journal :: HTC Experiments :: Landscape+Urbanism :: Lebbeus Woods :: Life Without Buildings :: loud paper :: Pentagram :: Polar Inertia :: Pruned :: PYTR 75 :: The Sesquipedalist :: sit down man... :: SpaceInvading :: Strange Harvest :: Super Colossal :: things magazine :: Tropolism :: varnelis.net :: Where

Nothing to say except thanks.

Delirious Detroit: Land of UnReal Estate

After a brief, work induced break from blogging, I've amassed a collection of posts from Detroit, which seems to be getting a lot of attention of late as perhaps the poster child of urban voids. The report that we worked on in last falls SDAT is slowly nearing publication, so definitely check back here for the full document soon. One of the major themes, obviously, is the rampant deterioration of both community and infrastructure in Detroit. Treehugger offers some more visual clues to the issue - a particularly poignant one being the box elder sapling growing from the detritus inside an abandoned Public School Facility.


:: Detroit Public Schools Book Depository - image via Treehugger

This image gives some clue to the solution - deterioration not equalling death but offering the potential for rebirth and regrowth. The flip side of all this chaos is the move towards positive change. For an ongoing update of some of the current goings on, an interesting blog analyzing the unique Detroit phenonomenon is Detroit UnReal Estate Agency, a collaborative with an aim to: "...produce, collect and inventory information on the 'unreal estate' of Detroit: that is, on the remarkable, distinct, characteristic or subjectively significant sites of urban culture. The project is aimed at new types of urban practices (architectural, artistically, institutional, everyday life, etc) that came into existence, creating a new local ‘normality’ and a new value system in the city of Detroit."


:: image via Detroit UnReal Estate Agency

A recent story on NPR discussed the work of a pair of artists who: "...have been recruiting artists from around the world to buy the foreclosed houses in the neighborhood and rebuild." The low cost of entry and abundance of stock allows for some artistic flair and innovation. A proposed redevelopment aiming to be completely off the grid, is the "Power House Project" From the article: "...they set their sights on the foreclosed house down the street — a working class, wood frame, single family house that was listed for sale for $1,900. The house had been trashed by scrappers who stole everything, including the copper plumbing, radiators and electrical lines... instead of putting it all back and connecting to the grid, we wanted to keep it off the grid and get enough solar and wind turbines and batteries to power this house and power the next-door house."

Read some more about this and the reinhabitation of Detroit at the NY Times.


:: Power House Project - image via NPR

There are no shortage of recent calls from virtually everywhere to 'save' Detroit in a range of potential ways... these range from the practical, as urbanism points out the potential for public-private partnerships. A middle ground perhaps is a proposed high-speed train, seen via The Infrastructurist: "An outfit called Interstate Traveler, LLC is proposing to build an elevated high speed maglev train running between the depopulating metropolis of Detroit and the state capital of Lansing as the first leg of a multi-use national transportation network. The trains would travel at 200 mph along current Interstate rights of way with stations near current highway exits."

Check out this video of the proposal:

And perhaps falling into the outlandish, a proposal to build mobile nuclear reactors, as seen in a fascinating post from Treehugger: "After all, alternative energy is huge now, and in World War II Detroit retooled from cars to tanks in a matter of months. How much of a stretch would it be for them to start churning out these portable nuclear power stations that the Russians used until the unfortunate events at Chernobyl nudged them off the road. This is a TES-3 built on a T10 tank platform, with an 8.8 megawatt output." Yikes!

:: image via Treehugger

A range of other options include a proposal to use Brownfield sites for renewable energy production (via The Dirt); to perhaps the more innovative (yet illegal) ultimate in guerilla gardening, from a post on Where: "We all know Urban Agriculture is the big thing these days, hailed to save our urban youth by offering values, safe havens, and job training. My question is, what will happen to these urban farms when we legalize marijuana. I don't know the answer, and I am not implying there is one answer, I just think it's an incredibly interesting question, and so I thought I would poss (sic) it to the community here at Where. I mean, the inner city has historically been plagued with drug crime and addiction but perhaps the legalization of marijuana could offer a way out? I mean, the urban farms, the knowledge of agriculture is already there, and certainly the abandoned lots are there, and the drug colonies are there. On the other hand, maybe it would be a terrible thing leading people to dependency and bigger addictions. Either way it's a compelling situation to ruminate on. Rustbelt - Weedbelt."


:: Weed City? - image via Where

So what to do with all of these ideas? All of these options and more are on the table and can be your guide to a current competition entitled 'Rouse [D]etroit'.


:: image via Treehugger

"This is an international open ideas competition challenging people to come up with designs that will rouse the city of Detroit and encourage an evolution of our understanding of its unique urban environment. We have studied, examined, photographed, and proposed our ideas many times over, but how can we begin to take action to improve the overall condition of what so many believe to be a modern day ruins? Every city has its history and Detroit is no different, but now it’s our turn to “bounce back” and maybe not in the traditional or conventional way, but in a new, unprecedented way that is specific to the one-of-a-kind condition Detroit presents to us. So the solution too, will be one-of-a-kind specific to our Detroit… let’s see what you’ve got… Ranging from macro to micro, explore all options; this project is not just about the large scheme, but also the small details. We are looking for the most CREATIVE and thoughtful designs that could help Detroit and make it better in some way. The competition does have one condition; the site or sites must be in Detroit. "

The ball is now in your court... submissions are due July 31.

Thank you Apartment Therapy!

I want to thank Leah Moss, an editor at Apartment Therapy, for the EXTREMELY flattering write up she did for my house tour!Leah came over last weekend to check out my place and chat for awhile. She's a great photographer and really captured my apartment well, no easy feat in such a small space! We had so much fun talking it hardly felt like an interview at all!

We talked a lot about small spaces and how to live in them, which is what 'Apartment Therapy' is all about. The challenges all are worth it though when you end up with your cozy cocoon.

If you are interested, check out the post! She's completely over flattering to me, I have to thank her for that. I know there are a lot of photos for my small space, but it's so fun for me to see it through someone else's eyes; a different perspective.

The post is online HERE

Southern Exposure

[Image: Elias Redstone stands inside the facade of Casa Poli, designed by Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects; read more about his visit to the house here. Photo by Jaffer Kolb].

Regrettably, I have not until now pointed readers' attention to the soon-to-finish travels of Elias Redstone, curator of London's Architecture Foundation, as he visits the work of emerging Latin American architects, from Mexico to Colombia, Chile to Argentina and Brazil, documenting the whole thing on his blog.
This massive three-and-a-half month tour, funded by a Winston Churchill Fellowship, comes to a close on April 1, when Elias returns to London. His huge roster of site visits – heavy with modern residential design – is worth a scroll, as are his visits to the architects' offices. He even drops in on our Postopolitan friends, Arch Daily.
Check out the blog for more.
Let me randomly add, by the way, that I would absolutely and genuinely love to do the Australian equivalent of this trip...

Talks, Tours, and the Cities of Tomorrow

[Image: Photo by Satya Pemmaraju, courtesy of the Architectural League].

Here are some upcoming events, courses, and lectures that I would attend if I could:

—Tonight, March 26, author William L. Fox speaks in Reno at the Nevada Museum of Art about his new exhibition, co-curated with Matthew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, about the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Hopefully Fox will also discuss his newest book, Aereality: The World From Above; Fox's books are an ongoing exploration of "extreme environments" and their impact on human cognition, from Antarctica and the gridless deserts of Nevada to the Australian Outback and even Mars.

—Also today, March 26, kicking off in Los Angeles (and then again four days from now, on March 30, in Chicago) is an Urban Escape and Evasion course run by the group OnPoint Tactical. The premise of this is hilarious but fascinating: "While on an international business trip, you are kidnapped and held for ransom. A terrorist attack closes the business district and you find yourself in a fix. How do you stay alive? How do you get to safety on your own?"

This class provides leading-edge skills to civilians who live and work in challenging urban environments or in urban centers that may destabilize during a crisis. Topics covered include covert movement (day vs. night), the judicious use of caches, understanding urban baseline movement and urban awareness training, the use of urban disguises and false papers/identification, lock picking, escaping from unlawful custody, obtaining and driving local transportation, the use of "specialized" urban gear, and instruction on how to develop urban escape and evasion go-bags, etc.

If you already know how to do all that, of course, there are also advanced courses. For that, somewhere in the Philadelphia/Camden, NJ, area, beginning April 30, trainees will "spend time in the city in an extensive (extended) escape and evasion simulation. Students will be required to obtain food, water, and shelter. They will need to avoid capture, and they will be required to complete several tests or scenarios that will require advanced students to truly apply their scout and urban survival skills." I love OnPoint's final line: "Warning: Massive waiver required for this course!" These "urban survival" courses are run in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Conway, Arkansas. If only I had known about OnPoint earlier, I would have invited them to speak at Postopolis! LA. Check out their lock-picking gear. (Spotted via kottke.org).

[Image: Think you'll survive a corporate kidnapping (or the coming apocalypse)? OnPoint Tactical disagrees; sign up for their courses to learn more].

—March 27-29: The City From Below hits Baltimore, Maryland, exploring, among other things, how "unanticipated futures are being imagined and built" in the contemporary metropolis. My problem with the event write-up, however, is that participating in "social justice struggles" appears to mean adopting a new, niche vocabulary full of analytically useless words like "herstories" – i.e. feminism's own "Freedom Fries" moment – excluding from your audience many of the very people who would benefit most from such discussions. Emerging forms of grassroots urban self-governance don't require bizarre, over-academized newspeak about "metropolitan rearticulation" and "horizontal framework[s] of participation." We don't need to know that you've read Judith Butler in order to organize a better youth basketball league, plant a roof garden, or campaign for affordable day care. I also have a growing problem with the fetishization of "resistance" in today's leftwing political writing, as if "resisting" something is, in and of itself, a technique that only the left is capable of performing. But the Bush Administration "resisted" the Geneva Conventions and Alberto Gonzales "resisted" civil liberties laws, even as the Mormon Church "resisted" gay marriage in California. Resistance has no political affiliation, and it is tactically meaningless to promote resistance as a goal in and of itself. One need look no further than the conservative Counter-Reformation; as its very name indicates, this was a massive act of cultural and intellectual resistance. Indeed, to pretend that "resistance" is worthy of commendation at all only makes sense if you've built your entire movement around a shifting sequence of enemies who, by your own admission, are always one step ahead of you. The alternative – articulating, out of the blue and in the middle of nowhere, unsolicited enthusiasm for a more equitable future for everyone – would seem both substantially more effective and unifying. It seems little wonder, then, that many otherwise intensely interesting urban social justice movements remain rhetorically self-ghettoized, when their own communication strategies seem to exclude the very people they most urgently need to convince.

—On Monday, March 30, London's Complex Terrain Laboratory will begin a four-day symposium about P. W. Singer's important new book Wired for War (previously mentioned on BLDGBLOG here). As the event unfolds, regular updates will be posted online.

[Image: Ecological Urbanism at the Harvard GSD].

—If it wasn't for Postopolis! LA, I would be in Boston, attending Harvard's Ecological Urbanism conference, running April 3-5. "While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical," we read, "issues surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed."

The conference is organized around the premise that an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities. An ecological urbanism represents a more holistic approach than is generally the case with urbanism today, demanding alternative ways of thinking and designing.

Speakers include – and the list looks great – Rem Koolhaas, Andrea Branzi, Stefano Boeri, Anuradha Mathur, and super-dean Mohsen Mostafavi, among many, many others.

—Saturday, April 4, in Montreal, the excellent Canadian Centre for Architecture will sponsor Mapping Rural Montréal: "Artist Amy Franceschini leads an exploration of rural sites and activities in Montréal, questioning the dichotomy of country and city (in English). $10 per person. Free for children under 12. Reservations required: (514) 939-7026."

—On April 25, Esotouric will be hosting a bus tour of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: "Bungalows. Crime. Hollywood. Blondes. Vets. Smog. Death. This was Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, which resonated from deft and melancholy fits of his writer’s bow." Esotouric's Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles tour also looks well worth a spin.

—Finally, for now – as there are dozens and dozens of other amazing events I could mention – the Architectural League in New York is hosting what sounds like an exciting two-day conference called New Architectures of India, from April 30-May 1. It will "address the architectural and urban forms that are emerging as a turbulent 'second modernity' rearranges a vast part of the landscape of India."

All of these are barely the tip of the iceberg, however; I'll hope to keep track of other lectures, events, gallery openings, conferences, courses, and such like as the year trundles on.

On Vacation

I'll be on vacation for a couple weeks, enjoying some sun, sky and time with family, and therefore taking a break from my daily and weekly web pages. In the meantime check out my 33 favorites and the other quality links on the sidebar.



Posts will resume in two weeks.

Freshkills Park Blog

A recent discovery via blog linking, the Freshkills Park Blog, offers some insight into the workings of the major large-scale and long-term landscape urbanist project of North America.

"Freshkills Park Blog is compiled by members of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation team working to develop Freshkills Park. Blog entries represent the interests and views of just a few individuals, and should not be taken to represent positions or opinions of the agency or City of New York as a whole. Mostly, we just think that Freshkills Park is a fascinating and inspiring project that weaves together a series of unusual issues and disciplines: waste management systems, ecology, landfill infrastructure, urban planning and landscape architecture, public art, land reclamation, sustainability, renewable energy, New York City history. The list goes on."


:: image via Freshkills Park blog

One juicy tidbit was a link to Popular Science, with a graphic exposition of the transformation of Freshkills from landfill to park. Having just finished The Watchmen graphic novel, the art is a bit minimal, but the story is just as compelling. Check out the full spread for the whole story.


:: image via Popular Science

Also, for some ongoing images of the park, check out the Freshkills Park flickr photos here.

Today's archidose #300

DSC_1431, originally uploaded by bavadekar praveen.

The Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship in Hubli, India, 2009. If you know the architect of this building, please put it in a comment on this post.

There are many more photos of the DCSE Building in bavadekar praveen's Flickr set.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

33 Favorites

With the sidebar links growing every week, I've decided to add a category at the top with my current favorites, the web pages (primarily blogs) that I look to daily or almost daily, whatever the case may be. This list will definitely morph over time as my interests change, as pages fade away, or as other pages' tastes diverge from mine. Please don't take it personally if your page isn't there or if it falls off. It's a subjective list there to help those overwhelmed by the loooooong list below it.

Why 33? Well, my aim at first was 20, but it was too difficult to limit myself to that number. Just over thirty seemed to work, and I'm a sucker for repetition and palindromes.

So here's the list, also added to the top of my sidebar links.

:: Arch Daily
:: Archinect
:: Architect's Newspaper
:: ArchitectureMNP
:: ArchNewsNow
:: [the belly of an architect]
:: BLDGBLOG
:: Brand Avenue
:: BUILD Blog
:: City of Sound
:: Coudal
:: Design Observer
:: dezain.net
:: Edificial
:: Fantastic Journal
:: HTC Experiments
:: Landscape+Urbanism
:: Lebbeus Woods
:: Life Without Buildings
:: loud paper
:: Pentagram
:: Polar Inertia
:: Pruned
:: PYTR 75
:: The Sesquipedalist
:: sit down man...
:: SpaceInvading
:: Strange Harvest
:: Super Colossal
:: things magazine
:: Tropolism
:: varnelis.net
:: Where

The 21st Century Park & The Contemporary City

Via ASLA's blog The Dirt, an announcement of an upcoming event that resonates with recent resurgence in thinking and discussion about the role of large civic parks. Happening in New York City and sponsored by The Forum For Urban Design some info from the Forum's website: "In the past few years, there has been huge interest and investment made in designing new parks for cities and development projects around the world. The belief is that parks and open spaces bring significant value, distinction and amenity to the city, enhancing both the environmental and social aspects of city life. Many of these new parks assume very different programs, characteristics and forms from some of the famous urban parks of the 19th and 20th centuries, raising important questions about current and future directions in park design and programming."


:: image via Forum for Urban Design

Day one of the event includes a Landscape Architects Panel, including a who's who of modern park design: James Corner from Field Operations, George Hargreaves of Hargreaves Associates, and Michael Van Valkenburgh from Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Day two features civic leaders, moderated by Marion Weiss from Weiss/Manfredi. Those in the proximity, definitely check it out.

Dumbarton Oaks Orangery

The Orangery at Dumbarton Oaks is attached to the main house via the breezeway I pictured on Monday. However, it dates back to the mid 19th century when it was a freestanding structure and was later connected to the house in the 1923 remodel.The architect matched the federal style applied to the structure with this beautiful detailed brickwork. Like elsewhere on the estate, the lanterns are intricate ironwork with delicate leaves and swirls. The french doors must be 8 1/2' tall; Love the transoms too! Here is a detail of the cornice and one of the transom windows.

The interior has a 150 yr old fig tree (vine?) that encompasses the entire room, covering everything. You can see it here above the entrance to the space from the breezeway and how it wraps the entire space below.So lush and green, the same hexagonal clay tiles are on the floor. The lanterns are almost hidden behind all the plants. The way an orangery should be!

Two very proper french terra cotta sphinx's flank the front door. All of the plants live in large terra cotta pots. Each wall between french doors & transoms has a beautiful medallion or plaque. I love the way the fig tree has grown around them.

If you're ever free and find yourself in Georgetown, stop in to see the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks!