Byrdhouse

Yesterday's Future, Today

A visit to the Kennedy Space Center in photos.

MA Guide Book

Design is Human - May 6-11

I'm proud to announce the MA08: Design Is Human event in Atlanta May 6-11, 2008.

MA is the result of the vision and efforts of Bernard McCoy and Elayne DeLeo to unify the greater Atlanta design community through modern home tours and events throughout the city. I have been fortunate to have been involved on the branding-concept-strategy-design side of things. It’s been a team affair of armchairs, pc students and design friends.

Join us, explore some of those homes you've had your eye on during the Modern Atlanta Home Tour. Other highlight events include the wine tasting at Poliform SWITCH, the Belgium Design & Fashion Event for Darfur, and the Launch Party at Mason Murer Gallery.

Ticket prices vary. Many events are free. More information is available at the MA web site.

McCormick Tribune Campus Center

This is by Rem Koolhaas OMA at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. The school is Mies van der Rohe's old stomping grounds. See the Full Gallery here.

Concrete for Miles

Montreal

Train Ride In Tokyo

For your viewing pleasure, a movie clip of riding the train in Tokyo.

The Dunes

[Kitty Hawk, NC]

At the Border

[South of the Border]

June has been our travel month. We recently drove out to the Outer Banks for a fair share of lighthouses, hang gliding, and Wright Brothers memorials. We spent much of the time at the beach with an igloo stuffed with brew-skies.

The image above comes from our lunch stop at South of the Border, a campy exit off I-95 that boasts a truly American roadside experience, mexican-style. There's hundreds of billboards before you ever get to the exit, each featuring Pedro and a poorly constructed pun. Floridians will recognize it as the Ron Jon's technique in highway marketing. I will admit to you that I circled it on the roadmap with a highlighter days before. I actually wanted to go there. I'm a sucker for run-down kitsch. As my brother yawned and Florrie piped "Why did we stop here, again?" I silently took images of booths clad in vinyl cow prints.

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Headed South

We're traveling to Austin this weekend for SXSW because we heard you had something important to say about:

a) your new book
b) accessibility and web standards
c) wireless stuff
d) blogging

Hot Air

Suburbia is such a strange thing to observe from a couple hundred feet. This weekend we went for a hot air balloon ride over Atlanta's northern sprawl. A hot air balloon ride is one thing, but in the Remax balloon, now that is whole 'nutha adventure. I spent most of the time dangling over the basket's edge, snapping images of the suburban landscape. It made Florrie very nervous. Dog's barked, kids followed, and when we landed in that cul de sac, it was quite a neighborhood spectacle. View some images from the trip.

The pilot's cheese ball humor, which deserved a drum kit's 1-2-crash, was always accented with a good tug on the balloon's fuel gauge.

Experience The W

Who needs another gadget? For my birthday this year we opted for a getaway at the W Hotel Atlanta. Stunningly styled for the modern metrosexual, this hotel group is a destiniation for any traveler living the designer lifestyle. We made it a weekend, sped across town and enjoyed a relaxing time in luxury. We discovered tasty pan-asian cusine (more commonly marketed as "fusion" cusine) at the deliciously sassy Savu, the hotel's premiere restaurant. But let's not kid ourselves here, the W is in Dunwoody, far away from the urban setting it attempts to elicit. But the bathrooms were grand and the in-room catalogs kept us in reach of the city lifestyle.