Brookside Artist Community live/work space

Open House November 1st, 1-2p

This town-home is part of a lively, vibrant community of professional artists. Your new neighbors include painters and sculptors, dancers and choreographers, a harpist, and a well-known concert pianist.

The building began it’s life in 1850 as a factory, turning out rubber heels for shoes. As industry left the area, the artists began moving in. Groups like the Boston Photo Collaborative worked here for years and this unit was home to the Boston indie band Morphine.

Converted turn of the century factory

Several years ago, the artists living here learned the owner of the building was planning on selling it for conversion to luxury condos. Fearful of losing their beloved homes the artists banded together to buy it for themselves.

It took a ton of organizing, several government grants, and the collaboration of the Mayor’s Office and the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) but the artists were able to raise millions of dollars to purchase and renovate the building.

All 24 units were completely gut renovated and rebuilt to the highest safety and construction standards. The units were officially designated “live/work” so the artists could practice their crafts here. Many were purpose-built to meet individual needs – the tall unit on the end, for example, houses a rope-climbing artist!

1st floor flexible use studio space

This unit is especially well-suited for running a creative business, since the first floor is separated from the more private living quarters.

The developer was the highly respected firm of Peter Roth.They designed a building that was respectful of the history of the place, but had all the modern amenities like energy efficient windows and state of the art Rinnai point of use heaters.

This unit received special care as it was considered the best of the building. The brick walls were parged down several feet and carefully rebuilt to hold the weight of the new top addition. The walls were made with steel studs. The first floor was dug out and concrete re-poured to a depth of two feet.

Master bedroom with large closet

The contractors prided themselves on the solid construction – as one declared, “This will last another 150 years!”

The complex is a mixture of market rate units and a special kind of affordable housing restricted only to artists. The market rate units, like this one, have no financial re-sale restrictions. The affordable units may only be sold to artists who qualify through the BRA’s rigorous artist certification program and have adequate financial resources. Most hold down professional jobs, like teaching, in addition to their art work.

Flexible living, kitchen and dining area

Since the artists worked so hard to obtain their units, they are passionately committed to maintaining the property. The building is self-managed, so condo fees are very low. Occasionally the neighbors volunteer to rake leaves, trim bushes, clean gutters, etc. Each “work day” ends with a roving cocktail party and cookout on the board walk!

If you’re interested in whats happening in the building industry or looking for that new, cutting edge product you’d better mosey over to Boston Build 2009 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston from November 18th-20th. You can visit the exhibit hall only for about $15 or register for work shops, symposiums and tours which cost starting around $150. There is an entire range of options.

This directly from the website, “Build Boston is the largest regional convention and tradeshow for the design and construction industry. In this 25th anniversary year, over 250 exhibits fill the tradeshow floor and more than 200 workshops, tours and other professional development and networking events are offered. More than 10,000 building industry professionals from 43 states and 19 countries attended last year’s event.

There’s something for everyone at Build Boston — building owners/managers, architects, engineers, contractors, interior designers, design and construction firm administrators, landscape architects and all professionals, interns and students with an interest in the built environment.

This year, three keynote speakers, seven one-day symposiums and dozens of alumni receptions, building industry dinners and special tradeshow events are planned.

View the show information online, download the full conference program or request a hard-copy brochure and start planning your Build Boston 2009 experience today.

Suck it up buddy. You ain’t seen nothin’. I was trying to do some real research the other day, and as usual got distracted. A couple hours later I ended up with some interesting fodder for this post. I’m always fascinated with fortress-like homes. My wife will be the first to call me a complete wacko, but aside from the owner’s serious lack of design sense, this place is awesome!

Home sweet home.

This home was featured on HGTV in June 29th and the owner’s website self-describes it as The Most Unique Real Estate In The World!

You get your own airport too!

Here’s what they have to say – click the image above for the website…

Living room

Efficiency to say the least.

Bedroom

Bathroom vanity

Nice spiral staircase.

Are you starting to get a funny feeling yet? Haven’t noticed any corners? Hayday with a vacuum?

Grain silo house here I come!

Listen, I’m all for it. I get bored of all the same old real estate. I say, throw em’ a curve. Pun intended.

My very good friend Mike Randall share many common interests including a general mis-trust of the government, an entrepreneurial streak and last but not least a strong wanderlust.

We’ve had scores of conversations over the years about expatriation and how to pull it off. Of late, I’m more inclined to stay in America and explore some of the very rural, off the beaten path areas of our country like Taos, NM, parts of Oregon, Montana, etc. However, Mike just sent me a link to a community in Costa Rica that is insane. One of the founders came up with the hair-brained idea to build a treehouses with zip lines connecting them. It reminded me instantly of something in Disneyland or the like. The pragmatist in me would have said, “you’re out of your mind ” if someone had suggested it to me. I would have been wrong. The good folks at Finca Bellavista have followed their dream and are now the envy of us all. My kid would explode in rapture at the idea of riding a zip line over to her friends house. Or school. Or wherever.  The original plan only had 65 acres but later blossomed into a 350 acre village. They have a community bath house, pedestrian skyways, and more creature comforts than I expected.

“Residents are now able to stay connected with the outside world at Finca Bellavista! On January 5, 2008 we had our high-speed direct link satellite dish installed, which is powered 100% by solar-generated electricity. The signal is great and the service is the fastest we’ve experienced in all of Costa Rica! The entire base area at Finca Bellavista can access the Wi-Fi signal. That means residents can work remotely or chat with far-away friends and family from a riverside hammock or anywhere else at the base area of the community. What a great way to stay in touch while getting away from it all!”

Okay, I’m listening…but I’m still skeptical, right? The crazy thing is that the development is selling out. They offer 2-4 acre parcels and they seem to have some good planning and the foresight to put some parkland and community spaces in there so it doesn’t feel like a tropical trailer park. The amount of spaces that have been purchased and the number of units built seems hard to believe. I haven’t gotten to read enough of the website to see if they have construction costs yet, but they can’t be cheap. The workers must certainly be highly skilled. I anticipated very rudimentary dwellings that looked as if they would fall in a good wind – but these things look pretty good and they look to be getting some good engineering ideas up their sleeves from some of the drawings they have on the site. Have a look around their website for yourself.

Concept drawings for treehouse at Finca Bellavista

I just happened upon Andree and Ken’s weblog on Neighbor’s For Neighbors community organizing website (I guess it’s working). I’m excited about the prospect of watching them renovate their very old home with an eye to giving it a zero carbon footprint.

Jack's Store is now JP Green House

I signed up for their newsletters and I think you should too. Here’s a snippet from their project page:

The JP Green House is a zero carbon* demonstration project, sustainable urban model and hub for 350.org climate action founded by Andrée Zaleska and Ken Ward. We are rehabbing an abandoned, 100 year old, former neighborhood store located on the line between Jamaica Plain and Roslindale in Boston, Massachusetts. Our aim is to achieve passivhaus standards, win substantial independence from grid supplies of water and electricity, and supply a large portion of our food on a modest income. We are retrofitting the former “Jack’s store” as space for workshops and trainings, neighborhood events and gatherings like our JP Family SongFest.

The JP Green House is located at 133 Bourne Street, Roslindale. We welcome visitors & volunteers and have a schedule of activities and events. You can contact us at:

greenhousejp[at[gmail.com 617.512.8350

I’ve been working on my garden now for about 5 years. When I bought my house it was basically a crack house. I actually never really saw the 1st floor before I put in an offer – and I certainly never did a home inspection.  I remember when I first moved in and I spent hours just walking around it looking at the design (or lack of it), and waffling between being elated that I was finally a homeowner, and utterly depressed at what a shitbox I had purchased.

The entire yard from edge to edge was paved with thick, stinky asphalt. Not a blade of grass was visible. As I have tendency to do everything 110%, I began renovating the inside of the dwelling as well as recycling ALL of the asphalt and sifting the top twelve inches of soil on the entire property.

We are basically right on top of the culvert that contains the Stony Brook, and although we’ve never had any significant water in our basement, I wanted to take steps to keep it the foundation as dry as possible. I dug a big ditch under the patio to the right and hooked it around in an “L” shape all the way to where the driveway meets the sidewalk. There I dug a 9′x4′x3′ ditch and dropped into it.

I lined the bottom of the ditch with gravel and then a layer of landscaping cloth and then laid the drainage tub (oddly named “drain tile”) inside, poured gravel on top and wrapped up a big drainage burrito. This was a really inexpensive way to deliver the access water away from my foundation quickly.

Around this time we had traveled to San Diego’s Balboa Park and a couple other places that had Japanese Gardens including Portland and Seattle. I fell in love. I was also studying Japanese construction techniques and the space saving, ingenious ideas that they often employ.

My daughter Vitoria in a beautiful stand of Black Bamboo

My favorite is drawers in each stair step of a staircase. How cool is that? Anyway, I was determined to have a Japanese garden right here in JP. I met with a landscape architect who talked things through with me. Basically, some of the criteria and parameters I had to work around didn’t combine well with the style. For instance I think Boston is a zone 6 (garden speak for the climate we have here) and the hard winters are rough on bamboo and many of the plants native to Japan. Over time, I’ve learned that by combining more hearty Japanese species in the design with some very basic ground covers – I could fake it. In addition, we wanted a garden that would absorb a great deal of water, never need to be cut or need very much attention. It has taken a lot of trial and error, as well as the very skilled advice, tutelage, and hard work by my friend Rich Gargiulo at Treeworks (617-983-0813) but we now have a passable Japanese garden. I am very proud of my hard work – which is rewarded every time someone walks by and compliments us. Now if I could just keep people from letting their dogs pee pn my bushes I’d have it made!

Japanese styled gardens in front of my home.

I’d love if some of our readers could offer up any anecdotal information about their gardens, resources they might find helpful in the area, etc. I’d love to hear any tips and advice you have for surviving the winter, etc. Also, in the near future – I will have too much ground cover, and I’d be willing to trade plugs of creeper for other small plants that might fit in to my scheme. Feel free to drop me a line if you’d like to come by and see my tiny garden!