The City Of Charleston

We arrived at the City of Charleston and received a very in depth exlpanation and tour of Charleston from Michael Maher who is an architect and friend of Ted. Michael is the Director of Charleston Civic Design Center.


Along side visual plates explaining the growth of Charleston over time, there was also a braille version.











Tardio, Carlos Tardio House, Atlanta GA

Chris took us to meet a local architect named Carlos Tardio who also teaches at Georgie Tech  as a design teacher.
This is the view of his house coming over the bridge.
A railway runs beside and under the bridge next to his house.
His house is a little lower than the street level, therefore you get a unusual perspective into the house.

Underneath the house you can see the massive steel beams he has used as well as the wood flooring. There is nothing between the exterior and interior except the wood flooring.
The living room. Most of the house consists of these swiveling walls that area connected at the ceiling and floor. He uses this system in order to section off different areas of the house.

This is looking towards the street through his main entrance. The table pictured there also spins in oder to allow his to close the front wall. He demonstrated how strong the welding joint was by jumping up and standing on his table.
He wanted to use ordinary wood in a precious way for his floor instead of using precious wood. The wood floor was varnished with a coating that is also used in oil paintings.
He wanted to produce wall panels that were structural and to also have glazing. Essentially he made the windows structural units for the house.

A driving idea behind the house's design was he wanted to encourage people to go outside as much as possible. Therefore he designed the house to have large doors and walls that could open.

Here he is telling us about how he used a lot of recycled windows and that he wanted to use materials that could also be recycled later.

One of the coolest features in the house was the ability for the ceiling to also open. This opening is on the top floor almost right above his bed.

Tardio, house two, Atlanta GA


These trees were across the road from the house and the reason that there is Xs and Hearts on the trees is because they have been marked to be cut down to make way for a condo. However there is a group of people called Granmaw Gordon trying to save the trees and have painted hearts over the Xs.

Scogin Elam, Clayton County Headquarters Library, Atlanta GA

The Clayton County Library was also designed by Scogin Elam Architects.

...is that cow print on the building?
Gotta love the moo-cow print.







Even though the library was closed because of the holiday, we ran into the head librarian and here son who were bringing in some supplies around the back of the building. They were very nice and said that we could look around inside the buildings while she was there.



Rudolph, Tuskegee University Chapel, Tuskegee AL

First off let me say that some of these photos are not the greatest quality because it is difficult to take a clear photo under low light without a tripod.
Secondly, the scale of the Tuskegee University Chapel was amazing. The use of natural lighting and colouring it through glass really sets the atmosphere as well. The building has a large leaking problem from the skylights though, however we were there during a huge thunderstorm and the building is quite old.



Justin in the grand podium for which the preacher stands.
Skylights






Looking down from the balcony.


Rural Studio, The Three Washrooms, Perry Lakes A

The three public washrooms here at Perry Lakes were all locked when we were there. Fortunately I was able to climb in or through two of them to get photos.


The wood in this photo is the entrance to the first washroom.
And this is what you see when you are sitting on the toilet. Mmmm, yes. Very nice.

This is the view in the second washroom which is quite amazing.
Second washroom again with the door on the left.
The third washroom was elevated about 7 feet up and was a lot harder to get access to sense there was no hole big enough to fit myself through. However I did manage to get my hand in there and take a photo looking up, which is basically what the view would be like.