2018 in brief

 

With Richard Bender at factory_os on Mare Island. Factory-built housing is a topic I'll explore as a visiting scholar at Berkeley.

This year felt like a transition from 40 years of full-time work to something new. Shedding the structure that had framed my days for decades took adjustment. In late October, I became a visiting scholar at Berkeley's Department of Architecture. I also joined the editorial committee of ARCADE, the Seattle design magazine. And I've been helping my friend Vasilina Orlova with a manuscript. 

Our modest house in Fairfield, CT: three salons, six bedrooms.

Travel was intermittent. We took a short trip north to Healdsburg and Boonville. We went east to celebrate a family birthday in Fairfield, CT, and to see our granddaughter and her parents in Richmond, VA. I went to Seattle to attend an ARCADE meeting and see friends up there. This gave me a chance to visit OMA's remarkable Central Library, a truly impressive building.
 

The Big Room (level 3) in Seattle's Central Library, by OMA.

While in Seattle, I got an unexpected invitation to go to Tokyo to attend the Innovative City Forum. I spent nine days there in the second half of October with my writing partner, Richard Bender, and his wife Sue Bender. I saw many friends - Miho Ito, Yu Serizawa, Ryoko Ueyama, Daichi Amano, Sy Chen, Naomichi Kurata, John Mader, and Shigeru Yamaki - but alas not everyone. 

Kei Minohara and his wife Harumi at dinner in Makuhari.

A particular pleasure was to spend an afternoon and evening with the planner Kei Minohara, who lives in Makuhari, the new town between Tokyo and Narita Airport he helped plan. His apartment is in a complex designed by Steven Holl.
 

Toshio Oyama behind the counter at the Nest Café.

RB and I went to the Fukugawa District, part of an older Tokyo that's rapidly disappearing, with Hidenobu Jinnai, historian of Edo (as Tokyo was called). I met Sue's friend Amy Katoh, champion of Japanese traditional crafts and owner of Blue & White, a store in Tokyo that features them. And RB, Sue, and I visited the new Nest Café founded by Toshio Oyama, my oldest friend in Tokyo.

John, Sally, Theo, and Loz at Michael's house this summer.

Our second son John and his family were here in August. Their older son Laurents (Loz) stayed on to attend San Francisco State University as an exchange student. (He attends Cardiff University in the UK.) John and Sally will be back in April to upgrade their domestic partnership to a marriage. 

The view.

Our oldest son Michael bought a house near the coast north of San Francisco that he's now restoring, the family in tow. He, his wife Bo, and our grandson Conor live close by, as does our daughter Elizabeth. She spent the fall in Europe, mainly in Paris but also in Crete, writing and gearing up to go out on her own. Our third son Ross, his wife Alison, and our granddaughter Caroline visited this summer. While I was in Tokyo, Kathy was in Richmond seeing them.

Caroline and Alison during their visit.

Kathy was hugely involved in the campaign against California's Proposition 10, a sledgehammer measure aimed squarely at community-based providers of rental housing like her and Michael. It was defeated, 60:40. Whew! With this behind her, she's stepping down as president of the Berkeley Property Owners Association, which she's led for the past two years. It should free up time to travel more, a shared ambition. She and Michael are working together now. With Elizabeth setting up as an independent writer and editor, don't be surprised to see "Snowden & Père" at some point in the future.

Goats near Elizabeth's cottage in rural Crete.