Design: California ‘Desert Modernism’ In Australia

The Local Project (August 29, 2023) – Just outside of Adelaide is Richmond House, a family home designed by studio gram that offers the owners a robust, relaxed and character-rich home to raise a family.

Video timeline: 00:00 – Intro the Californian Inspired Family Home 00:50 – The Location of the Home 01:08 – A Desert Modernism Brief 01:36 – Connection to the Landscape 02:09 – A Walkthrough of the Home 03:18 – Behind the Collaborative Process 03:52 – The Material Palette 04:30 – Unique Aspects of the Home 04:53 – A Robust, Relaxed, Character Filled Home

After spending some time travelling around California, the clients delivered a detailed brief for a home renovation that was inspired by the architecture and interior design of desert modernism. Additionally, the brief requested a family home designed to suit a growing family and allow them access to an abundance of natural light. As the clients were a winemaker and photographer, the brief also requested a connection to landscape and the garden beyond.

The house tour begins in the original part of the house, where a considered renovation to the interior design has taken place; the bedrooms, master ensuite and main bathroom are now located here. Moving throughout, the original portion seamlessly connects to the new extensions through carefully designed openings. In the new extension of the home, the house tour reveals a simple open plan living space with a wealth of natural light. Cutting the family house in four quadrants, the family home designed by studio gram employs one quadrant as the kitchen, another for the dining space and the third for a living area.

The fourth quadrant is removed and, in its place, a courtyard garden is included to enhance the connection to nature. As a collaboration between studio gram, the client and the landscape designer, the garden and home unfold as one and give the owners a home that seamlessly connects all aspects. Additionally, discussions of midcentury Palm Springs and desert modernism played a major role in the renovation as well as the architecture and interior design of the home.

Future Cities: A Floating ‘Dogen City’ In Japan

Tomorrow’s Build (August 29, 2023) – Dogen City in Japan is a smart healthcare city floating on the sea that integrates food environment, architecture, data, energy, and ocean resource with a focus on healthcare.

News: Ukraine Elections, Afghanistan Women’s Rights, New Arctic Express

The Globalist Podcast, Monday, August 28: Logistics of elections in war torn Ukraine with historian Alex von Tunzelman and Kyiv correspondent Olga Tokariuk, and former Afghan politician Shukria Barakzai brings us up-to-date on the crackdown on women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Plus: Finnair’s new Arctic Express service and the latest business news with Isobel Hamilton.

The New York Times — Tuesday, August 29, 2023

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Not Over Yet: Late-Summer Covid Wave Brings Warning of More to Come

A wave of Covid-19 outbreaks is raising fears about more infections in the fall and winter.

Hospitalizations are still low but have been rising in recent weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Judge Sets Trial Date in March for Trump’s Federal Election Case

Former President Donald J. Trump in Atlanta last week.

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan rejected efforts by the former president’s legal team to postpone the trial until 2026.

To Escape the Heat in Dubai, Head to the Beach at Midnight

In a city where weather that would constitute a deadly heat wave in Europe is just a typical summer day, official “night beaches” have become a popular way to cool down.

A Forced Kiss, and a Reckoning With Sexism in Spain

The nonconsensual kiss that Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s soccer federation, pressed on Jennifer Hermoso has come to embody the generational fault line between a culture of machismo and more recent progressivism.

Preview: London Review Of Books – Sept 7, 2023

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London Review of Books (LRB) – September 7, 2023: The new issue features Colm Tóibín review of ‘Annotations to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’; Desperate Midwives; French Short Stories; Catastrophic Thinking and Plant Detectives…

Arruginated: James Joyce’s Errors

By Colm Tóibín

Amazon.com: Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses: 9780198864585: Slote,  Sam, Mamigonian, Marc A., Turner, John: Books

Annotations to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ 
by Sam SloteMarc A. Mamigonian and John Turner.

Ulysses is haunted by the story of its own composition. As Joyce famously put it, ‘I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.’ The annotators point out, however, that it is ‘very likely that Joyce never said this’.

Opinion: No Fix For China’s Economy, Firms Fighting Disrupters, Palestine Wine

‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (August 28, 2023) Three essential articles read aloud from the The Economist. This week, why China’s economy won’t be fixed, America’s corporate giants are fighting back against disrupters (10:15) and the challenge of making wine in Palestine (21:50).

San Francisco Views: Tour Of Alfred Hitchcock 1958 Movie ‘Vertigo’ Locations

KPIX | CBS NEWS BAY AREA (August 27, 2023) – ‘Vertigo’, one of the enduring classics of American cinema, was Alfred Hitchcock’s love letter to the Bay Area many of the views he recorded in 1957 are little changed 65 years on.

Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based on the 1954 novel D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor. The film stars James Stewart as former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson, who has retired because an incident in the line of duty has caused him to develop acrophobia (an extreme fear of heights) and vertigo, a false sense of rotational movement. Scottie is hired by an acquaintance, Gavin Elster, as a private investigator to follow Gavin’s wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), who is behaving strangely.

The film was shot on location in the city of San Francisco, California, as well as in Mission San Juan BautistaBig Basin Redwoods State Park, Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive, and Paramount Studios in Hollywood. It is the first film to use the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie’s acrophobia. As a result of its use in this film, the effect is often referred to as “the Vertigo effect”. In 1996, the film underwent a major restoration to create a new 70 mm print and DTS soundtrack.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 4, 2023

A man hides behind a tree while a woman and dog run past.

The New Yorker – September 4, 2023 issue: The issue’s cover features James Thurber’s “New Tricks”, discussed by the artist’s granddaughter and his legacy and his love for his canine companions.

How a Man in Prison Stole Millions from Billionaires

With smuggled cell phones and a handful of accomplices, Arthur Lee Cofield, Jr., took money from large bank accounts and bought houses, cars, clothes, and gold.

Illustration of an IPhone showing modern home on the screen surrounding the phone shows a prison.

By Charles Bethea

Early in 2020, the architect Scott West got a call at his office, in Atlanta, from a prospective client who said that his name was Archie Lee. West designs luxurious houses in a spare, angular style one might call millionaire modern. Lee wanted one. That June, West found an appealing property in Buckhead—an upscale part of North Atlanta that attracts both old money and new—and told Lee it might be a good spot for them to build. Lee arranged for his wife to meet West there.

Coco Gauff’s Glorious Progress

Tennis player Coco Gauff smiles on a tennis court

Gauff has the charisma and talent to be not just a champion but a star, and this summer she has played better than ever before.

By Gerald Marzorati

Last weekend, at a tournament in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Coco Gauff beat Iga Świątek for the first time. It was one of those moments in tennis when the ground seemed to shift: Gauff had never taken a set from Świątek, the current world No. 1, in the seven previous times they’d met. It was the biggest win of Gauff’s young career—but it was in keeping with a high-summer revving of her already formidable game. In the hard-court tournaments held across North America which are essentially warmups for the U.S. Open, Gauff has been the imposing presence that the tennis world has been waiting for her to become—waiting avidly, for sure, but a little anxiously, too. As recently as early July, when she lost in the first round at Wimbledon, there was fretting that she wasn’t making quick enough progress. 

News: Prigozhin Death Verified, US-China Trade Talks, Greenland Politics

The Globalist Podcast, Monday, August 28: A vibrant show from Monocle’s Zurich studio presented by Emma Nelson. We’ll discuss the latest from Ukraine, as well as China and the US’s latest trade talks.

Also, journalist Bruno Kaufmann examines Greenland’s geopolitical significance, we talk technology and the latest from the travel industry.

The New York Times — Monday, August 28, 2023

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Trump and His Co-Defendants in Georgia Are Already at Odds

The Fulton County Courthouse in Georgia this month.

Some defendants have already sought to move the case to federal court, while others are seeking speedy or separate trials.

Leaderless and Exposed, Russia’s Wagner Faces an Uncertain Future

People in Moscow paid their respects this weekend at a makeshift memorial for Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, and others killed last week.

It could be hard for the Kremlin to find a way to neutralize the mercenary group after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death while retaining its fighting power and geopolitical links.

An Inside Look at Covid’s Lasting Damage to the Lungs

President of Powerful Realtors Group Is Accused of Sexual Harassment

An employee described a “culture of fear” at the National Association of Realtors, a powerful nonprofit that controls access to nearly every U.S. home listing.