Tag Archives: January 2024

San Francisco Bay Design: Sausalito Houseboat Tour

The Local Project (January 2, 2024) – A house boat with rounded windows that frame the bay, Sausalito Houseboat by Craig Steely Architecture evokes a deep appreciation of the surrounds.

Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to the World’s Best House Boat 00:40 – The House Boat Community and its History 01:02 – A Spacious Brief 02:03 – A Walkthrough of the House Boat 02:46 – The Layered Design Approach 03:23 – A Simplistic Material Palette 03:50 – Accounting for the Climate 04:23 – Satisfying and Favourite Aspects

Located just north of San Francisco, the home is situated in a small house boat community of Sausalito. In World War II, Liberty ships were once predominantly built in the area, however, after the war, it was abandoned for residential use. As such, a community was established and house boats were built, creating a truly memorable location for a home. Working closely with the client – who wanted something spacious – Craig Steely Architecture took to designing a house boat that went against the typical aesthetic and design of others.

Additionally, the house boat is clad in décor that will accommodate the weather and surrounds, using materials such as old red wood from another project that does not have any finish but remains sturdy. Thinking about the dock, the ocean, the views and the Sausalito Bay surrounds, Craig Steely Architecture created a home that was reactive and connected the interior space to the outdoors. However, when the client and architect discovered the lot, they found a sinking barge but, deeply interested with the history of the space, they took to designing a house boat that referenced the bohemian history.

National Geographic Magazine – January 2024

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National Geographic Magazine (January 1, 2024) The new issue features ‘Saving The Monarchs’ – Inside the movement to help these beautiful and vulnerable butterflies thrive; Can monarchs adapt to a rapidly changing world? – Extreme weather and rising temperatures threaten their epic migration, but scientists say targeted habitat restoration can help….

Follow the monarch on its dangerous 3,000-mile journey across the continent

The iconic North American butterfly’s annual migration patterns are under threat from habitat loss and extreme weather, causing its devoted fans to research solutions and push for protection from the Endangered Species Act.

He spent 50 days on a deserted island. Then he found a message in a bottle.

The sea of sand with waves and grass instead of sea-foam.

Jasper Doest spent nearly two months photographing the Netherlands’ Rottumeroog, where visitors are usually prohibited and he found a new sense of freedom.

Arts/History: Smithsonian Magazine – January 2024

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Smithsonian Magazine (January 1, 2024) – The latest issue features ‘Picturing The Past’ – A special report on Tracing A Lost Ancestry; Reimagining Portraits of Civil War Heroes; A Journey to Discover an African Homeland; Pinpointing Birthplaces of the Enslaved, and more…

The Top Ten Ocean Stories of 2023

This year was marked by many broken records in the ocean.

Major discoveries, an undersea tragedy and international cooperation were some of the biggest saltwater moments of the year

By Naomi Greenberg

CULTURE: FRANCE-AMÉRIQUE MAGAZINE – JANUARY 2024

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France-Amérique Magazine – December 30, 2023 –  The new issue features ‘The Peak of French Chic’; A Century Ago – Inventing the Winter Olympics in Chamonix…

The Foundations of French-American Friendship

From Washington D.C. to New York City and from New Orleans to Paris, many philanthropic organizations continue to nurture the bonds connecting France and the United States through history, politics, economics, language, and culture.

By Roland Flamini

The New York Review Of Books – January 18, 2024

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The New York Review of Books (December 28, 2023)The latest issue features Ben Tarnoff on Elon Musk, Julian Bell on Peter Paul Rubens, Fintan O’Toole on the American gerontocracy, Anjum Hasan on recent Sri Lankan fiction, Matthew Desmond on America’s Covid-era experiment with a social safety net, Francine Prose on a vampiric celluloid Pinochet, James Gleick on the science of free will, Frances Wilson on Tove Jansson and the Moomintrolls, Álvaro Enrique on indigenous Americans in Europe, Katie Trumpener on Alexander Kluge, two poems by Jack Underwood, and more.

The Fate of Free Will

By James Gleick

In Free Agents, Kevin Mitchell makes a scientific case for the existence of human agency.

Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell

Nobody was holding a gun to your head when you started reading this. You made a choice. Surely it felt that way, at least. A sense of agency—of control over our actions, of continual decision-making—is part of the experience of being human, moment by moment and day by day. True, we sometimes just drift, like robots or zombies, but at other times we gird our loins and exert our will. David Hume defined will nearly three centuries ago as “the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind.” The feeling was universal then and it’s universal now.

Tools to End the Poverty Pandemic

Why have Americans not fought to sustain the unprecedented Covid-era expansion of aid to children, renters, and gig workers?

By Matthew Desmond

The Pandemic Paradox: How the Covid Crisis Made Americans More Financially Secure by Scott Fulford

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from Covid-19 by Zachary Parolin

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Jan 1 & 8, 2024

A person pauses from working at their desk and looks out the window at fireworks over a city skyline.

The New Yorker – January 1 & 8, 2024 issue: The new issue‘s cover features Bianca Bagnarelli’s “Deadline” – The artist evokes a moment suspended between the old and the new.

How Camille Pissarro Went from Mediocrity to Magnificence

A painting of a young girl with flowers by Camille Pissarro

He began as more of a tutor than a talent. But in his final decade he lent a keen eye-in-the-sky view to the Paris streets, rendering miracles of kinetic characterization.

By Adam Gopnik

It’s one of the stranger anomalies of French intellectual life that Impressionist painting—by far the most influential of French cultural enterprises—has received so little attention from the most ambitious French critics and philosophers. One can page through André Gide’s journal entries, a lot of them on art, or through Albert Camus’s, and find very little on Claude Monet or Edgar Degas (and much more on the Symbolists, a group that was far easier for a literary man to “get”). Marcel Proust cared passionately for painting, and his hero-painter Elstir has touches of Monet, but in order to make him interesting Proust had to model him on the more histrionic James McNeill Whistler, with samplings from a forgotten American painter added in.

A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza

A photograph of the writer Mosab Abu Toha and his family

Following Hamas’s October 7th attack and Israel’s invasion, Mosab Abu Toha fled his home with his wife and three children. Then I.D.F. soldiers took him into custody.

By Mosab Abu Toha

International Art: Apollo Magazine – January 2024

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Apollo Magazine (December 23, 2023): The new January 2024 issue features ‘The Last Days of Vincent Van Gogh’; What’s in store for the art market?; Paris pays tribute to Agnès Varda, and more…

Breath of fresh air – Gerhard Richter in the Alps

Three exhibitions in the Engadin Valley explore how the Swiss mountains have inspired some of the painter’s most playful work

Remembering the festive geese of Christmas past

The festive bird has often been served up by artists and writers including J.M.W. Turner and Charles Dickens

Health & Nutrition Letter January 2024 (Tufts)

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Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter (JANUARY 2024): The new issue features ‘Healthy Lifestyle May Outweigh a Genetic Risk Factor for Heart Disease; How to Stick to Those Resolutions!; Check Your Nutrition Knowledge; Special Report – Expand Your
Plant Palate; The Facts About Pea Protein; and more…