Situated just behind New Street Station, the Birmingham Back to Backs are nestled in the very heart of Birmingham and are a residue of the history of the city’s population over the past 150 years.
The Back to Backs were originally tiny houses literally built back to back to each other in different quarters. Within these quarters communities would form. They were built in the 1800s in order to provide homes for the ever increasing population of the Birmingham of the Industrial Revolution. The Back to Backs were still inhabited by residents until the 1960s and 1970s when most of the courts were demolished to make way for more modern accommodation. 10 years ago the National Trust acquired the city’s very last surviving court of Back to Back buildings and has been preserving them ever since, much to our advantage.
From www.redbrick.me/…
Photo from: www.britainexpress.com/…
Photos of Back-to-Backs: www.google.com/…
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Round roof barn in Willamette Valley, Oregon
There are buildings that have — for lack of a better word — a sweetness to them. Like a small abandoned cottage in an English field I once found, slowly disintegrating back into the soil from which all its materials came. Inside, I could feel the lives that had been lived there. Or the buildings of master carpenter Lloyd House. It happens most frequently in barns, where practicality and experience create form with function. No architects needed, thank you.
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Bill and Athena Steen, the straw bale/earthen plaster maestro/maestra team from Arizona are helping build this home, which will be featured in our new book, Small Homes.
Bill writes: “Interior adobe wall in a clay-plastered straw bale house we are helping our boys build in Sonoita, AZ.”
(Bill shoots pretty much all his photos with an iPhone — has been doing it for a few years. I’ve finally come around to doing this. Both of us still use the big cameras (him a Nikon, me an Olympus OM-D) for serious shoots, but the iPhone for everyday shots. The new iPhone 6s Plus has a super new camera.)
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A dome made of cob, earth bags, light straw clay, and adobe in the high desert of Southern California.
This is Sneak Preview #7 from our forthcoming book, Small Homes, to be published in October, 2016.
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Yogan and Menthé, carpenters from France, who have been featured in our last two books, stopped by here yesterday on their way home. They have spent the last three months hitchhiking and working on the West Coast, from Northern California up to Orcas Island. Kindred spirits, these two have had a wonderful time, working with a variety of people, trading work for room and board.
We’ll be posting photos of their projects in the near future.
From www.lloydkahn.com/…
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I’ve often found that homes that appear quite simple on the outside are lovely inside. Also that in my experience, men tend to think of how a building looks on the exterior, whereas women tend to judge a home by the interior space and the life that can be lived within. That’s an observation from decades of observing both men and women and their ideas of what makes for a desirable home.
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The Whole Earth Catalog was a revelation to us in the ’70s. Then we (my wife, her brother and sister and I) were twenty-somethings sharing a family camp on a remote lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
With our kids and their families, we’ve torn the place apart and rebuilt it. We talked, Keith Huff, a retired carpenter friend into doing the framing and roofing, and we’ve paid for some other services that were beyond us. But a lot of what’s happened has been our sweat equity.
–Jim Leach
This is Sneak Preview #4 from our forthcoming book, Small Homes, to be published in October, 2016.
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I was shooting photos of the old one and Louie said, “Hey, the one across the street is identical.” Sure enough. Twins. On the ocean side of the highway in Fort Bragg.
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Over the years we’ve sent prison inmates any books they ask for. 20 years ago, we were sending out a lot of weight training books. These days, they’re asking for building books.*
Yesterday this package arrived and it was a delight. The spoon is really nice. Handcrafted, not made in China.
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I really like this. The curved roofs, the corrugated siding (never needs paint), the nifty balconies, the alternating symmetries.
Kudos to the good architects, of whom there are unfortunately few these days.
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