The mighty and ever-beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. I’ve been to the top (of the south tower), as well as underneath it in a kayak journey from my home beach into San Francisco.

Plus my dad went out on a plank walkway to the south tower when it was being built in 1933.

I got a connection with this bridge!

P.S.: The true designer of the bridge was Charles Alton Ellis, not Joseph Strauss. See John Van der Zee’s book, The Gate, on the true story of this elegant design.

I got an Instagram message from Greg Ryan last week, and got him to write up this unique project:

I was trying to design a structure that could be used as an outdoor classroom space during Covid. I wanted it to be inexpensive and simple to build, to cover maximum space with minimal materials and something that would lend itself to community builds (or ‘unskilled labor’).

I was inspired by the usual suspects … Frei Otto, Buckminster Fuller, Amory Lovins, as well as my brother’s interest in ultralight aircraft design and how strong something could be while being very light and using minimal materials. I was also inspired by Bill Coperthwaite’s yurts and the outward leaning walls that create a built-in seat or bench back. The aesthetic draws on architecture found in Vermont, including covered bridges and barns.

I wanted something that could be built with minimal materials that were readily available, could be built in a shop and assembled quickly on site. Strong enough to survive Vermont winters, handle heavy snow loads, and strong winds. The resulting structure is extremely strong (as it is composed primarily of triangles), easy to assemble, and uses minimal materials.

The end result is a structure that looks modern, but also fits in with the traditional architecture of New England. Although the structures were originally designed to be outdoor classrooms, people are finding many uses for them, including shop space, lumber drying, boat houses, second garages, backyard covered decks, etc. A unique feature of the “RyanTruss” is that the entire building is laid out on a single template. This template is also a drill guide. The idea being that a community group could get together and build one of these with basic cordless tools.

In practice, this has proven a little more difficult than that, though we keep getting closer.

Over the past year, my sons Aidan and Casey have built over a dozen RyanTrusses and have worked to refine the building process as well as honing in on the best ways to assemble the structures onsite.

www.gregryan.us
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A month or so ago, I saw a unique elliptical wooden teardrop trailer in the surfers’ parking lot at Salmon Creek (Sonoma County). Inside was Mira Nussbaum, who was painting on a silk scarf. The trailer will be one of the units covered in our forthcoming book (publication date May-June, 2022), Rolling Homes. Mira told me she and her husband lived in a tiny home, and she sent these photos. A link to her art work is at www.silkstorymaps.com.

Our tiny house, Tree Song, was inspired by three years of visioning and design for a better way of life. We built this sanctuary so that we could take a step towards living our own beliefs and values in our day-to-day choices. Tree Song was built in 2010 from locally harvested and produced material sourced from local businesses who care about their ecological impact, furthering our intention to live a simple life connected to the land. Tree Song was built on a 22′ × 8′ trailer and is 13′ tall. This amazing home has been at two retreat centers on the East Coast, made an arduous cross-country journey, and now resides in Northern California where we have called it our home since 2017.

–Mira and Alex