Lesley’s been weaving shawls, blankets, scarves, and knitting hats for her Open Studio event on Thanksgiving weekend. I’ll post a reminder a week or so before.

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

Lloyd,

Just looking at your blog and reminiscing. I’ll include my first house that was inspired by your first book. I built it in the woods outside Chapel Hill NC. I stretched burlap over the frames and sprayed it with watered-down cement. The area was many acres of owner-built alternative architecture. (The book “12 by 12” is about a little house that was on the next street over.) The funny thing about my little house is, years later I was traveling through the area and went by to see what it looked like. Astonishingly (to me), it had been turned into an upscale suburban sea of split-level homes but the one on my old lot had kept the little yurt and was using it for a pool house.

Since those days, I have built 6–8 houses; the most recent was in a community called City of the Sun in southern New Mexico primarily out of papercrete.

Thank you for all you have done to inspire countless dreamers.

–Bob Cook

Back in the ’60s, my architect hero was Bernard Maybeck who, along with architect Julia Morgan, designed a series of wonderful Bay Area buildings. One of Maybeck’s experiments was “Bubblestone,” making a wall by hanging burlap bags that had been “…dipped into a frothy mix of concrete and then hung, shingle-style, onto exterior walls.”

Reference for above quote: patch.com/california/berkeley/bp–architect-bernard-maybeck-and-his-experiments-witac2f59eef0

The New York Times
September 20, 2021
by Soumya Karlamangla

It’s Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed two bills aimed at easing the state’s housing crisis. Plus, firefighters are scrambling to protect some of the world’s oldest trees from flames.

No matter where you live, you’re probably familiar with the exorbitant cost of housing in California.

The state’s median home price has crept above $800,000, more than double what it is nationwide. Among the 50 biggest cities in the country, we’re home to the top four most difficult places to afford a mortgage. And half of all Americans experiencing homelessness live in California.

Our housing crisis has a seemingly simple solution, according to the laws of supply and demand: Build more housing.

But for decades, resistance from suburban homeowners has stalled development as the problem has only gotten worse.

On Thursday, the state took a step toward creating higher-density neighborhoods as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two high-profile housing bills.

Though the bills, Senate Bills 9 and 10, endured intense opposition in recent months, neither is all that revolutionary, said Conor Dougherty, a reporter for The New York Times who writes about economics in California.

But the package of housing reforms passed in California over the past four years, including these two latest measures, “is probably the biggest change in housing in 50 years or more,” Conor told me.
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