Tornado-proof homes (continued...)

A little over one year ago in March, I was already lamenting against the woefully inadequate building design to protect residential, institutional and commercial occupants against tornadoes. The one that just hit Oklahoma City is another reminder that regulators governments and architects aren't doing enough to address this horrible risk.

So instead of complaining, I'm proposing something that could transform the way people build new home and rebuild damage one in “twister country.” Use a flying saucer design offering minimum resistance to wind and equip it with automatic shutters that would further streamline their surface.

Simple, cost effective and long lasting!

Sprechen Sie noch Deutsch?

Forty years ago, I drove from the French Alps to South Germany to take an intensive, full-immersion, German course, in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg. I had never learned the language in school and begun from scratch.

German is not that easy to learn for the French-born and I wanted to be able to teach skiing to visiting German tourist in Avoriaz. This first 6 week session wasn't what I would term a total success, but it got my feet wet and gave me the basis for another similar course that I would take 6 month later.

Instead of applying myself to learning German 24/7, I spent a lot of time testing the local beers and sausages at some local “Stammtisch...” Well, I probably was already believing that if not today, perhaps tomorrow!

Where are the happy people?

When I consider everything, I feel that I'm quite fortunate with my life and therefore I consider myself happy. Of course, there are still a million things that I would have like to accomplish, but I now realize that there are so many hours in the day, and that in the end, it's not the quantity, but rather the quality of our experiences that account for anything of value.

Like many of these events, perception often times takes over reality and the lenses through which we see the world around us can make all the difference. If you happen to share my feelings and my views, begin taking a mental account of the people you know, who could be feeling just like you and me and yet, continue to feel frustrated, unhappy and undeservedly punished by life. You'll quickly find out that their numbers are pretty staggering...

Why snow melts earlier

Because I love skiing and winter so much I have always been a keen observer of snow behavior; from the moment it falls off the sky to the time it finally melts. It's only since I've returned to a mountain environment, after a 10 year hiatus, that I began making precise observations and taking notes.

What I found is that over the almost 3 decades I've lived in Utah, snow melts much faster in the late spring, and early summer. Today, I think I know why this happens. It's not so much because of rising global temperature as most would think, but because humans are soiling their snowfields, all over the world.

All the particulates and other pollutants that are emitted from Paris Diesel cars to Beijing Coal-fired generator plants or forest fires in the West, are eventually dropping upon our snowfields and glaciers in such amounts that just a few days after a fresh late season snowfall, the dirty deposits take over, making the remaining snow all gray and exposing the dark bare ice on glaciers.

All of this contributes to a huge loss in reflectivity of these normally white surfaces that increases the penetration of the solar heat and hasten melting. As a matter of example, the Greenland ice sheet loses its surface reflectivity from 85 percent to 30 percent according to Jason Box, founder of the Dark Snow project. A very compelling video of his research follows...

Confluence of activities...

Yesterday was one of these crazy day where too many events where occurring at once. Not just because they had been planned that way, but simply due to the fact that certain delays and other unforeseeable developments made them coincide.

Situations like these make you wonder “how can I manage to keep all these balls up in air while I'm juggling them?” That's often when panic management comes in handy and can save the day.

The secret is to remember to expedite one component at a time, let a few suffer for a short while before turning to them when it's their turn, until everything finally falls into place. I wish I had known how to handle that thirty years ago!

Project rapture

For the past few days, I've been consumed by a project that is hugely important to me. So, as a result the rest of the world can fall apart, disappear, nothing seems to matter to me anymore. It's just amazing how a little project that's probably meaningless to others and counts so much for me can obliterate all the life around me. Call it rapture, blinding passion or insanity if you will, but I love that feeling!

What can you expect from your architect?

For one thing, this very special type of professional should create a residence that will work for the client and also draw from their education, experience and common sense to design something that's functional and the best solution based on the specs and constraints provided.

If the individual is artistic and creative, so much the better but, at this point, this should be seen as the frosting on the cake and these two latter elements should never be the one that overwhelm the rest. This could spell big trouble. Like anything, an architect needs to be managed and guided by the client into creating what's needed.

Don't expect architects to go on automatic pilot and deliver the goods with little or no intervention from the client. Only expect them to hold their ego in check and you should be so lucky!