http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981357552
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Rocket City Retro, Mid-Century Style Florida Space Coast
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| Nichole and Billy Meyers |
The commercial was shot in the home of Nichole and Billy Meyers, a thirty-something couple who collect 1950s-1960s-era pieces. The house is a sweeping, tri-level structure built in 1961-'62 and located in Cocoa's River Heights subdivision. It features one room of their home which has been finished -- as much as any avid collectors ever finish rooms -- and eventually the couple plan to complete the entire house in vintage. 'I am a purist,' Mrs. Meyers said. 'It will be 100% period.'
The inevitable overflow from their personal passion first spilled into a vintage furnishings store down in Eau Gallie which they ran for about a year, but now they've expanded into a larger venue in Cocoa Village: Rocket City Retro store, launched a few days ago at 9 Rosa L. Jones Place.
Genesis of Billy Meyers' collecting bug began when he purchased his first home at age 20. A bungalow built in 1952, it featured all the typical design elements of the era: A house conceived as a system for living, incorporating passive solar heating and cooling, seamless indoor-outdoor living space, clerestory windows providing pleasant, indirect natural lighting, and a spare interior.
'It had the pink, grey and black terrazzo,' Mrs. Meyers said, 'It had site sensitivity -- the patio was built around a tree. The outdoors, was just another room.'
"It was not kitschy at all,' said Mr. Meyers, referring to a common misconception about collecting American style. With its open, uncluttered interior space and spare, distinctive furniture shapes, 'These houses are easier to clean. Less time spent on housework means more time spent with family,' said Mrs. Meyers, noting the couple have a 12-year-old.
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| Hand made tile table, late 1950s; Danish Modern table, 1962 |
Among their best customers are college kids who have good jobs, and are their late 20s to 30s. 'A lot of people come in because they have seen this type furniture in advertizements, and on TV,' said Mrs. Meyers. Popular items include everything from clothing, tube radios and record players, table furnishings to complete furniture suites.
"we are also getting a lot of retirees,' Mr. Meyers said. 'They're downsizing. They're moving into beachside communities and looking for those 1,500 sq. ft. houses. Not only is this the furniture they grew up with, and that they love, it also fits the scale of these homes perfectly.'
Generally, the Meyers say their customers are people who are looking for '...pride in workmanship and superior materials,' said Mrs. Meyers. 'Made-in-America brand names still hold value.' The Meyers said their customers don't want furniture which have been made in China. 'Our customers say, 'Hey, this furniture has lasted 50 years, it can last 50 years more, Mrs. Meyers said.
'The decision to buy vintage furniture is a decision to buy a certain quality,' Mr. Meyers said. 'It's as much emotionally driven as it is calculated purchase. It's good furniture, made to last.'
------------------------------------ 30 -----------------------------------
More info:
Rocket City Retro
Kennedy Space Center commercial, 'One Day'
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| Rocket City Retro shop/ Mid-Century collection |
Friday, May 11, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Mid-Century style on Florida's Space Coast
Now that the last of the shuttles have been picked apart and dispersed for points elsewhere, and Americans have to hitch a ride beyond the blue, it can be said also that the original dream of a Space Age, which so gripped the nation's psyche during the golden 1950s-60s seems to have run out of fuel here as well.
Once a nexus of launch activity and a parabolic building boom, the Space Coast was arguably a near-perfect time capsule of Mid-Century Modern design. The style of the time was an exuberant explosion of vaulting roof lines, angled plate glass, sine wave arches, boomerangs and atoms.
Mid-Century Modern. It was streamlined, it was copied, it was a physical manifestation of faith in science and in an unlimited future. It influenced the world, from housing to industrial design. It was the 'American Look,' indigenous as Jazz music and uniquely our own.
The Space Coast once had the American Look in spades, although little of it has been preserved; there are a few worn details left, but those may well already be on someone's list to 'update'. The great irony is that Mid-Century Modern design has now come full circle.
Elsewhere in the world, Hipsters snatch up remnants of Atomic Age furnishings, art and clothing. Gen Xers vie for the un-renovated 1950s-'60s homes. Urban explorer websites send pilgrims to Cocoa Beach's unique and once-spectacular Glass Bank. Although dim and crumbling, the 1961 structure is considered vastly more interesting than older, but, yet-another-non-descript Greek Revival buildings in the area.
Conservation groups are vigilant in protecting Mid-Century buildings in California, Washington, Nevada and Oregon; efforts are ramping up in other states as well. Enclaves of the playful, distinctive architecture have proven to be major tourist draws in Phoenix, Arizona and along New Jersey's Wildwoods Shore.
Variations on the Mid-Century style -- Atomic, Vroom, Ray Gun Gothic, DooWop and Googie are increasingly cropping up on our nations' Historic Register. Renovators reap tax breaks and the amount of money for rehab grants is growing.
In residential housing, today's young architects look at Modernist and Mid-Century style as they lead a backlash against the excesses of the housing bubble, when boom-time contractors raced to pack homes with the most square-footage-under-air in order to qualify for ever-larger construction loans. Critics call those results bland and bloated warrens of rooms, rather than livable spaces.
They suffer from choppy layout, wasted space and wasted materials. Interiors are climate control nightmares, and exteriors a pastiche of illogical roof lines and stuccoed foam gewgaws. Garage Mahalls.
In a 2006 article The Wall Street Journal noted a rise in 'minimalist' houses, sparing of energy, materials and square footage. The trend has rippled out into commercial custom home design: The National Association of Home Builders' 2012 awards went to models which demonstrated simplicity, cost-effective use of materials and to those which incorporated indoor-outdoor living space. To American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, that would sound quite familiar.
Wright, as always, was ahead of the curve. In the late 1930s, a post-Depression scarcity of building materials (more likely, a dearth of moneyed patrons) prompted him to re-think single family home design. He was among the first to observe that advances in industrial production techniques and in transportation would likely yield a more autonomous working class ready to venture into suburban enclaves to raise families.
Toward that end, Wright designed faster, cheaper, and more comfortable homes. He called his concept Usonian, and these are its basic elements: low-cost building materials; spare roof lines, most of them on a horizontal axis; passive solar heating and cooling attained by extended roof overhangs and covered walkways for shade; clerestory windows and patterned concrete block fenestration for pleasant, indirect interior lighting; strong visual and physical connection between the interior and exterior spaces through glass walls and spacious patios; open floor plans for kitchen and living areas; concrete slab floors and carports. Yes, Frank Lloyd Wright invented carports.
Just as Space Coast high tech began to come into its own, Wright completed his 'Child of the Sun,' a 10-year opus which is the whole of the campus of Florida Southern University in Lakeland (designated earlier this year as a National Historic Landmark by the Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior).
Let's just understate and say Wright was influential in Florida home building in the early '50s. Ever the entrepreneur, Wright reprised his Usonian concept. Essentially, he went into the building supply business, producing the both modest floor plans and a patterned, concrete block-and-rebar system for modular, expandable houses. He envisioned this system would be a hit with the DIY homeowner crowd and assembled on weekends, after barbecue parties.
Most homeowners, however, passed on it and just hired building contractors to produce similar-looking designs. Wright's original proportions got re-interpreted into standard concrete block sizes. Further, few of the maestro's horizontal roofs ever remained water tight for long, and his glass walls didn't particularly lend themselves to privacy in subdivision settings.
Nevertheless, most of Wright's 'natural house' concepts formed the basis of Mid-Century housing design.
Meanwhile, in California, architect John Lautner, with a nod towards Italian Futurist architecture circa World War I, took design off the chain and created motion. He is primarily responsible for the American kitsch known as 'Googie' or 'Ray Gun Gothic', architecture, for upswept roofs, geometric curves and glass, steel and neon Space Age designs.
Concurrently, designers Charles and Ray Eames revisited and refined Wright's sometimes-chunky and overdecorated lines, consulted Modern art, threw in a little Miro, a little Mondrian, and made use of new technologies in extruded metals and molded plywood. Generally, they set about streamlining American industrial and consumer products from chairs to World's Fairs. They were highly-influential in the look of Mid-Century interior furnishings.
Through all this the sleepy little Space Coast built on, a blank slate with a big need. The Town of Cocoa Beach saw a 1000% increase in building permits between 1950 and 1960 to the point where, as noted in City archives, a moratorium on permits was declared in order to 'sort things out'.
Relatively modest and utilitarian, Space Coast buildings of the time lacked some of the more exuberant excesses of 'Ray Gun Gothic,' but nonetheless represented with sinage of Vanguard rockets and the airborne buttresses of the Starlite Motel.
Low cost houses with the signature overhangs and open plans made best use of sea breezes in the era before central air. Most of the housing design hereabouts was decidedly plebian, but isn't that what Wright would have wanted? And most of those early homes are long gone; such as the subdivisions razed for Launch Complex 39.
If you look closely, though, you can still see vestiges of the Space Coast's contribution to Mid-century American style. One distinctive feature in our area seems to be that actual rocket scientists liked the look of sine waves in their concrete entry canopies. A few of these remain.
What an interesting little Petri dish the Space Coast once was. Most of the Mid-Century buildings here were never surveyed or cataloged.
An apochryphal story, but it is believed the iconic Moonhut sign ended ignobly on a dump.
In 1984 parts of Cape Canaveral Air Force station were added to the National Register of Historic Places, but we locals failed to take a cue from that.
The erosion continues. Little Cape Canaveral bungalows and bits of buildings are going, going, gone, leaving subsequent generations to weigh the history of a seldom-seen audacity of American design against salt-rotted rebar and asbestos-wrapped pipes.
Fly me to the moon
And let me play among the stars.
Let me see what Spring is like, On Jupiter and Mars...
Once a nexus of launch activity and a parabolic building boom, the Space Coast was arguably a near-perfect time capsule of Mid-Century Modern design. The style of the time was an exuberant explosion of vaulting roof lines, angled plate glass, sine wave arches, boomerangs and atoms.
 |
| Florida Memories Collection |
The Space Coast once had the American Look in spades, although little of it has been preserved; there are a few worn details left, but those may well already be on someone's list to 'update'. The great irony is that Mid-Century Modern design has now come full circle.
Elsewhere in the world, Hipsters snatch up remnants of Atomic Age furnishings, art and clothing. Gen Xers vie for the un-renovated 1950s-'60s homes. Urban explorer websites send pilgrims to Cocoa Beach's unique and once-spectacular Glass Bank. Although dim and crumbling, the 1961 structure is considered vastly more interesting than older, but, yet-another-non-descript Greek Revival buildings in the area.
Conservation groups are vigilant in protecting Mid-Century buildings in California, Washington, Nevada and Oregon; efforts are ramping up in other states as well. Enclaves of the playful, distinctive architecture have proven to be major tourist draws in Phoenix, Arizona and along New Jersey's Wildwoods Shore.
Variations on the Mid-Century style -- Atomic, Vroom, Ray Gun Gothic, DooWop and Googie are increasingly cropping up on our nations' Historic Register. Renovators reap tax breaks and the amount of money for rehab grants is growing.
In residential housing, today's young architects look at Modernist and Mid-Century style as they lead a backlash against the excesses of the housing bubble, when boom-time contractors raced to pack homes with the most square-footage-under-air in order to qualify for ever-larger construction loans. Critics call those results bland and bloated warrens of rooms, rather than livable spaces.
They suffer from choppy layout, wasted space and wasted materials. Interiors are climate control nightmares, and exteriors a pastiche of illogical roof lines and stuccoed foam gewgaws. Garage Mahalls.
In a 2006 article The Wall Street Journal noted a rise in 'minimalist' houses, sparing of energy, materials and square footage. The trend has rippled out into commercial custom home design: The National Association of Home Builders' 2012 awards went to models which demonstrated simplicity, cost-effective use of materials and to those which incorporated indoor-outdoor living space. To American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, that would sound quite familiar.
Wright, as always, was ahead of the curve. In the late 1930s, a post-Depression scarcity of building materials (more likely, a dearth of moneyed patrons) prompted him to re-think single family home design. He was among the first to observe that advances in industrial production techniques and in transportation would likely yield a more autonomous working class ready to venture into suburban enclaves to raise families.
Toward that end, Wright designed faster, cheaper, and more comfortable homes. He called his concept Usonian, and these are its basic elements: low-cost building materials; spare roof lines, most of them on a horizontal axis; passive solar heating and cooling attained by extended roof overhangs and covered walkways for shade; clerestory windows and patterned concrete block fenestration for pleasant, indirect interior lighting; strong visual and physical connection between the interior and exterior spaces through glass walls and spacious patios; open floor plans for kitchen and living areas; concrete slab floors and carports. Yes, Frank Lloyd Wright invented carports.
 |
| Usonian Basic, Wikimedia Creative Commons |
Let's just understate and say Wright was influential in Florida home building in the early '50s. Ever the entrepreneur, Wright reprised his Usonian concept. Essentially, he went into the building supply business, producing the both modest floor plans and a patterned, concrete block-and-rebar system for modular, expandable houses. He envisioned this system would be a hit with the DIY homeowner crowd and assembled on weekends, after barbecue parties.
Most homeowners, however, passed on it and just hired building contractors to produce similar-looking designs. Wright's original proportions got re-interpreted into standard concrete block sizes. Further, few of the maestro's horizontal roofs ever remained water tight for long, and his glass walls didn't particularly lend themselves to privacy in subdivision settings.
 |
| Illustration from a 1952 Sherwin Williams brochure |
Meanwhile, in California, architect John Lautner, with a nod towards Italian Futurist architecture circa World War I, took design off the chain and created motion. He is primarily responsible for the American kitsch known as 'Googie' or 'Ray Gun Gothic', architecture, for upswept roofs, geometric curves and glass, steel and neon Space Age designs.
Concurrently, designers Charles and Ray Eames revisited and refined Wright's sometimes-chunky and overdecorated lines, consulted Modern art, threw in a little Miro, a little Mondrian, and made use of new technologies in extruded metals and molded plywood. Generally, they set about streamlining American industrial and consumer products from chairs to World's Fairs. They were highly-influential in the look of Mid-Century interior furnishings.
Through all this the sleepy little Space Coast built on, a blank slate with a big need. The Town of Cocoa Beach saw a 1000% increase in building permits between 1950 and 1960 to the point where, as noted in City archives, a moratorium on permits was declared in order to 'sort things out'.
 |
| Mosquito Beaters archive |
Low cost houses with the signature overhangs and open plans made best use of sea breezes in the era before central air. Most of the housing design hereabouts was decidedly plebian, but isn't that what Wright would have wanted? And most of those early homes are long gone; such as the subdivisions razed for Launch Complex 39.
If you look closely, though, you can still see vestiges of the Space Coast's contribution to Mid-century American style. One distinctive feature in our area seems to be that actual rocket scientists liked the look of sine waves in their concrete entry canopies. A few of these remain.
 | ||
| Saturn Condo, Cocoa Beach |
 |
| Cape View Elementary School, Cape Canaveral |
 |
| Cape Royal Building, Cocoa Beach |
An apochryphal story, but it is believed the iconic Moonhut sign ended ignobly on a dump.
In 1984 parts of Cape Canaveral Air Force station were added to the National Register of Historic Places, but we locals failed to take a cue from that.
The erosion continues. Little Cape Canaveral bungalows and bits of buildings are going, going, gone, leaving subsequent generations to weigh the history of a seldom-seen audacity of American design against salt-rotted rebar and asbestos-wrapped pipes.
Fly me to the moon
And let me play among the stars.
Let me see what Spring is like, On Jupiter and Mars...
Sunday, May 6, 2012
A valentine to Mid-Century Style, Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach
Ok, so most of the architecture is gone.
A few years ago, the owner of the famed, but now-renamed Moon Hut had the original neon sign languishing in the restaurant side yard for quite some time. Of course I noticed it, and stopped by to ask about its disposition. (real, I offered to buy it). The owner told me quite a few people were interested in it. Good. He said he was undecided as to what to do.
Months later, I noticed the Moon Hut sign was gone, so I stopped in again and asked what was what.
He told me he had consigned the sign to the dump.
This is what we deal with here everyday; so few original structures are left. The once-spectacular Glass Bank is falling apart before our eyes. There has been some interest from Cocoa Beach City Council to secure the building, but from what I understand the owner has set a price out in La-La land and would rather see the whole of it fail than take less dosh than what he thinks it is worth. Kill it for everyone, doll, do as you will.
When one goes to the Brevard County Historical Society in Cocoa Village and asks for info on subdivisions build in the Go-Go era of the 50s-60s, one gets a blank stare and is told, 'but we have buildings from the 1820s,' as if that really means something (face it, LOTS of places have old buildings). They do not understand that a building of mediocre design from the 18-somethings is much less interesting than even a modest structure from the Atomic Age. They simply do not get it.
Here's a few snaps of remaining architectural details.
Always interested in input. Please feel free to upload your shots.
Will upload a photo-essay of other architectural details asap.
BTW, the woman on the lawn mower -- I have that hat. I love estate sales.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Art video of Space Shuttle launches shortlisted for Vimeo award
Grand Finale 2010-11, a video compilation of space shuttle launches designed by artist McLean Fahnestock is among the top entries for this year's Vimeo award in the Remix category.
Based on NASA launch footage, Ms. Fahnestock's hypnotic piece was completed last July with the launch of Atlantis, final flight of the Space Shuttle Program. The California artist presents feed from all 135 missions synchronized across a 15 x 9 grid.
The cumulative effect of left-brain technology at work yields a real right-brain experience: The individual clips merge into ripples of color, and audio feed from mission control becomes a dreamlike, collective whispering. Her selective editing conveys our emotional experience of the shuttle program as well.
Vimeo winners will be announced June 7-9, during the Vimeo Art Festival held concurrently in New York City and online.
Fahnestock is a sculptor who also works in video and photography.
Yours truly contributed a video clip to this project, shot from the Jetty during the last launch. Alas, though, it seems to have found its place on the cutting room floor.
------------------------------------- 30 -----------------------
Here's the link to the video (hint: it's in HD with stereo sound, so let the page load fully):
http://vimeo.com/27505192
Interesting stuff from Ms. Fahnestock:
www.mcleanfahnestock.com
Based on NASA launch footage, Ms. Fahnestock's hypnotic piece was completed last July with the launch of Atlantis, final flight of the Space Shuttle Program. The California artist presents feed from all 135 missions synchronized across a 15 x 9 grid.
The cumulative effect of left-brain technology at work yields a real right-brain experience: The individual clips merge into ripples of color, and audio feed from mission control becomes a dreamlike, collective whispering. Her selective editing conveys our emotional experience of the shuttle program as well.
Vimeo winners will be announced June 7-9, during the Vimeo Art Festival held concurrently in New York City and online.
Fahnestock is a sculptor who also works in video and photography.
Yours truly contributed a video clip to this project, shot from the Jetty during the last launch. Alas, though, it seems to have found its place on the cutting room floor.
------------------------------------- 30 -----------------------
Here's the link to the video (hint: it's in HD with stereo sound, so let the page load fully):
http://vimeo.com/27505192
Interesting stuff from Ms. Fahnestock:
www.mcleanfahnestock.com
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
See what happens if you really don't care?
Here's a shot taken in New Orleans about a year and a half ago.
Happy Birthday Jeanne d' Arc.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Home to roost with David Poole
 |
| Brigitte, herself. photo by David Poole |
Brigitte is the star. She's French, you know. A
salmon Faverolle hen. She has the run of a little homestead as neat and
well-ordered as any English garden, because she behaves herself and does not
scratch up the vegetable plots, notes David Poole in one of his intermittent
'Poole Family Urban Farm Reports' on You Tube.
A long-time gardener, Poole, 48, is an engineer who
lives with wife Dawn, and three of five children who are still at home. 'When we
first built the house in 1986, I intended to have a kitchen garden,' Poole said
in a telephone interview from his Cocoa homestead, 'but then I had kids and I
didn't have room for it, and I let it go.' Recently, though, the Pooles have
expanded their interest in an edible landscape.
They began by planting fruit trees four years ago,
and in the past couple of years began to devote more time and backyard space to
vegetable cultivation in raised-bed gardens. 'I have always had an interest in
how things were done in the past and like the idea of having some level of
self-sufficiency, even if it is somewhat symbolic, as a reminder to not take
things for granted.'
 |
| David Poole |
This year the soil improvements should pay off in
spinach and kale. 'We compost everything here, all green material on our
property. Along with a conviction of biblical stewardship, we are concerned with
food quality and sustainability,' said Poole. 'We have slowly switched to
humanely raised meats and organic dairy products. At first it was hard to find,
but now we have witnessed the free-market responding to that demand with more
selection, lower prices and increased availability. I would also love to see
market demand correct other issues, as consumers reject GMOs and hormone laden
meats.'
The current U.S. economy has also heightened the
Pooles' interest. Although it does not sustain the family completely, the
backyard garden '...does help with the grocery bills,' he said. They are also
able to sell a modest surplus of eggs from 'the girls,'Brigitte and the
compliment of hens they keep in the back yard; they are pets with benefits.
'Well, it won't really save you money, but that is usually not the reason most
people are doing this. I would say the main reasons would be availability,
control and quality. I love knowing where my eggs come from.'
 |
| Florida 'Cracker' coop, design/build D. Poole |
'We treat our animal humanely,' Poole said. 'when
you have a chicken in a cage -- look at the size of the cage -- ours weren't
producing, you find out how small the cage is.' That piqued Poole's interest in
building chicken coops which were both comfortable for the chickens and the
neighbors. 'People have nice houses, and I recognized there was a need for a
coop that would be attractive enough to add to the landscape and not have to be
hidden out back or look like a pile of scrap lumber.' He builds coops as a both
method for providing an entry point to those with an interest in keeping fowl,
and sells them on Craigslist.
 |
| Cute coops, with an eye towards neighbor's property values |
Poole said he's noticed interest in backyard
farming transitioning from niche magazines to those magazines with mainstream
appeal.
On April 3, Brevard County Board of
Commissioners did hear from local residents on the subject of loosening rules
for keeping fowl on 1/4 acre lots.
Currently the county considers two and a half
acres suitable for raising poultry.
According to minutes from the Brevard County website:
"Toby
Napier requested approval of backyard poultry, excluding roosters, on
residential lots having a minimum of .20 acre in un-incorporated
residential neighborhoods, and a preliminary number of poultry to be
allowed would be two fowl per .10 acre of property.
The
following individuals spoke in favor of backyard poultry: Penny
Norrie, Margaret Goydelod, Susanne Richmond, and Andy Schneider.
The
Board directed staff to come back with a report on what is occurring in
various communities around the area, and to have discussions with
different organizations that could be affected relating to raising
poultry on non-agricultural property."
So, we shall see.
But, given, some municipalities and homeowners' associations once thought they might dictate how homeowners could do laundry, intent on banning unsightly clothes lines (O, how delicate their sensibilities). Florida answered in 2009 with 'right to dry' legislation, passing a law forbidding any ban on this basic solar energy right.
Given mounting food inflation pressures, backyard eggs might start looking mighty attractive to families, especially those with children and it could be los pollos ninas might win this round. Go Brigitte.
'If the trucks stopped delivering tomorrow,' Poole
said, 'and you decided that was the time to start gardening, you can count
yourself about two years behind where you should be. I encourage people to do
small things whilst they can and learn a little as they go. Two hens and a
couple of raised garden beds is a great start, and requires very little
time.'
------------------------------------------- 30 ---------------------------------------------------
More information:
Check out spacecoast.craigslist for Mr. Poole's occasional chicken cook builds.
Poole's Backyard Urban Farm Report for Coastal Florida on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAMvvhoG5Mc&context=C452116cADvjVQa1PpcFPibRD9ZuyOjoumvjln0hiK2Dh0wz_F304=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8U_oN7fqy0&context=C4f62c0aADvjVQa1PpcFPibRD9ZuyOjojWoC6h0FZ4ML8ZqmSKmao=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8U_oN7fqy0&context=C4f62c0aADvjVQa1PpcFPibRD9ZuyOjojWoC6h0FZ4ML8ZqmSKmao=
Food, Inc. movie trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3I
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