Home is where?

Growing up we had a needlepoint hanging on the wall that read: "Home is Where Your Heart Is". My grandmother had a similar one at her house:

No Matter What
No Matter Where
Its Always Home
If Your Heart Is There

I recently returned from a family reunion in Cape Cod. It was the first time in 6 years we didn't have to fly from California to attend a reunion; we instead drove up from our new home in Virginia. Before heading out to the Cape we spent a day in my hometown, Herkimer NY. While sitting in my parents living room I realized that I hadn't been "home" during the summer season since 2002. It was a strange realization and one that brought back questions I have turned over in my mind for the last 5 years, in brief: What and where is home?


In his book Home: A Short History of an Idea Witold Rybczynski traces the history of the concept of "home" back to 14th century townhomes in Europe. Bourgeouis townhomes provided one of the first senses of domestic comfort and differed dramatically from the contemporaneous castle of the aristrocrat, monastery of the cleric, and hovel of the serf. However medieval homes also stand in stark contrast to 21st century concepts of the idea: people rarely (though increasingly) live where they work; few in our rootless society remain in one place for their entire lives; and our complex food distribution systems leave us disconnected to the location where crops are produced. If the "home" in the 14th century was a permanent residence where people engaged in their trade, slept, and prepared meals from crops that surrounded their town, what is the meaning of "home" today? Definitions abound.

As this is an ongoing question and one on which I've spilled a lot of ink over years (including several research papers while at Fuller and a course proposal to USC), I'll probably devote several future posts to new questions I'm encountering regarding "home". Looking back: In what ways did Los Angeles feel like home during our seven years there? At present: How long will we live in Virginia until it feels like home? Looking forward: How do we create a sense of home for our children, even if we relocate houses or towns down the road? Perhaps home is simply where your heart is, but knowing the location of one's heart is equally perplexing!

Locust ReLocation

Thirty days from today we will be homeowners again. It has been a long escrow; nearly 3 months in all. We're itching to leave our two bedroom rental for the spacious two-story, four-bedroom house down our street; Locust Ave. In just 6 months we will have transitioned from an 800 square foot apartment in LA (with two kids and no yard) to a house nearly 3 times as big with nearly 1/2 an acre. And it can't come sooner. Every morning our 2-1/2 year old begs to go outside and we look forward to having lots of place for him to run around. [More "before" photos can be found on our flickr.com page]


The house was built in 1940. Most houses surrounding it on the street date from the early 20th century, towards the end of what Frank Shirley calls the "golden era of American residential architecture" (1740 through 1940). Emili and I have typically gravitated toward older houses over the last 7 years; in LA we rented a 1930s apartment in Hollywood and bought an early 1920's Spanish style house in a historic district in Pasadena. There we renovated the kitchen, replaced some windows and doors, added a patio, and built a fence. Almost all the work was cosmetic.

However after we sold our house in Pasadena we rented a mid-century modern apartment dating from the late 1950s. It came complete with Japanese screens around the covered porch and tons of windows in every room. We also collected several modernist pieces of furniture during our last 2.5 years in California as our aesthetic shifted away from traditional "cottage" furnishings.

In moving to our new house we again are planning to do some renovations though they're shaping up to be much more extensive than the last go around. The work includes:

• A porch across the entire front
• A grade-level sunroom off the back
• A rear screened in porch off the kitchen
• Air conditioning
• Updating the kitchen, bathroom, and layout of the 500 square foot detached cottage
• Removal of asbestos shingles and residing of the 2nd floor
  

One question we dealt with early on was: What style should characterize the additions? The house is a traditional Mid-Atlantic colonial. How would we incorporate modernist aesthetics in the traditional house? As disparate styles are difficult to execute on the exterior without looking shoddy we opted to maintain the traditional feel but push it to a more farmhouse (and thus less colonial) look. The new 2nd floor siding will be vertical; 1st floor brick will be whitewashed to match the new siding color, all new roofs would be hipped rather than flat or gabled. A book that has heavily influenced our design decisions is aptly titled: The Farmhouse: New Inspiration for the Classic American Home.

We have plans for the interior as well. This is where the 'modern' concepts of openness, honesty, and light will really come into play. All of the individual rooms are currently divided by walls. There is little connectivity between rooms, even on the first floor where you might expect fewer divisions of space. Thus, once the exterior renovations and additions are complete, we'll be turning our attention to removing most of the 1st floor interior walls (one benefit of being a structural engineer!) This will allow us to "connect" most of the first floor together and bring more light into the darker portions of the 1st floor. It will also give us the opportunity to tweak some of the spaces we feel are a bit awkward. In the coming months I will post progress photos on the blog, so if you're interested, subscribe to the RSS feed for updates.

Born to Run?

On a trip to Los Angeles last month I read Chris McDougall's Born to Run. The book is an amazing piece of narrative-meets-investigative-journalism that tales why the knees, ankles, and feet of technologically advanced runners (i.e. those wearing expensive running shoes) are injured more frequently than runners wearing little or no supportive footwear. Throw in an incredible story of a race in the Copper Canyon of Mexico between the Tarahumara Indians and some of the best (and quirkiest) ultrarunners in the United States as well as a little evolutionary biology claiming that humans were born to run and you have a fun summer read. It definitely made me want to hit the trails each time I put the book down.

Considering my current bout with running injury one of the most helpful concepts from the book was McDougall's description of the foot's arch:

"Your foot's centrepiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. Push up from underneath and you weaken the whole structure."



The analogy of a Roman Arch is helpful. If we were to add a column directly under the keystone of a Roman Arch--hoping to provide it with some support in its old age--it wouldn't be long before the compressive action of the arch was destroyed and the entire structure crumbled. McDougall similarly claims that expensive running shoes eventually destroy the natural arching action of the foot.

The take home for me is my need to strengthen the muscles in my feet. McDougall's argument was the specific impetus for my current experiment in barefoot running. Over the last three weeks I have increased from 100 meter stride outs to 3 mile grass runs completely barefoot. The experience has been exhilarating, especially in the early morning when the grass is still wet and the air is cool. This past weekend I got up to 5 miles in a pair of Vibram Five Fingers (KSO model). As of yet I have no discernibly stronger feet but its been a fun experiment. My ultimate goal is to be able to hang with this guy:

Confessions of a Heel Striker

I've been running for about 15 years. Over that time I've enjoyed only a few isolated injuries: a busted knee after my first marathon (putting me on the DL for nearly a year) and many a turned ankle with their associated weeks of down-time. Until recently all of the injuries could be traced to fairly simple causes, running with super old shoes or tripping over pine cones (yeah, one magnolia cone in Pasadena knocked me out for two months!)

Enter plantar fasciitis. This little pain-in-the-heel has caused me grief to no end since moving to Virginia earlier this year. To date I have absolutely no probable explanation for it. I've been running relatively low mileage compared to the previous 12 months; the trail terrain I've been on is markedly softer than the road / mountain combination I was running in So Cal. I recently took about four weeks off which pretty much ended the pain. At that point I visited my local running store for advice. Luckily one of the owners has dealt with plantar fasciitis and had some good advice:

• calf raises throughout the day,
• stretch more regularly,
• pick up small items with my toes, and, interestingly,
  
• incorporate barefoot stride outs into my weekly running routine.

The last item should help strengthen my foot over time and potentially reduce the underlying cause of the injury. After a few weeks I was having little to no pain by incorporating most of the exercises (except barefoot running) into my daily routine. Then, about a month ago, the heel pain started creeping back in.

In researching things more I've come to realize that I'm a full-fledged, hard core heel striker (see photo from the 12/08 Death Valley Marathon). In the early stages of a run (or whenever I'm feeling particularly spry) I tend to run with a forefoot/midfoot strike. But as the weekly mileage piles up and/or in the later stages of a long run I tend to drop my heel. This practice can potentially lead to a host of knee and foot related problems. Whether my heel strike is partially responsible for my plantar fasciitis or not, I have yet to determine.

In response I've taken steps to correct my foot strike in response to the mounting evidence I've recently read about the benefits of midfoot/forefoot striking (more on that in a later post). And later this summer I'm scheduled for "gait analysis" at the University of Virginia's Center for Endurance Sport. The director of the SPEED clinic there recently spoke at the local running store and encouraged me to really work on my running form (possibly at the expense of speed training or high mileage) this summer. I've also begun to incorporate barefoot running into my workouts and have attempted to carry the barefoot form over to my runs with shoes. To say the least, its an interesting exercise. I'll post more on barefeet later...until then, go run!

About

[6.25.12] Once upon a time I intended construct(ure)s to be a sometimes heady, somewhat theoretical blog combining my multiple loves of old and new buildings, the natural world, and theology/philosophy into one grand mashup. Three years and not a tremendous amount of deep posts later, I found that most things I actually blogged about were much more pedestrian. And I'm ok with that. I like writing about long races I run. I also enjoy posting updates on the various renovation projects my wife Emili and I undertake on our 70+ year old house. For whatever reason, though I enjoy researching and writing the histories and theories of interesting buildings on my way to another Master's degree, I haven't blogged much in this area. Maybe I'll try to write more in coming year. Maybe not. Either way, in light of the disconnect between my old "about" statement and the actual content of this blog, I felt a more accurate statement (if that's what you call this paragraph!) was warranted. I kept the old statement below to remind me why I started the blog in the first place and because its still an accurate statement of what I hope to write about more regularly. Time will tell whether or not this hope bears out...

[6.30.2009]
construct(ure)s is a blog about various characteristics of constructs and structures. By definition constructs are usually conceptual in nature while structures, whether natural or manmade, are typically physical. As a designer of the built environment, avid trail runner, armchair theologian, and historian of our man-made surroundings, I am interested in each of these disciplines in their own right. However I am most intrigued when exploring connections between them. During the later part of 2009 through early 2010 this blog will also record the renovations and remodeling we are undertaking on our 1940s home.

deconstructing the etymology of construct(ure)s

constructure (n) –   

1. that which is constructed or formed; an edifice; a fabric

construct (n) –  

1. something constructed by the mind: as a: a theoretical entity b: a working hypothesis or concept 
2. a product of ideology, history, or social circumstances

structure (n) –

1. something made up of a number of parts that are held or put together in a particular way
2. the way in which parts are arranged or put together to form a whole; makeup
3. the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity
4. something constructed, such as a building.
5. biology a: the arrangement or formation of the tissues, organs, or other parts of an organism b: an organ or other part of an organism

construct (v) –

1. to make or form by combining or arranging parts or elements
2. to draw (a geometrical figure) with suitable instruments and under specified conditions
3. to set in logical order