January 19, 2011 – 1:49 pm
I would like to be able to state that I became an architect to save the planet from wasteful, polluting buildings – the built world accounts for some 40 percent of the greenhouse gases we produce – but the truth is my fondest desire was to become a thespian. As the theater is an iffy [...]
November 19, 2010 – 11:09 am
I have been told not to write about cats and I have not. No one said anything about raccoons. A family of these masked mammals introduced themselves to Centerbrook recently. The little bandits apparently are living beneath our offices, rent free, and the entire entourage padded out into a small enclosed courtyard from which a [...]
November 4, 2010 – 3:17 pm
Be a fly on the wall and watch Patrick McCauley hand-craft decorative brass capitals for the columns at the Carl Hansen Student Center at Quinnipiac University. Mr. McCauley is the Master Model Maker and Product Designer at Centerbrook Architects.
September 2, 2010 – 10:19 am
Five years ago, when I started at Centerbrook, the office was following standard recycling procedures – separate bins scattered about for paper, glass, and bottles – with a few creative twists. For example, we could deposit into “The Treasure Chest” items that we no longer wanted but still had some life in them – you [...]
Not to be upstaged by our resident American Egret, two new visitors have been hanging around this summer by our fishing hole. These two elegant wading birds – a mother and an immature Black-crowned Night Heron – are shown below perched in trees overlooking the Centerbrook dam. The photo above is the young one atop [...]
“Nature’s Answer” has just joined “Nature’s Call,” the “Blue Loo,” and assorted other partner-designed bathrooms here at the home office. All, save one, affords a unique sedentary experience. For example, take Jeff Riley’s Nature’s Call. One hasn’t lived until one has powdered one’s nose in front of a wide-screen, high-definition color television screening continuous nature [...]
April 22, 2010 – 11:46 am
The Yankees don’t always win. Empires founder. Mountains even crumble. But could the same apply to the Team Centerbrook Spellers at the recent Bee chez Valley Regional High School? We averred not. The scene looked the same as it had last year, prior to our momentous 2009 three-peat (that’s a sports word, not a real [...]
It rained and rained Monday and Tuesday. Then it rained a little longer, stopped and poured some more. Mother Nature can be so redundant. Sepia-toned water arched over our dam, turning white and foamy when confronted with an obstruction or the rocks below. At the end of the day, the badminton court was under water, [...]
Spring comes earlier for maple sappers. Robins or green shoots in the garden means a missed maple sugaring season. The first unseasonably warm day in February, or even January, is our harbinger of Spring. I panic, thinking I’ve missed the early run with highest sugar content destined to become Grade A light amber. I tapped [...]
February 24, 2010 – 5:24 pm
Late this week here in the Land of Steady Precipitation has been dreary to the Nth power, unless, of course, you are calculating the kilo wattage that the winter freshet is producing at our corporate dam site out back, as “rain man” Bill Rutan is wont to do on his PC. The word that our [...]
