Though Gandhi’s projects are dramatically different in form, such consideration of their remote, subarctic backdrop connects them to one another — they “look like they could only be in Nova Scotia,” he says. It’s a slow, tough place, surrounded either by water that seems like it might be happier as ice or, on the southern coast, by trees so sparse and stunted that they probably would have preferred to grow elsewhere.I love the photographs — and here are more photos at the architect's website — but they look like right here in Madison, right now. I guess our trees are bigger, but the land overlooking cold water is not like something faraway to me. It looks like my town.
February 4, 2020
What do you mean? They look like they could be on the shore of Lake Mendota, here in Madison!
I'm reading "In Nova Scotia, Homes as Wild as the Landscape Around Them/Across the province’s cliffside fishing towns, Omar Gandhi’s residential architecture is as austere and intense as the environment for which it’s built" (NYT Style Magazine):
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I think this guy designed somebody’s lake house on Lake Champlain. You see it heading into Mallet’s Bay. from the Broad Lake. But there is a lot of empty space in those photos.
It’s a lot nicer than Bernie’s little dacha.
That architecture looks colder than Hillary’s tits.
Looks like a Cialis commercial.
They look like right here in Madison, right now. I guess our trees are bigger, but the land overlooking cold water is not like something faraway to me. It looks like my town.
Well, technically Nova Scotia is only maybe 350 miles north latitudinally of Madison, plus it's warmed by the ocean so...
A famous Canadian whom I won’t name check here built a house in that area, though it does seem like a house to attract attention, but it is buried pretty deep in some woods on a cliff overlooking the lake. Makes sense now. When we first saw it from the boat, my girlfriend and I were just scratching our heads.
The one on the beach on St. Lawrence Bay is amazing. What a view! Too bad it will be tropical and underwater in 10 years.
@Althouse, before I clicked on your link that I would see something that I would see something resembling updated Frank Lloyd Wright. The NYT link was behind a paywall but the stuff at the architect’s link says “Prairie” to me. YMMV.
I suppose the builders are using double pane insulated glass. Unless they are true believers in Global Warming. The views of water are calming and all, but they probably can't wait to leave and go to a more exciting place.
Somebody at the New York Times should be out of a job soon.
Early in the story, we learn that "EVERY FEW DAYS, the Canadian architect Omar Gandhi migrates between Toronto, his hometown, and Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, where he opened his eponymous firm in 2010."
That's over a thousand miles each way! Where is the climate-related travel shaming??
traditionalguy said...
I suppose the builders are using double pane insulated glass. Unless they are true believers in Global Warming. The views of water are calming and all, but they probably can't wait to leave and go to a more exciting place.
I bet they have to run and change their pants after they get their first heating bill.
Biff, you forget. If someone is a very popular artiste or politically correct social commentator who openly supports cagw, they automatically have unlimited carbon credits. So technically he as a negative carbon footprint.
My maternal ancestors first landed in Nova Scotia before emigrating to the U.S. I've never been up there, but would like to go someday. So far, everything I know about Nova Scotia comes from watching Trailer Park Boys on Netflix.
I like the giant outhouse.
Blogger Howard said..."Biff, you forget. If someone is a very popular artiste or politically correct social commentator who openly supports cagw, they automatically have unlimited carbon credits. So technically he as a negative carbon footprint."
You're not wrong.
The first photo is of a house with glass walls. All that glass is rather wasteful of energy. I wouldn't live in such an energy sieve in a cold climate.Maybe the Sulzbergers would be willing to pay for my heating bills. Though it should be noted that glass walls in hot climates will similarly waste energy.
Nova Scotia,like New Caledonia, reminds us that the Scots Invented the Modern World. As set out in the book of the same name subtitled," The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything In It."
Hint:They did it by universal literacy and education demanded of them by the Protestant Kirk of John Knox.
Nah, those houses don't have any nearby neighbors. The lakeside houses in Madison are mostly crammed in right next to each other. Especially the ones in the Village of Shorewood Hills. Every time I go along Lake Mendota Drive I see another giant new modern that has been shoehorned into a previously empty lot. The same goes for the lakeside homes in Monona.
I guess some of the Maple Bluff homes have large enough lots that you could take a photo like that, making it look like there were no neighbors.
The houses are derivative of Richard Maier's glass houses in the Hollywood Hills. The landscape of Nova Scotia may be unique, but the architecture is not particularly inventive or location-specific.
So exotic! Now where can I catch the bus?
Halifax NS is no where near 350 miles north of Madison, more like 70. And the environment in the maritimes - generally cooler salt water - will retard the vertical growth of the trees there.
I love NS, been there a bunch, always travel there by boat. Sailed in five Marblehead (MA) to Halifax NS races. Round the clock sailing in July. Full foul weather gear, including fleece underclothes, for the overnight watches.
I have lived in NS for thirty years, pretty much my entire adult life. But no need to go on.
I won’t need to parse the article cause most people know things like this in papers are rarely accurate. I am more interested in the point about how some places are different than other places. That’s true to a point but (I believe) less somewhat than some tourist or design middlemen like to stress.
One of the great things when Google map streetview first came around (sorry to credit Google but it was rather novel) was being able to see the geography (at least from the st) of so many places I have never been and likely will not. Be it a small town in southern Chile. Some back road in Poland. An r/v park near the Florida keys. Even for awhile it seemed you could see backroads in China although I think that’s been closed, haven’t check over there in awhile. You could float through a street, be it Paris or Wheeling and see for yourself what’s what.
There are both the consistencies and the variances - I always note which some places seem to like to build fences around their homes and which places don’t. I don’t think we build fences with the same vigour here in NS as, say, Fla, or even in the mountain towns of Italy, where fences seem to be more common than not.
But then you see that the bus shelter in a small rural village at the end of South America is near to the one at the end of your st. We’re One, but we’re not the same. That’s not an endorsement of globalism or localism, it just is.
Brrr... I'd prefer something cozy.
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