Cosanti

Defining Desert Living, September 2020

The legacy of architect, ecological pioneer, urban philosopher, artist and craftsman, Paolo Soleri (1919– 2013) thrives at Cosanti in Paradise Valley and Arcosanti in Cordes Junction, 70 miles north of Phoenix. Also in Arizona, admirers remember him for the Soleri Bridge crossing the Arizona Canal at Camelback Road in downtown Scottsdale.

From the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, Soleri and a cadre of apprentices and volunteers students designed and built Cosanti. These structures include the Earth House (1956), Pumpkin Apse/Barrel Vaults (1967), Soleri Studio (1959), CatCast Home (1965), Gallery (1961) and canopied Pool (1966); they represent Soleri’s pioneering vision to create a habitat balancing human needs and the environment.

Designated a culturally significant site on the Arizona State Registry of Historic Places, Cosanti is also where Soleri perfected his “earth-casting” technique for building structures and procedures for casting the now-famous bells; where he designed his great unbuilt bridges; and where he wrote Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, which inspired him to build Arcosanti.

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Van Gilbert

ENR Southwest, January 2021

Every story has unique challenges and satisfactions. That’s perhaps most so with stories celebrating a life’s work. In this case, New Mexico architect Van Gilbert was awarded a Legacy Award for the Southwest Region by Engineering News Record, the country’s premier construction industry magazine. For more than 40-plus years, Van, now retired, combined his love for the topography, history and culture of New Mexico with dedication to regional architecture and a joy of connecting communities. He says: “An architectural practice can make a broad contribution to society, a contribution that often extends beyond the building to support the complex needs and goals of communities and institutions.”

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Culture & Sustainability

Green Living, August 2019

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Tulsa Race Massacre

ENR Texas/Louisiana, October 2020

On June 1, 1921, Oklahoma Gov. James Robertson declared martial law in Tulsa after a white girl claimed she had been raped by a black resident.
Ultimately,  300 people died and 800-plus were injured, $2.7 million in property damage resulted ($30–50 million in 2021 value) and thousands were interned and homeless. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre had destroyed the 35 square blocks comprising “Black Wall Street,” one of the nation’s wealthiest black communities. On June 2, 2021, the 11,000-sq-ft Greenwood Rising history center was dedicated, a $7.5-million one-story building celebrating the great story of the Greenwood District.

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Douglas B Sydnor, Historic Buildings Define Our Spirit

ARA, March April 2021

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Father’s Day Story June 2021

Ahwatukee Foothills News

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Craig Martin

ENR California, August 2020

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Mike Lovell: Blue Collar, Blue Chip Collection

Highline Autos, November 2020

Mike Lovell is similar to many car lovers whose collections we’ve featured in GreatGarages. The vehicles aren’t just high-dollar valuables: They represent childhood, dreams, aspirations and treasured joys. For example, the passion meant reclaiming at least two automobiles. One is a 1967 Camaro he had to sell to go off to college; his dad reacquired it and had the classic pony car restored by friends. Now it sits in the purpose-built garage just south of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. Another is a 1987 Buick Grand National, which he sold shortly after buying it. But America’s quarter-mile production-car king that year had engaged his daughter’s interest; she chided him for the sale without her sign-off. Now, with velvet stanchions guarding it, the GN is safe at home. When she’s 16, it’s hers. A classic joy.

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Our Future Homes & Offices

Green Living, September 2020

The way we work in the office, how we live at home, how we interact with family, friends and our neighbors: COVID-19 has changed our lives. The pandemic has forced us to socially distance from those we do not know and even distance ourselves from those we do. Many of us who are older began our careers in cubicled environments built by the individualist post-World War II ideal: a womblike space all ours to produce and achieve on our own spunk and merit. The technological culture of connectivity then forged a collegial environment of open spaces for collaboration and sharing. The pandemic has changed this, at least for a while, to larger cubicle spaces and smaller shared ones. We Zoom together; before we roomed together. Staying more at home, we have looked to home gyms and expanded offices and home-at-school spaces for the children. Not traveling, we are spending more money for upgrades or even buying new homes. We want, says one of the contributors, Zen.

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John Kalil and Children Continue the Tradition at Kalil

AFMA Journal, July 2020

John Kalil Jr. and his four children, John, Nick, Kaley and Michael, are the new generation at Kalil Bottling in Arizona. His brother, George, guided the company for a half century until his death in July 2019. John’s father, Fred, and his father, Frank, began the company, a national leader in beverage distribution and a private bottler, in 1948. This is a family success story that begins with John’s grandfather coming to the United States from native Lebanon when he was 12. The stories about Pancho Villa, George’s love for University of Arizona basketball in Tucson and how a young Coach Lute Olson wouldn’t’ wait the team bus for him are classics. Classic, too, is the continuing respect for George Kalil. In writing the story, I asked for John; I called him “Mr. Kalil.” One of John’s associates corrected me, saying, “Well, we still reserve that name for George.”

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Mesa Artist Finds Warm Reception in Montana

East Valley Tribune

Born in Banning, California, artist Linda Glover Gooch moved in 2001 to Mesa, Arizona, where she lives with her family and works in her studio. Her Impressionistic paintings reveal her wonder from Western landscapes in Arizona and Montana –– grand places such as the Salt River near Phoenix, the Grand Canyon and Glacier national parks and Flathead Lake in northwest Montana. About 20 miles from the lake, she is hosting “Intertwined with Living Waters: The Art of Linda Glover Gooch” in Kalispell at the Hockaday Museum of Art occupying a 1904 Carnegie Library on the National Register of Historic Places. For the most part, she works “en plein air,” setting up her easel to create, in this case, paintings, field studies and sketches of life-giving water in its varying forms of river, fog, snow and clouds.

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Father’s Day 2020: What Dad Gave Me

Green Living, June 2020

2020 is a year of sadness and celebration, too. While all of us find different paths to meet the demands of a pandemic, we can also thank those who have helped make us aware and prepared. So, for Father’s Day, we asked 10 neighbors to recall what their dads gave them in terms of eco-sensitivity. We switched it : not providing a list of gifts to acquire for dad but a list of his gifts to us. Elizabeth Walton’s dad, Jerry, took her to Lake Erie for summer vacations, and Randy Schilling’s dad, Fritz, to Turkey Creek in Merrillville, Indiana, near Chicago: “We saw robins and woodpeckers. We saw muskrats swimming in the water. We saw snakes slithering in the grass. We saw squirrels climbing up trees chasing each other.” And Andy McCain’s dad, John, spent time with him in Cornville, north of Phoenix, at the getaway home for the late senator’s family: “Whenever anyone visited, he would go on and on about the trees on the property, especially the cottonwoods and the sycamores.”

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Joan Fudala: Scottsdale’s Historian

Green Living, August 2020

For more than three decades, Scottsdale’s Joan Fudala has served Scottsdale and the Valley as author, communications executive, author, lecturer, preservation advocate, historical consultant and member of numerous commissions, committees and nonprofits. In nominating her for a 2020 Governor’s Heritage Preservation Honor Award, Scottsdale architect Douglas B. Sydnor, FAIA, wrote: “Joan Fudala has effectively promoted and created a public awareness of our history in the greater Scottsdale area; contributed to our understanding of Scottsdale’s historic people, places and events; and executed research and publishing projects that celebrate our vast historical resources.” Congratulations, Joan, for keeping that history vibrant.

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Earth Day And the EPA Celebrate 50 Years

Green Living, April 2020

Discussing the coincidence of the 50th anniversary of EPA with the first Earth Day in 1970 was the agency’s administrator for District 9, serving the West from San Francisco, John Busterud, and Professor Noah Sachs at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia. The professor wryly noted, “The EPA is often called the federal agency no one likes to be the head of because it’s a punching bag for every interest, from the left to the right.” For sure, it’s been politically influenced over the years, and administrators with varying commitments to environmental responsibility have led it. Still, the agency has improved our lives, with cleaner air and waterways, a Superfund to remediate the mess we’ve made for more than a century and a robust recycling system, which now employs 757,000 people who receive $36.6 billion in annual wages. When EPA was founded in 1970, the national recycling rate was less than 10 percent. Today that has more than tripled to about 35 percent.

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The Art of the Allison

Western Art & Architecture, February/March 2020

The Allison Inn vibrantly celebrates its place on 35 acres in Oregon’s spectacular Willamette Valley. On the surrounding hills, signature to the vinicultural area southwest of Portland, the 85-room luxury hotel in Newberg cultivates seven pinot noir and pinot vineyards. Throughout the LEED Gold-certified hotel and the site are 500-plus origi­nal works by more than 100 Oregonian artists, including paintings, photography, ceramics, fiber art and sculpture. And, the 100-seat restaurant, JORY, honors the glacier-deposited soil that has made the area world famous. The artworks are curated by Loni Parrish, the daughter of the hotel’s founder, the late Joan Austin, whose husband’s family homesteaded nearby seven generations ago. Her brother, Ken Austin III, handcrafted two tables, bothe part of the collection and your dining experience when you visit.

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Castle Hot Springs: Arizona Oasis

Western Art & Architecture, December/January 2019-20

The first time I heard about Castle Hot Springs Resort was shortly after moving to Arizona in 1981. At the time, the historic location in the Bradshaws north of Phoenix was chainlinked, and the owner, Arizona State University, wasn’t sure what was going to happen to it. Fortunately, Scottsdale-based developer and resort manager, Westroc Hospitality, working with current property owners, Mike and Cindy Watts of Phoenix, have just reopened it. The result is magnificent: Triumphantly renewed is the 123-year-old property once frequented by the Vanderbilts, Pews, Rockefellers and the Wrigleys. Teddy Roosevelt was here during his visit to dedicate the nearby dam on the Salt River named for him; his cousin Franklin Delano followed. John F. Kennedy was here as a recuperating WW II Navy veteran before he was president. Artist Maxfield Parrish and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius also signed in. Come up for a few days and take the waters –– or at least read the story!

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Frederick Penn Weaver

ARA, Fall 2019

Frederick ‘Fred’ Weaver, FAIA (1912–1968) cofounded the distinguished Phoenix architectural firm, Weaver & Drover. The successor, DWL Architects + Planners Inc., celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2019. The firm designed significant Arizona buildings: Phoenix Sky Harbor International Terminals 2, 3 and 4 (1962– and with Lescher & Mahoney Architects, 1979 and 1990); the Chapel at the Arizona State Hospital (1963), also in Phoenix; Arizona State University’s Charles Trumbull Library and Pedestrian Mall (1966); and Valley National Bank branches, the most famous at 44th Street and Camelback Road (1968) in Phoenix. “Weaver & Drover . . . delivered well-designed commercial, institutional and governmental commissions throughout the Phoenix area . . . done with a confident, sophisticated and elegant touch,” says Doug Sydnor, FAIA.

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Home Schooled

Interiors, Fall 2019

Architect C.P. Drewett of Scottsdale, the Phoenix builder, Rich Brock’s Bedrock Developers, and Scottsdale interior designer Claire Ownby, ASID, collaborated on this sleek Paradise Valley home and three in-spirit adjacent ones. The one-level four-bedroom Modern home is transparent, without clutter: Outside are the landmark Camelback and Mummy mountains, which the Chicago couple enjoy with friends and family through large glass windows and doors or outside on beautifully landscaped grounds. Contemporary lines and materials integrate with details such as knotted wide oak planking, alder woodwork, a distressed acacia dining room table and petrified wood blocks in the great room. Darrin Kauer, the project superintendent for Bedrock Developers, aptly said: “I enjoyed the feeling of discovery when entering each room.”

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Home in Arcadia

Modern Luxury, October 2019

The Arcadia neighborhood in Phoenix may not quite be equal to the ancient Greeks’ vision of paradise on earth, but its quiet pedestrian-friendly streets, views of landmark Camelback Mountain and fine homes have made it one of the city’s highly valued communities. Completed in 2017 on a cul de sac lot, this Bungalow Cottage Transitional home includes a pool house and a traditional detached garage, adding another two bays to the two in the main garage. The team was exceptional: the family who envisioned it; Mark Candelaria, AIA, the Scottsdale architect; Santorini Homes, the builder and a neighbor of the homeowners; and Arcadia Design Studio, led by Kim Anderson, assisted by Elizabeth (Imbornoni) Hamill, for the interiors. “Everything was designed just the way we wanted,” one owner says. “I feel like we have lived here forever.”

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