WORK - LIVE - GO!

A study in restraint

Architectural student Hank Butitta was tired of designing buildings that weren't real for clients that didn't exist. He wanted to do something real, to work with his hands and put his ideas into practice, so he bought a used school bus and converted it into a clean, modular live/work environment. He presented his bus for critique - complete with a kitchen, bathroom, beds, storage, and even a floor made from recycled gymnasium maple. Imagine his fellow students, with cardboard models, digital fly-throughs and paper renderings - I'll bet Hank's crit put some of them to shame.

 

 After his final presentation,  Hank and his co-conspirators left  for a 5,000 mile tour heading West. Summer's winding down, but they have just about reached the halfway point. 

On the Road Again

We applaud the practical ingenuity of a student stretching the conventional boundaries of study. His modular work/live space is well thought out and neatly executed - bravo to Hank.

 

You can see more photos, video, and follow their travels over at Hank Bought a Bus. (via Home Designing, Gizmodo, Le Monde Tue Nini)

Deep under cover in the Jungle

We've always taken a light-hearted view at Whereuwork. An inch deep, a mile wide, simple profiles of "creative caves, by and for creative folks." Now and then, something comes along that catches us by surprise, like the home and workplace of Glenn Greenwald.

 Mr. Greenwald is a journalist of deep passion and conviction working in the arena of civil rights. He is a man in the thick of it, jousting with world leaders, shining a light in the darkest recesses of the CIA, NSA, MI6, Interpol and God knows which other secret spy agencies.We would have assumed, if we gave it any thought, that Mr. Greenwald of course lived in New York or London, close to his adversaries and publishers. Not so - this from a report in the New York Times on Tuesday:

"..Greenwald lives and works in a house surrounded by tropical foliage in a remote area of Rio de Janeiro. He shares the home with his Brazilian partner and their 10 dogs and one cat, and the place has the feel of a low-key fraternity that has been dropped down in the jungle. The kitchen clock is off by hours, but no one notices; dishes tend to pile up in the sink; the living room contains a table and a couch and a large TV, an Xbox console and a box of poker chips and not much else. The refrigerator is not always filled with fresh vegetables. A family of monkeys occasionally raids the banana trees in the backyard and engages in shrieking battles with the dogs.

Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Greenwald does most of his work on a shaded porch, usually dressed in a T-shirt, surfer shorts and flip-flops. Over the four days I spent there, he was in perpetual motion, speaking on the phone in Portuguese and English, rushing out the door to be interviewed in the city below, answering calls and e-mails from people seeking information about Snowden, tweeting to his 225,000 followers (and conducting intense arguments with a number of them), then sitting down to write more N.S.A. articles for The Guardian, all while pleading with his dogs to stay quiet. During one especially fever-pitched moment, he hollered, “Shut up, everyone,” but they didn’t seem to care..."

We are astonished that a man so active on a worldwide basis, so engaged in civil rights battles, can do serious work from a jungle retreat - complete with screaming monkeys.  Our (tin foil) hat is off to you, sir.
If you haven't heard of Glenn Greenwald, well then, you are simply not paying attention. You can find more (much more) HERE.

Esprit de Cream

Edward, dishing the scoop.

I recently had the pleasure of wandering in downtown LA on a balmy summer's night. Once you leave the shiny business and museum district and head South and East, the streets start to feel softer, freer, like old familiar shoes (well worn, a bit scuffed, perhaps a bit pungent, too). People were hanging out on corners, browsing at the Last Bookstore, waiting for the bus - it's a real live gritty city, alright.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a brand new housing complex and what I took to be a hipster bike store near Fifth and Main. A cacphony of spinning gears and bobbing wheels in a tall picture window, a queue of people staring into their phones.

Peddler's also does house calls - with a portable churn.

Once inside, it became clear that something else was going on. A dapper fellow on a roller-racer was peddling away, cranking the whole moving window art piece with every stroke - but also churning ice cream! A long chain through the wall was turning an iced tub in the back room, churning out oodles of delicious ice cream and sorbet.



"Peddler's Creamery" is the brainchild of Edward Belden and a dedicated crew of idealists who are determined to think different. PC is a Benefit Corporation, a new class of business that considers social and environmental costs, as well as profit, in their business planning.
Hey, maybe corporations can be people after all...


Edward says the hardest part was the initial funding. Once he got a few committed partners, the momentum took off. Now, there is a 'Peddler's Club' - a de facto waiting list for the honor of spinning the ice cream churn.

Sophie churns, the kinetic window art turns like a clockwork.

Their excellent ice cream and sorbet features local, organic, dairy, non-dairy and vegan ingredients. They are committed to their local neighborhood; 5% of profits are donated to social and environmental causes.
Nouveau Cyclistes are alive and well in South LA, and the food scene is all the better for it.

Hungry for more info? Check out www.peddlerscreamery.com for the, ah, scoop.