DuaneDesign

Architecture group calls for a beefed-up energy tax bill - The Hill's On The Money

2010-07-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Architecture group calls for a beefed-up energy tax bill - The Hill's On The Money

Mies and Philip Johnson Face Off in Modernist Prize Fight

2010-07-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

Mies and Philip Johnson Face Off in Modernist Prize Fight

Sustainable Design

2010-06-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

The time is now for design to be frugal with resources and friendly with the land.

In the past two years with the fallout from the financial implosion and the drying up of credit, the developer of land and the builder of structures have all but come to a screeching halt around the world. The investor of the sprawling housing subdivision has been waiting for the supply to be absorbed and the commercial space will have to wait until people are working again.

While government control and regulation attempt to tackle the problems with the mortgages that were created by the government in the first place, the long base of stagnate money flow brings the economies of the world to a snail's pace. The design profession has contracted and contracted occupying itself with marketing, reinventing, and the lowering the standard of our lives by allowing compensation to be prostitute to the little work that is available. The good news is we are not at the beginning of the cycle, the bad news is, we don't know how long the cycle is going to last. If the governments continue their regulatory squeezing, out of control spending and increasing taxes on the risk takers, then the design profession will not be sustainable at any level.

The way sustainable design will occur is when regulatory and tax structure is again in the favor of the risk taker. The risk of capital and investment in a high reward and open market low taxing environment is what makes the new developer start planning and the owner start building. When this occurs we will start planning and designing.

The new parameters will need to be for the architect to lead this next wave to a higher standard of sustainability for the owner, client, and for the designers as well. We bring to bare old uses in new ways, create a more integrated built environment, and the designers explore ways were we can take ownership or develop the project. Until the designer does have ownership will sustainable design take place with strong roots that will survive through the next fall cycle in the world economy.

Designing in the Lake Wylie, SC Bufferyard

2009-05-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.lakewyliepilot.com/409/story/334716.html

It is very important that all design options are open to review for relevance and common sense as well as good well thought out design solutions.

I have made the case over and over that Lake Wylie residences must have the options to create living spaces that are use able as well as protect the quality of the water in the water shed. That is why I am emphatic about having the wording of the new ordinance a design and owner friendly law as much as possible.

Official Website www.DuaneDesign.com

2009-03-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

Thank you for visiting DuaneDesign Blog, to continue to my website please connect to http://www.duanedesign.com/

The website is a continuation of my professional practice qualifications, contact information, past work, new ideas, honors, service to others, FAQs, and more.

Design early in my career.

2009-03-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

Some of my early work in designing was small but diversified. After graduating from Cornell University I was hired in June of 1977 with Reasoners, a diversified firm located in Bradenton, Florida. The Owner and President E.S. "Bud" Reasoner was a very well know entrepreneur in Florida. Mr. Reasoner was a Landscape Architect, businessman, board member of a local bank plus many other local and state organizations.

"Bud" started my career by having me design a landscape renovation project for a local Bank. The project was a planting design for the street scape and parking lot areas. Over the next fourteen months I designed over fifty Landscape Architecture projects. The projects included, court yards for single family residences and condos, beach houses on the coast, churches, and other commercial projects. In addition to projects in Florida I helped in designing the layout for Nassau County Plant Show in New York for the firm's display. I also designed a renovation project for a Historical House in Manatee County. While I was in the office of Mr. Bud Reasoner I learned design, tropical plant material, selling, business, management, and that one must be diversified if you are to survive.

In February of 1979 I decided to leave Reasoners and Florida for the Carolina's. The Charlotte, North Carolina region was an area of the country that showed me a long term sustainable growth for many years to come. It was the new Atlanta. It came to pass that March fifth 1979 I packed my 1973 Opel Manta Luxus and moved to Rock Hill, South Carolina. Rock Hill, it was only twenty miles south from Charlotte, North Carolina, the new town where I was to start out on my own.

DuaneDesign: The first of many.

2009-01-25T18:04:00.000-08:00

DuaneDesign: The first of many.

Cornell, the learning place.

2009-01-25T17:12:00.000-08:00

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York is truly one of the best schools in the country if not the world for many disciplines. I was very fortunate to be excepted in the spring of 1973 and enter the fall of 1973. The first couple of weeks in September that year were the warmest, but as the weather goes in upstate New York, just hang a round for a while and it will change.

The freshman year is one that students get "weeded out" as they say. I remember a day in Bailey Hall before classes started and the President of the College spoke to all of us freshman and said "look to each side of you, now one of won't be here at the end of the year." How true that statement was. I almost was one of those didn't make it, I thought freshman biology and chemistry was easy, until the tests. The test are designed to not pass. So I had to make a change and kick everything realated to studing up a few notches. Well, from that point on all subjects need to be a priority and I was to be a full time and I mean full time nose to the grind stone student. This was going to be serious. This is Cornell, this is Ivy League, and I loved it.

The second semester freshman year was a little bit lighter in scope which allowed me to concentrate on the subjects and that I did. A freshman architecture class was a favorite, figure drawing was another very interesting as well as learning how to draw humane figures quickly. The professor was awsome. There two of us men students in a room of eighteen woman. The compositions were nude students. My first thought was, I wonder if we take turns. That was not the case, they were students who were paid for their modeling. The other classes were chemestry, art history for an english class, and another enviromental ecology course.

The first of many.

2009-01-25T11:22:00.000-08:00

To the people that may want to learn about what DuaneDesign is all about. I will keep an on going journal of design philosophy and processes from my experiences over the past thirty-six years.

In actuality my interest in design on the land and buildings started in my very earlier years as a young child. I built homes, other buildings, and walls using blocks, Lincoln logs and stone. The home site I grew up in Lansing, New York was an old quarry. It had large boulders, water basins from springs that allowed me to create whole villages made from rock and water. When my dad brought in loads of soil to be used in our yard for spreading out to make the areas for lawn, I would create a road and drainage systems, added building sites and played for hours in the piles of soil in the summer until dark.

In high school I continued my interest in buildings, land, and plants. I also loved to draw. The drawings were either space ships, my other interest, or buildings. My biggest influence in the field of design, buildings and the land was the wonderful opportunity to travel with my Mother and Father, Cay and Matt Christopher, in Europe for six months when I was eleven to twelve years old. Looking back at those long months, even though sometimes it may have seemed boring, the boring that was happening was going into my brain. The buildings from all the large cites and country sides were making imprints on my memory that will be used in my design profession of the future.

When I was a junior in high school I need to make my career decision, either astronaut and the military or design with architecture or landscape architecture. Before my final descision was made I visted Cornell and went to several lectures by Marvin Adelman, the newly appointed director of the Landscape Architecture department in the fall of 1972. When I heard Professor Adelman speak and show his slides, I said yes. I chose Landscape Architecture because of all the diverse elements that it incorporates. The profession included drawing buildings, designing on the land, my streets, houses, drainage and my love of plants. I missed the path to space travel, but watched it every step of the way. The college I would choose would be one in my "back yard", Cornell University. The choice of Cornell was also one of the wisest decisions I have ever made in my early adult life. So then I entered Cornell as a freshman in the fall 1973.