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    Residential Architecture Northern Virginia
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    Why the Hell Would You Do That?
    Peter VanderPoel
    • Feb 20, 2019
    • 3 min

    Why the Hell Would You Do That?

    One of the assignments for sophomore architecture students was developed over three related projects. The first part was to draw a Roman letter, most often an initial from the student's first or last name. This letter would be drawn on a 10" x 10" sheet of heavy paper. The objective was perfection. Research online would reveal the geometric construction of the chosen letter based on a historical standard. There was little expectation of creativity at this point, but the stude
    43 views0 comments
    Better Late than On Time
    Peter VanderPoel
    • Jan 28, 2019
    • 3 min

    Better Late than On Time

    In Support of Procrastination In professional baseball, when a batter would come to the plate and obliterate the back chalk line of the batter’s box with his cleats, the odds were good that the the hitter was a student of Charley Lau. He advised his hitters to stand back as far as possible in the box to give themselves a fraction of a second more to evaluate a pitch. That’s procrastination. They would still have to make the decision but they had a slight advantage over those
    41 views0 comments
    Form Follows Function
    Peter VanderPoel/ Viollet-le-Duc
    • Feb 13, 2017
    • 1 min

    Form Follows Function

    I recently had a cup of coffee using a cup that provided some discomfort to what is often the most soothing event of the day. Referring to the drawings above, the loop for the finger was only large enough to allow the index finger (A). The weight of the coffee, being offset from its support at (A) is pulled by gravity and rotates around the index finger (B). To keep the coffee from spilling, the rotational force at (B) must be countered by an equal and opposite force- the knu
    129 views0 comments
    Washington National Cathedral
    Peter VanderPoel - Photography
    • Feb 10, 2017
    • 1 min

    Washington National Cathedral

    #WashingtonNationalCathedral #architecture #photography
    35 views0 comments
    22nd & I (or so)
    Peter VanderPoel
    • Mar 18, 2016
    • 1 min

    22nd & I (or so)

    #art #watercolor #ambiguity #architecture #washingtondc
    5 views0 comments
    Wyeth Smackdown
    Peter VanderPoel
    • Mar 10, 2016
    • 3 min

    Wyeth Smackdown

    A few years back, I visited the Wyeth Museum in Chadds Ford, PA. The Wyeths are a tremendously talented family with a museum devoted to 3 generations of painters: N.C., Andrew and Jamie, with a portion of the museum devoted to each. N.C. Wyeth, father of Andrew and grandfather of Jamie, is best known for his illustrations that appeared in such adventure books as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, among others. He also pursued fine art, but felt frustrated and condemned himself as
    8 views0 comments
    It's Just a Game
    Peter VanderPoel
    • Feb 16, 2016
    • 2 min

    It's Just a Game

    I've noticed a subtle shift in some of the board games that have made their way into our house. But what seems subtle while we're playing, actually upends the paradigm of the way we think about games and subsequently ties into the discussion of "architectural" vs. "engineering" thinking. In engineering there is a "correct" answer and a metric to prove it. A solution can be the least expensive, the shallowest, the strongest, etc. All of these can be verified through calculatio
    23 views0 comments
    The Lavender Button
    Peter VanderPoel
    • Jan 21, 2016
    • 3 min

    The Lavender Button

    My computer was completely black. The only exception was a small, lavender button. It was a "disk eject" on the face of a PC that I had in my office. It was about an inch and a half long and a sixteenth of an inch wide. The edge of the button was eased and had a dip in the center about the same radius as my forefinger. One day the disk drive stopped working. Several more jabs with my finger didn’t change the result. I was unable to find the small hole normally provided
    16 views0 comments
    I Can Paddle, Canoe?
    Peter VanderPoel
    • Dec 20, 2015
    • 4 min

    I Can Paddle, Canoe?

    Years ago I visited the Adirondacks and met Caleb Davis. He conducted a class on making a wooden canoe paddle. I hadn't signed up for the class, but at breakfast the next day I had a chance to sit across from him and he explained why he did what he did in creating his paddles. His description struck me as a template for good design: A single piece of wood is shaped as a response to needs, both physical and environmental. The result is a tool that lets someone move a canoe t
    21 views0 comments

    © 2017 by Peter VanderPoel.

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