funhaus

The PLOT- Final Approval GRANTED from Norfolk Design Review

2012-01-24T15:30:00.004-05:00

The KIOSK

2011-08-08T14:48:00.002-05:00

The Kiosk is forming in Richmond... it will be a welcome center for the Manchester neighborhood, migrating between three critical locations of urban relevance over the course of two weekends in October. The Kiosk is a product of the 2011 Emerging Leaders in Architecture, a year long honors academy of the Virginia Society of Architecture. Thom is one of the 15 participants, each of whom is an architect, intern, or student from around the Commonwealth. The group is keeping a Blog with updates on progress. Check it out here.

Fun show at the Belmont

2011-08-08T08:35:00.003-05:00

Friday night was superfun at the Belmont. Thanks to Jill Berch, NEC, and Glass Pennies for a great time. Videographer Jay Sanchez was there with his gear recording for an upcoming episode of SOUNDCHECK... looks like you might be able to watch Whispering Winds on tv in three weeks from now.

WORK PROGRAM ARCHITECTS

2011-04-12T10:04:00.003-05:00

I am very happy to announce that WORK PROGRAM ARCHITECTS is open for business in Downtown Norfolk. The studio is a partnership between me (Thom White) and Mel Price. Come visit us at our space in the beautiful Monticello Arcade, 208 E. Plume Street, Suite 2, Norfolk, VA 23510. Also visit our website: www.wparch.com.

We played a show

2011-02-03T07:48:00.003-05:00

Whispering Winds played a show this past Saturday. I know... a little after the fact. A lot is in flux... there will be numerous interesting and exciting things to post soon. Believe me.

Press for Art Bike Racks

2010-11-06T15:06:00.003-05:00

Peter Johnston of 5forty design and I have collaborated on the design for two artwork/bike rack pieces that we will build and install in Downtown Norfolk. We recently presented our designs at the Downtown Norfolk Council monthly meeting, and some good coverage in the press followed: In the Virginian Pilot, in AltDaily, and Wavy TV 10. To see the whole DNC Member briefing, including analysis about "bikeability" in Norfolk from Frank Duke, Director of Planning and Community Development for the City of Norfolk, click here.

Dr. Mitchell Joachim

2010-10-28T16:27:00.002-05:00

Last Tuesday evening, the Hampton Roads Chapter of the AIA hosted its Fall Lecture with Dr. Mitchell Joachim. I was one of the organizers of the event and am very happy with how it turned out. Mitch's talk was excellent, and the Granby Theater was packed. Thanks to everyone who came out, and to Marci and Russell Parrish, Jen Stringer, Martin Borger, and Andrew Ferrarelli for the hard work. Also big thanks to Shannon Chance, Jim Gehman, Greg Rutledge, Kevin Murphy, Bobby Wright and the Granby Theater for supporting the event and for help with planning the design competition which we'll soon kickoff. More on that soon... I had chance to interview Dr. Joachim just prior to his visit. Read it here. Also, read Leona Baker's interview at VEER Magazine.

SHOW at 37th & Zen

2010-06-27T15:37:00.000-05:00

first discussion tonight

2010-05-28T13:14:00.001-05:00

Tonight's discussion will lay some of the ground work for a competition I will be working on organizing with the Hampton Roads chapter of the AIA. Come out and join in. Also, it's a good excuse to come downtown and enjoy Art|Everywhere again - or for the first time.

Warehouse show

2010-05-17T10:27:00.003-05:00

Whispering Winds played a show with Boneske and Pan Am Down (Joshua Kraemer solo set) this past Saturday, the 15th, at the Warehouse in West Ghent. We had a blast. Thanks to everyone who came out.

EVERYONE | HOME

2010-05-01T12:20:00.000-05:00

PKN 2010: my slides

2010-04-19T15:41:00.020-05:00

WHISPERING WINDS LIVE TONIGHT

2010-04-10T11:12:00.002-05:00

PKN 2010

2010-04-10T11:05:00.002-05:00

i'm on a poster (to the tune of "I'm on a boat"). Hopefully I'll be presenting at this event (I have to get my slides in by Monday).

Article & First Demo

2010-02-01T13:25:00.006-05:00

The Flatiron Park article, Part 2 of a series, is up at AltDaily. Check it out here. Special thanks to Mel Price & Peter Johnston for the extra time and effort on the lovely watercolor rendering, and thanks of course to all of the RE:Vision Norfolk folks working on this, especially Jesse Scaccia, Katherine Richbourg, Cary Sadauskas, Teresa Lockhart, and Kevin Murphy.

And, the first Whispering Winds Demo "Life Support" has been posted up at Imperfect Smile Records myspace site, here, and on the Whispering Winds page, here. Check it out.

All this work is dedicated to my boy, Sid. I'll miss you, buddy.

Progress Report January 2010

2010-01-22T14:37:00.014-05:00

Happy 2010. Some of what's going on...

Whispering Winds is being recorded by Josh Kraemer and Mike Dunn of Imperfect Smile Records. I made a logo for them for fun:

RE:Vision Norfolk is working on an initiative to transform Flatiron Park in Norfolk to a more inhabitable civic place. I wrote an article back in October for the local online journal AltDaily. Check it out here. A lot of exciting developments have happened since the article came out... A second article will be out soon.

Peter Johnston of 5forty design and I collaborated on a proposal for a public art piece / bike rack for downtown Norfolk, and we were awarded the commission! check out two of the pages we submitted as part of our proposal: The Buoy Bike Rack. Fabrication should begin soon at Peter's shop.

At Ivy Architectural Innovations, the church in the Bronx I'm working on is in limbo waiting for zoning and design approvals; hopefully 2010 will be a good year for this work. Here's a screenshot of the current Revit model:

Work on the kitchen/studio renovations at home is progressing nicely. I've been posting images on facebook pretty regularly; here are a couple of the most recent shots:

BEFORE & AFTER sheetrock

Kitchen coming online

High Line

2009-10-20T16:18:00.005-05:00

I've got a bunch of pics from a walk I took around NYC one Sunday in September...

First, the excellent HIGH LINE:Then... some other notable buildings...More to come...

FESTIVAL SHOW

2009-09-21T11:14:00.003-05:00

UPDATE: Due to schedule conflicts, Whispering Winds won't be able to play this show. But still go to the Festival - it will be superfun

Back to the Boot

2009-08-17T11:34:00.001-05:00

Come see Whispering Winds at the Boot, next Wednesday night, the 26th

Upcoming Show

2009-07-08T13:10:00.000-05:00

First work visit to the Bronx

2009-05-12T15:25:00.003-05:00

Was up in NYC last Wednesday and Thursday for finalization of the schematic design documents for a new church in the Bronx. I'm excited to be working on this challenging project.

It was a long and busy couple of work days - only chance for seeing the sights was while being driven between the site and LaGuardia.

Next time I'm up I'm planning on an extended weekend. People and places to see.

My PKN2009 slides

2009-04-23T08:54:00.009-05:00

The format of the event was 10 presenters (ended up being 12) showing 20 slides with each projected for 20 seconds. My presentation was the last one of the evening. The following is the slideshow, in the order it was presented:

Thank you to Rob Reis, Katie Stodghill, Stephanie Frantz, Mary Jaasma, Matt Pearson, Catherine Hugo, and Jessica Obradovic for organizing the event. And thank you to all of the people who came out - there were around 200 people in attendance!

PKN

2009-04-10T10:24:00.004-05:00

Come see me at PKN

Upcoming Events

2009-03-19T07:26:00.009-05:00

Talk Night 5 POSTPONED - I'll post the re-schedule date soon

Marissa is showing new works at the Belmont - they are up now - go check them out - they're great

I am thinking about applying to show some stuff (and you should, too) - but even if I don't, I will be attending this Architecture Week event at the Granby Theater

Talk Night 4

2009-02-20T10:27:00.003-05:00

Talk Night 4 was last night. Good discussion about these articles: Design Loves a Depression and Design Hates a Depression. We also watched Joshua Prince-Ramus's TED Talk.

Looking forward to next month. Send me an email if you would be interested in joining us.

VOTE!

2008-11-04T09:04:00.002-05:00

Graphic by Shepard Fairey

big week

2008-09-05T16:18:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday Whispering Winds played its first show

Today Substantial Completion was achieved at Wave Convention Center

ALMOST DONE!

30 AUGUST 2008

2008-07-07T11:36:00.004-05:00

chocolate fun

2008-05-01T15:35:00.008-05:00

a new fridge meant cleaning out the old one... wherein a 5 and 1/2 year old bag of freezer-burned fun was found and promptly plated and placed in the microwave

request for some dj no fun to be honored soon...

Slideshow

2007-10-21T12:54:00.000-05:00

Amber Waves

2007-06-05T17:19:00.000-05:00

New camera -yay! (thanks beth). Perfect for a drive down to Knotts Island on a stormy Sunday afternoon for a wedding... congrats T.J. & Jessica.

Post Lag

2007-04-30T09:16:00.000-05:00

So the blog has stalled a bit, as has the construction of the website. I acknowledge it's not fun at all to check on a page that never changes, so I offer the following rendering:

The past several months have been intense as this project inches closer to getting under construction. It is an 80,000 square foot, 2,500 seat performing arts center / convention center for a church in Virginia Beach. With steel joists spanning 165 feet over the auditorium, a two-story Lobby with 200 feet of curving blue-tinted glass curtain wall, suspended catwalks, multiple coffeshops and bookstores, etc., it will be dramatic to see this thing begin to take shape in the coming months. It'll be worth showing off the progress, so expect to see some updates on this with images in late summer. ("Yeah right" you're saying right now)

FLASHBACK funbox

2007-01-30T10:11:00.000-05:00

As I pull the materials together (at long last) for funhaus.net I will be posting here from time to time on the past projects and events. If you, dear visitor, have any photos, stories, or commentary of ye olde funhaus of yore, please please contribute - it is certainly the spirit of community that drives this thing.

The first entry in the FLASHBACK series is the piece "Turn", aka the funbox. Back in the year 2000, Amy Broderick was a masters thesis student at MICA in Baltimore and was one of 10 artists awarded a "Viewing Station" to be publically displayed as part of the annual Artscape festival. The artists were issued a plywood box, approximately 4'x4'x8' and solid on all sides except for a Plexiglas panel in one of the vertical faces; the requirements were to install drawings in the box for "90, 180, or 360 degree viewing". This opportunity to challenge the frame and manipulate the connection between 2d drawing and three dimensional space was the inspiration which lead the project to evolve into a collaboration between Amy, who was working on large drawings with ink on paper at the time, and Thom, who was working in architecture. The idea was to put the viewer inside the box, and the drawing outside. Further, the viewer would have to interact with the drawing - to touch it and pull it around the box, to turn it- in order to see it in its entirety.

The funbox became a sort of spectacle at the festival. It was amusing and surprising to watch people line up to enter it while the masses surrounded it...the viewers inside and out becoming the objects of attention. Even more amusing and surprising was watching people put their hands inside the rubber gloves we installed... totally nasty; those things reeked of crab cakes in no time!

After three days of abuse from hordes of often drunken and/or sun-stroked festival-goers, the installation finally succumbed with the drawing, which had been sandwiched in acetate to shield it from moisture, shredded and then ultimately ripped in half, the gloves pulled off their bungees, and the box itself soiled with the grime of summer fun.

I intend to post a video i made of this thing in action on funhaus.net. stay tuned.

Another Milestone

2007-01-19T10:37:00.000-05:00

It's been a fun week for me on the Architecture side of things. On Tuesday, the previously blogged-on American Cancer Society building had its dedication ceremony, which means it is fully operational. And yesterday was move-in day for the Residence in Ghent project I've been working on since the Summer of '05.

This project began as an exciting design challenge for a couple of supercool clients: to renovate and make an addition to a historic residence in the Mowbray Arch section of Ghent. The existing residence would be gutted down to the floor plates with only a small number of interior walls remaining; and an old shabby addition would be removed to make way for a larger new Addition. Once drawings were made and the demolition began, the project quickly evolved into a significant construction challenge, as it was discovered that majority of the wood framing of the house was so compromised by termite damage and shoddy previous patches and "repairs" that it would all need to be replaced. So the house was stripped down to just its perimeter masonry walls and the roof. Steel frames and plywood shear walls were implemented to keep the house from toppling over, while at the same time affording us the opportunity to keep the first floor completely open and continuous, free of interior partitions, AND allowing us to completely remove the existing north facade, which would be the point of intersection of the old house and the new Addition.

It turned out well. There are some minor details which still need to be worked out, as is always the case. Once everything gets wrapped up and the residents are settled in, I'll head back for another photo session and post here in further detail. In the meantime, here are two sets of images of some of the highlights:

It will also be fun to post some "before and after" shots; they will be quite dramatic. Props go out to the clients for the vision, to John Tymoff, Michael Schnekser, and Missi Smith for their input and expertise through the design process and execution, to Covington Contracting for making it happen, and to 5forty Design for the custom fabrications.

Second Life madness!

2007-01-10T11:29:00.000-05:00

First... at the beginning of the week it was announced that Linden Lab is making the Second Life viewer (the software that gets loaded onto your home machine) open source, which is going to make the "by residents, for residents" aspect that much more true, and will certainly make the platform even more viable as a collaboration tool, which gets the FUN seal of approval (trademarked). Then... SL is featured on Archinect with a rather amusing look at "LOL Architects" out of Stockholm, a group with the goal of becoming the largest architecture office in the world. Check out www.archinect.com and www.secondlife.com.

I am slammed with a handful of huge deadlines (RL), but wow - 2007 is off to a very interesting start with regard to my current favorite hobby...

Oh yeah... Happy Lucky '07 to all!

CONTENT BY POPULAR DEMAND

2006-12-18T14:42:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well... somehow the word got around that a funhaus blog was launched (I only told 2 people...I'd ask you who they were and give you some guesses, but you already know who - so what would be the point???) and then I got flamed for not posting anything. I guess I deserve it... and I don't want anyone to declare battleblog or anything...so here I've broken down and finally posted something new: an image of a building and some detail shots of its interior.

I am excited that this building has finally opened. It is the Thomas R. Lee Volunteer Center - the local headquarters of the American Cancer Society. The site is a stone's throw from Mt. Trashmore and Fake Downtown in Virginia Beach. Design began in 2002, and it is finally open! woohoo! I'd like to give a special shout out to Tagore Hernandez up in Boston, who worked on this project back in the beginning.

So - this will be another aspect of this blog: to show off architectural work related to funhaus. This particular building was designed by Tymoff+Moss Architects; the Project Architect was Thom White, your humble poster.

critical mass disseminated as blog

2006-10-24T17:17:00.000-05:00

Well, here we go...

Get ready for some truly indispensable insight into all things FUN. You will be hanging on the edge of your seat as you cling to every sans-seriffed syllable and gasp at each expanded e-pic. You will rant at the pretention and swoon for the sincerity; will long and linger in the nostalgia and convulse in the shock of the new. ZAP! It's funhaus as a blog: spatially improvising and producing yet another diversion for you in the ever-expanding blogosphere.

enjoy!
tw