#fashion designers live in more interesting houses than architects

[thepastisalreadywritten]

“The occupations of a constitutional monarch are grave, formal, important, but never exciting,” wrote the British journalist Walter Bagehot in his 19th-century work on the English constitution.

If that’s true, no one appears to have told King Charles III.

The British monarch, who will formally be crowned king in a coronation ceremony this weekend, is perhaps the least non-exciting royal alive.

Quite aside from his position as the head of the British royal family — a role that he automatically took over following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September — Charles’s life has always been under the spotlight, from his fairytale wedding to Princess Diana in 1981 to his falling out with his youngest son in 2021.

What distinguishes Charles from his mother, as well as most other members of his family, is his vast array of interests and hobbies.

Many Britons could probably name something about the king that most would find eccentric or odd: His love of red squirrels, for example, or his passion for British hedgerows.

There’s also his disdain for cube-shaped ice. Virtually everyone in the country, if not the world, knows how he feels about leaking pens.

“He’s quite quirky,” Sally Bedell Smith, author of Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, tells TIME.

Quite unlike Queen Elizabeth II, who had a reputation for keeping her personal views on everything beyond corgis and horses private, Charles has always been outspoken about his views and interests.

The one that he is perhaps best known for is his passion for environmentalism, a cause that he took up as early as 1970 when, as the Prince of Wales, he issued a prescient warning about the “horrifying effects of pollution.”

On related issues such as organic farming and sustainable fashion, Charles was ahead of his time.

So committed is he to the cause of conservation that he purportedly still wears a pair of shoes that he bought in 1971 and drives a classic Aston Martin that runs on bioethanol made from cheese and wine.

He has since issued more urgent calls for radical climate action.

But the monarch’s interests don’t end with the planet. Among Charles’ other noted pastimes is architecture and, in particular, how it has been stained in the modern era.

He once described a proposed addition to London’s National Gallery as “a monstrous carbuncle” and even likened London’s contemporary landscape to the Battle of Britain in World War II.

(“You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe,” he once told attendees of an event marking the Royal Institute of British Architects’ 150th anniversary.

“When it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.”)

A living embodiment of Charles’ architectural worldview can be found 130 miles southwest of London in Poundbury, a town featuring pastel-colored houses, abundant courtyards, and signless roads that was designed by Charles as an experimental planning project in the 1980s.

Due to be completed in 2025, Poundbury has been hailed as a model for new, livable urbanism. To critics, however, it’s seen as more of a feudal Disneyland.

That Charles has so many passions — to say nothing of his interest in philosophy, homeopathic medicine, and Islam — is, in many ways, a direct consequence of his extended stint as heir to the throne, a period in which he had both the time and the resources to pursue his interests.

His time as Prince of Wales “was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a life spent in waiting,” Bedell Smith says, noting his work with more than 400 charities, many of which were directly tied to his interests.

“He was very busy; he was a man in a hurry.”

“He has a fogeyish side, there’s no doubt about it,” says Richard Fitzwilliams, a longtime royal expert. “But he’s also an extremely hard worker.”

This perception can get lost amid Charles’ more peculiar idiosyncrasies, from his reported preference to travel with his own custom-made toilet seat to his apparent unwillingness to administer his own toothpaste.

It’s little wonder that one of his biographers, royals expert Christopher Anderson, dubbed him “one of the most eccentric sovereigns Great Britain has ever had.”

Since becoming sovereign, however, Charles had to scale his own personal views and interests back.

In his first address to the nation following his mother’s death, he conceded that, as he takes on his new role, “it will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply.”

For many observers, this was an essential step in ensuring the continuity of the royal family as a unifying force in the country.

“A monarch simply cannot go out and make pronouncements on issues that could very well alienate some portion of the British population, and for that matter the population in those nations that remain realms over which the British monarch is a head of state,” Bedell Smith says.

“One of the most important roles of the monarch is to be the binding force in British society and to do anything that runs counter to that threatens his position.”

Charles has found some ways of maintaining his individuality, though.

While the monarch was reportedly blocked, for example, from attending the COP27 summit in Egypt last year, he did host a reception for others attending the summit to discuss the issue of climate change.

And while he may still be the “defender of the faith,” as the supreme governor of the Church of England, Charles has also dubbed himself the “defender of faiths,” reflecting his desire to be more inclusive.

And while Charles’s coronation will be steeped in religious symbolism and tradition dating back centuries, there will still be elements of the celebration that are unique to him, if you know what to look for.

The design of the ornately illustrated coronation invitations, for example, features a hedgerow border in an apparent nod to the monarch’s love of horticulture.

The ceremony will also feature Greek Orthodox music, in a tribute to the king’s father, the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was born in Corfu into the Greek and Danish royal families.

(“He was always interested in Eastern Orthodox thinking and practices,” says Bedell Smith)

The inclusion of religious leaders representing the Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh traditions in the coronation underscores Charles’s efforts to reflect Britain’s diversity, as well as his own interests in non-Christian faiths.

[swirlingdisobedience]

Multi-disciplinary Site-Specific references

Advertisement:

Brooke Bond Taj Mahal tea has created the installation called the "Megh Santoor" at the Vijayawada Railway station. The huge Santoor, which is 150 ft wide, has been designed such that with every rain shower, the water interacts with the santoor strings recreated on the billboard to present a rendition of the Raag Megh Malhar, the raag of the rains, -a tipical Indian classical music piece. Legends say that this raga has the power to bring out rains in the area where it is sung.

Taj Mahal Tea from Brookebond is a well known brand of Tea in India. 

Nike - Advertisement for a London-specific campaign.

Saint Laurent - Desert Runway women's summer collection 2021.

There were no spectators at Saint Laurent’s presentation of its 2021 Women’s Summer collection, only drone footage of models walking on the crest of a tall sand dune in the middle of a honey-colored desert.

Alexander McQueen - Glass dome runway women's spring/summer collection 2022

"Chilean architect Smiljan Radic built a cloud-like dome for luxury fashion house Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer show. The luxury fashion house invited guests to a large-scale transparent dome on a rooftop in East London, debuting their 2022 Spring/Summer collection.

The ever-changing London skies inspire this year's collection and how turbulent weather in the UK can be. Alexander McQueen's creative director Sarah Burton explains, "I am interested in immersing myself in the environment in which we live and work, in London, and in the elements as we experience them each day." To continue this theme of weather, temperament, and unpredictability, architect Smiljan Radic designed a large-scale, cloud-like dome to house the show. The transparent structure speaks to the outside climate and directly incorporates it into the experience." (from:

https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/alexander-mcqueen-1)

HIGHLINE New York.

The High Line is both a nonprofit organization and a public park on the West Side of Manhattan. Through our work with communities on and off the High Line, we’re devoted to reimagining the role public spaces have in creating connected, healthy neighborhoods and cities.

Built on a historic, elevated rail line, the High Line was always intended to be more than a park. You can walk through gardens, view art, experience a performance, savor delicious food, or connect with friends and neighbors-all while enjoying a unique perspective of New York City.

Nearly 100% of our annual budget comes through donations from people like you, who help us operate, maintain, and program the park.

The High Line is owned by the City of New York and we operate under a license agreement with NYC Parks.

History

Believe it or not, the High Line was once destined for demolition. Luckily, the community rallied together to repurpose it instead, creating the park you see today, for everyone to enjoy. It has since become a global inspiration for cities to transform unused industrial zones into dynamic public spaces.

https://www.thehighline.org/history/

1999

In the decades of disuse, many people were calling the High Line an ugly eyesore (Mayor Giuliani signed a demolition order, one of his last acts in office). But few of these critics saw what had secretly taken over the structure: a thriving garden of wild plants. Inspired by the beauty of this hidden landscape, Joshua David and Robert Hammond founded Friends of the High Line, a non-profit conservancy, to advocate for its preservation and reuse as a public space. Friends of the High Line remains the sole group responsible for maintenance and operation of the High Line (and is funded by supporters just like you).

Trampoline House - Documenta 15 underpass.

Trampoline House’s contribution to documenta fifteen, Castle in Kassel, hints at the physical and metaphorical representation of territorial power and the exercise of ownership. Physically, the ��castle” is a territory marked by a circle of chalk on the floor. Inside the circle, there is a public program of performances, debates, and screening of artworks that puts into perspective the Danish asylum system and attitudes towards refugees and migrants. The participants of a theater workshop with asylum-seekers, rejected asylum-seekers, and refugee youth write and perform sketches about life in the Danish asylum system. A creative writing workshop facilitated by Jean Claude Mangomba examines the criminalization of asylum seekers and a retracing of the rights lost in an unjust and discriminatory system.

Castle in Kassel is not merely site-specific. With its walls easily erased, the castle presents its own antidote to a discriminatory system, tied together through live streaming and documentation to convey Trampoline House’s vital role.

Located in the underpass at Platz der Deutschen Einheit, The Walls Have Ears is a hidden sound installation by Sudanese Artist Khalid Albaih from Trampoline House that consists of hidden speakers placed in random locations along the tunnel telling stories of asylum seekers in Denmark.

Trampoline House was formed in 2010 by a group of artists, curators, refugee rights advocates, and asylum seekers as an antidote to Denmark’s asylum, refugee, and immigration policies.

Balenciaga chips wallet:

$1,800 chip bag wallet. 

Balenciaga: Runway shows

Hito Steryl MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE

The video installation MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE presented at Trafó Gallery reveals similar ’invasions’ of history and emphasizes their cyclical nature by turning towards the processes of economic and political realignment that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and by featuring examples that target our hyper-contemporary world armed with trend analysis, data mining, political advertising and audience targeting. The video installation is co-created by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl and Miloš Trakilović and is based on their lecture in 2019 at n.b.k. - Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Almost 30 years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lecture reflects on post-1989 transformations and political rearrangements in the former Soviet territories, sheds light on the interconnections between culture and populism, and examines in a broader context the mechanisms of oligarchic-capitalist culture that emerged during the 'privatisation' of the former Eastern bloc. The luxury fashion brand Balenciaga acts as a starting point for the artists’ reflections on politics, culture and populism, and reveals connections between trends, social media and political processes, such as the success of alt-right movements, the manipulation of the US presidential elections that enabled Donald Trump's victory, or the rise of populist and neoliberal politics in the countries of the former Eastern bloc.

Posters "Picó" Cartagena, Colombia.

En medio del calor tropical, y el mar caribe existe un fenómeno musical, en el cual gira toda una cultura: Los pick ups. Estos no se promocionan con afiches impresos ni con litografías, sino con afiches artesanales; diseños hechos a mano por los artistas de Bazurto. Se han convertido en un símbolo de patrimonio cultural del Caribe.

El mercado de Bazurto en Cartagena, es el templo en donde reside el alma de la champeta. Allí, en pleno corazón, encontramos al maestro de los Carteles Picoteros: José Corredor Rodelo alias “El Runner”.

Pocas veces se tiene la oportunidad de ver personificada la tan conocida manera de trabajar de las hormigas. Día tras día, el Mercado de Bazurto en Cartagena alberga a un artista de la gráfica popular y sus discípulos, vivo ejemplo de trabajo arduo, disciplinado, organizado y en equipo.

El “Runner”, desde las épocas de colegio cuando, su maestro de idiomas decidió apodarlo de ese modo, hoy con 50 años de edad y sin ninguna agencia publicitaria tiene a su cargo la mayor Empresa (informal) de carteles populares de la Heróica.

[the-firebird69]

This is an example of the stucco on the turret and it's mixed in the use of the house and it's kind of a split-faced slightly colored block that's used on the exterior as well it looks very nice. They also added some touches to use some period windows and even in the turrets they do it like that so you don't have Windows everywhere and it's a nice touch and it makes it easier and it less expensive. As you can see this look works with the current roof. Are those a bigger roof then you see here it still broken up up top with dormers those windows you see up there and the roof they have some as examples and people like it

Thor Freya

Olympus

I like this look and it's something to be looked at it's because it's a veneer and it's less expensive and because of the mix and the effect it has and you're not in this big cold dungeon building and they can fend off anybody and it's not a German type obstruction out here it looks pretty normal and the veneer is nice it's not split Rock or random and it's very neat and it's not a German look either although it's very nice to have a very sturdy house out here people take it the wrong way

Hera

We have a lot of styles that work on this on the particular house chateau nouveau and it is a very nice look that we come up with the one they have is very rudimentary and it is almost it's 100% Bavarian and they don't even do that out there anymore it's very very rustic and old fashioned. We have a lot of new looks as a builder we can make the changes actually we have an architect who does that kind of work and on the plans that you get from them. We do insist you do that because they are the ones who copied the castles and no they're not copyrighted people have done it in the past and it is a wonderful idea to put this forwards a lot of people will love it and there's exteriors like this that work they look very nice. This is a good pic for the particular Palace that they're looking at and it is a castle piece there's some others that I think are nicer but the ones that they have is examples or not that great and he has some design changes that are right but he likes the block but that's because it is bullet resistant very bullet resistant I like it too but we have different color block and texture like this that's the same bullet rating and even works a little better because you don't have a good angle all

Freya Ridings

Here's our goals we hear this stuff and get interested and we started buying stuff and then we get blown off when we want to cancel it and how you should not do it unless you're going to definitely do it if you're planning to move you should do it now if we move out west which it looks like we're going to have to with these Max breathing down our neck and taking all the stuff and it looks like we set them up we didn't do it on purpose but we did take the ships in the first place so think about it if you're planning on moving this is a great idea this color and the texture and the different materials it doesn't cost a fortune it doesn't look like you're living in a few and it stinks over here and the water stays comes up through the drain all the time it's very gross but it's everywhere along the coast but still this look is great it's not obtrusive it doesn't say that you live in a fortress and it's not foreboding and it's a warm color and it's accepted down here this is a great color selection I'm glad you put it up it's better than the last one which was not bad the last one is probably a little bit more secure and like no lead would work even right up next to it and armor piercing would not work at a distance it's not bad it does look like a lot of stone cuz it really is I would buy this as a matter of fact I might look for some like this out there in the West.

Trump

This is smaller but it's kind of the same style and people's like the colors and they like the mix just like I said so you got a little help and we'll put it up in this wonderful people like it and I would say go for it and we need people to have a life to try and defend it I'm sick of people being huge poopers plenty of that we don't need that

Thor Freya

Olympus

I like this look it's one of my favorites so I'm hoping he saves it

Hera

Olympus

[sizzlingenemypost]

An Introduction to โรงฆ่าสัตว์วัฒนามีทโปรดัก

™

Improving your home can make it a nicer place to live.

The two most common home improvements are new kitchens and new bathrooms, for a variety of reasons. Few people replace their living room or bedroom regularly, but kitchens and bathrooms have so many fixtures and fittings that can quickly become dated, as there are constant advances in design.

When youre improving a kitchen, youre probably most interested in the decoration function is important to some extent, but in the end kitchens work very similarly, and most modern fitted kitchens will have similar facilities. What youre looking for is a kitchen that you like the look of, and that suits your style. Metallic kitchens are quite fashionable at the moment, and are worth taking a look at, but theres nothing to say that you have to blindly follow fashion.

While bathroom improvements might seem similar at first glance (they are often sold in the same showrooms, after all), they tend to be much more about function than aesthetics. Yes, no-one wants an ugly bathroom, but most people who upgrade their bathrooms are doing it because they want a better bath or a better shower from a practical point of view. A popular improvement recently is to turn part of your bathroom into a shower room it can be very nice if you have room, but dont try to squeeze it into too tight a space.

Of อุทยานเขาหินงู course, plenty of people also embark on much larger home improvement projects, such as extensions (including conservatories). This might be to add a bigger or extra bedroom onto your house, or a home office, or simply to ธนาคารโค-กระบือเพื่อเกษตรกร ตามพระราชดำริ make your living room larger. As you cant just buy extensions in a shop, you need to consult a professional architect and a builder first, but dont worry a good one will be willing to listen to your needs and ideas and make something unique and great for you.

[exactlyweepingsalad]

10 Tell-Tale Signs You Need to Get a New โรงฆ่าสัตว์วัฒนามีทโปรดัก

™

Improving your home can make it a nicer place to live.

The two most common home improvements are new kitchens and new bathrooms, for a variety of reasons. Few people replace their living room or bedroom regularly, but kitchens and bathrooms have so many fixtures and fittings that can quickly become dated, as there are constant advances in design.

When youre improving a kitchen, youre probably most interested in the decoration function is important to some extent, but in the end kitchens work very similarly, and most modern fitted kitchens will have similar facilities. What youre looking for is a kitchen that you like the look of, and that suits your style. Metallic kitchens are quite fashionable at the ศูนย์ไถ่ชีวิตโค-กระบือ moment, and are worth อุทยานเขาหินงู taking a look at, but theres nothing to say that you have to blindly follow fashion.

While bathroom improvements might seem similar at first glance (they are often sold in the same showrooms, after all), they tend to be much more about function than aesthetics. Yes, no-one wants an ugly bathroom, but most people who upgrade their bathrooms are doing it because they want a better bath or a better shower from a practical point of view. A popular improvement recently is to turn part of your bathroom into a shower room it can be very nice if you have room, but dont try to squeeze it into too tight a space.

Of course, plenty of people also embark on much larger home improvement projects, such as extensions (including conservatories). This might be to add a bigger or extra bedroom onto your house, or a home office, or simply to make your living room larger. As you cant just buy extensions in a shop, you need to consult a professional architect and a builder first, but dont worry a good one will be willing to listen to your needs and ideas and make something unique and great for you.

[diorchitect]

Pieter Mulier’s brutalist penthouse in Antwerp.

Designed originally in 1968 by Léon Stynen and Paul De Meyer and refurbished by Glenn Sestig Architectes.

[talkingharrystyles]

🌌At this point, do you all want to come over for an (virtual) outdoor get together?

You all deserve some R & R to recenter yourselves from the transfer of insanity from Holivia.

An ambiguous pink carpet, that is meant to be assumed his, accompanied with a post designed to reignite “stepdaddy Harry” fantasies, in lead up to more dumping of visual content of “stepdaddy Harry” this weekend, is truly more desperate and sad that Holivia, itself.

That post was littered with some much erroneous and conflicting information, that dismantling it would send OW into a complete mental breakdown.

1. If Daisy left the note before you “awoke”, why get up and plant yourself on the “staircase” to snap the pic infront of something that is easily linked to Harry? If this charade wasn’t meant to inflame critics, in an attempt to reclaim crumbling power, and if “privacy” was the reason, as to why he didn’t claim you on Stern and never will… why get out the bed, walk to the staircase, and take a pic of the “note” infront of something that surely scream “She’s in Harry’s House!” 🤨 Strike One.

2. You want people to believe that you all are living together to incite PR bloggers… why not, then, take the pic in the bed, where Harry, or something personal of his was seen? By His piano? His Keurig? His fruit bowl? His preferred toilet paper? I mean, it shouldn’t matter that those items wouldn’t be easily recognized by the public. As it would be absolutely “far fetched” for people to think that you’re just exploiting this “relationship” for fame and greed. Rather than it being sacred and personal as you claim. Right? Strike Two.

3. How many times have the public learned of parents lying of pregnancies, miscarriages, and instructing their kids to perform certain acts for the camera? Even foraging “sentimental letters that praises their parnets”, in their “kids” handwriting, for clickbaits? Millions and counting. Strike Three.

4. Harry’s almost thirty. He is someone who is constantly evolving and maturing. We’ve seen how his fashion has changed EVERY. SINGLE. ERA. The same is occurring in other minuet areas of his life. His architect spoke of how he was constantly modifying his home’s design plans. Which is why the renovation process took as long as it did, and it still wasn’t, to Harry, satisfactory when he moved in. You think someone who has matured his preference from baggy jeans to skinny jeans to slacks to flared jeans to whatever pants style he’s about to start liking next is STILL interested in having juvenile pink carpet in his home? It’s more than plausible that he has had the flooring renovated to something much more age appropriate (it’s not complex to figure it out). Strike Four.

5. Hypocrite, as always. She can’t berate “Daisy” for her “grammar” when the gramma queen herself wrote a post that was awful. Grammatically correct would had been to write, “New parents: I know THAT it’s hard now, (difficult would had be more accurate to use), (USE A COMMA AT THE END OF YOUR INDEPENDENT CLAUSES or finish with a PERIOD) and with you, sometimes, feeling like a huge fucking failure (Stop talking like a jock who thinks that profanity laced sentences makes you appear mature), (COMMA) but soon they’ll wake up before you and write thoughtful notes. Stay strong. (She is, obliviously, in huge trouble for her spelling and grammar; you can’t win them all). Here’s a better post to resubmit. “To all you new parents reading this, I want to offer you some encouragement. I know how difficult it is to struggle with striving to be the best parent(s) to our children. More than we like to admit, we experience more bouts of disappointment and self guilt than we do moments of pride. However, be gentle with yourselves. Know that your efforts are not in vain. When we least expect it, our children will express their admiration for us in thoughtful letters left behind. Stay strong. Your influence is not unnoticed by them. (Some might find the misspelling bothersome, but I don’t. It personalizes the note even more so). *Go stream Harry’s House on iTunes, and don’t forget to get tickets to DWD this September!* That is how the IG post should had be written for a lunatic who claims that she is so brillant and intellectual bright🤦🏽‍♀️.

That’s all I got. Let the lunatics destroy themselves. They’ve been doing it since January 2020, and will increasing do so in the upcoming weeks until nothing, but a barren wasteland of chaos and confusion remains.

Luna will link a glimpse of where I’m presently at.

You all more than welcome to join.

I could be weakly petty, and claim, “Guys I’m at Harry’s House! The green grass here matches the same green grass in his yard🥹”, but I won’t.

Sorry Harry. Your architectural design choice cannot hold a flame to this.

Don’t get jealous critics. You as well, OW and Company.

This, too, can be your reality once you abandon your self entitled, victimhood identity of, “I hate all men, but I desperately choose to depend on and cling to them to give my life substance and financially provide for me.”

Real WOMEN and MEN carve out their OWN individual paths. They don’t suck off of others because they’re either too lazy and incompetent to want to depend on themselves.

Like one said, “You are the architect of your own destiny ; you are the master of your own fate ; you are behind the steering wheel of your life . There are no limitations to what you can do, have, or be. Except the limitations you place on yourself by your own thinking.”

Shippers, OW and Co, even Harry and Co: You all are more than welcomed to join us.

You will be working, of course. I don’t know what. But someone(s) can find a productive task for you to do that will build character, and instill an appreciation for entrepreneurship and humility.

But start from the bottom and you, too, can be on this level.

.

[rayllumkissing]

Dana's Owl House AMA, a summary

• Eda is about mid to late 40s, and it's the same with Lilith except she's 2 years older. Gus is 12, Willow is 14 and King is "???????" years old

• When Lilith joined the Emperor's Coven, she dyed her hair to look "intimidating"

• Dana appreciates the positive press coverage of Enchanting Grom Fright, and she appreciates the negative ones as well "because I live to troll jerks :)"

• The teacher that Amity referred to as mom back in Lost In Language was not Lilith, in fact they're not really close and Amity lost a lot of respect for Lilith after Covention

• We may see more of Viney, Jerbo and Barcus soon

• When asked about what Luz's favourite anime was, Dana replied with a lengthy list stating that she thought about it too much

• Amity and Luz are confirmed to be lesbian and bisexual respectively

• Amity might dress in a "punk aesthetic" to impress people but she's more of a jock in Dana's mind

• When asked about King's broken horn, Dana just replied with "all will be revealed eventually"

• Dana hopes Season 2 will make us cry

• Originally, the gems on Eda and Lilith's chests was just going to be an in-world fashion choice. But during production for The Intruder she decided to use Eda's gem as a visual aid for the curse

• There's more to Amity's parents than we know, which can be either good or bad for our main cast. Also, Dana had fun writing Mr Blight stating that he was interesting

• We may see Luz celebrate her quinceanera (her 15th birthday) but that's if the show gets a third season

• Luz is Amity's first (big) crush

• We'll get to know everyone a bit better in S2

• Hooty apparently has an evil twin, Booty (I'm pretty sure this is just for laughs though)

• In the first episode, there was a background character that looked similar to Amity in design (the one with the pink stripe). Dana revealed that Amity did have a different design originally

• Edric and Emira are salty about getting stood up at Grom but they'll get over it as "they'll have plenty of distractions"

• There will not be a musical episode

• It was a last minute idea for Dana to include "Talk to the glyph, witch!" in Young Blood, Old Souls

• According to Dana, Disney is "historically weird" in terms of merch

• "Bird-themed things are generally a Clawthrone thing"

• Dana has always wanted to do an official graphic novel

• Eda and Lilith are confirmed to have more sibling moments

• Dana has no least favourite character design, but the puppeteer in Witches Before Wizards freaks her out

• Eda has been to vegas before and was not impressed

• Eda will win against Lilith in Hexes Hold'em, but most likely by cheating

• When a witch joins a coven, they're physically unable to perform magic outside of that area. Basic spells like levitation for small objects can be done but with great difficulty

• Witch is a gender-neutral term, wizards are a title which you can call yourself and "warlock" is akin to "edgelord" in the Demon Realm

• Spencer Wan is the only in-house animator (animation supervisor) for Season 1, and to acquire this Dana had to sit through many meetings with executives to get this position. The in-house animator for Season 2 will be Kofi Fiagome

• We can expect parental conflict, a lot of emotions, island exploration and new characters in S2

• Lilith's palisman is alive like Owlbert

• If Eda's curse can be healed her hair will not turn back to its original colour

• Belos has specific inspirations which will be revealed in S2

• King's backstory is deeper than we think

• Amity and Willow's relationship has a long way to go, but the air between them is definitely lighter now

• When asked about the codes hidden in the show, Dana said that in high school, Dana would spend her summers in Russia, and her and her Russian classmate would pass each other notes that was a mix of both the English and Russian alphabet. From there their secret language developed and changed and helped inspire the codes, along with Gravity Falls

• Luz would play minecraft and spend all her time building castles and coming up with stories for the towns she built

• Dana has many favourites on the show, but she loves Eda and King. She tends to like the characters she has the easiest time writing

• Willow works out every morning. Unlike Boscha, she doesn't brag about it

• Everything that people responded to from S1 (especially the last few episodes), there will be more of in S2

• No one's really sure what Hooty's made of

• Many Boiling Isles sculptors and architects are part of the Construction Coven

• Eda's bile sac stopped producing the chemicals needed to produce magic on her own. It's still there although it's useless now

• Luz is "a bit of a bonehead" when it comes to Amity's signals (Dana doesn't mean this as an insult)

• 4 years ago when Dana pitched the original idea for the show an old writing partner told him that no one would watch a show about an old lady, so she made the pitch bible out of spite

• Creepy Luz was actually a joke in response to the line, "maybe I'll meet a hot yet vulnerable upperclassman" from The First Day, but Dana likes the doppelganger theory and will neither confirm nor deny that she exists

• Dana likes to think that Boscha and Amity's moms have a rivalry from childhood and still compete with one another through their kid's achievements

• Edric and Emria's hair is naturally green like Mrs Blight's while Amity's hair is naturally brown like her dad's and Mrs Blight likes her children to be...colour coordinated

• The demon on Principal Bump is named Frewin, that's all for now

• The application of glyphs and their uses will be covered in Season 2

• A palisman is our world's equivalent of a "witch's familiar"

• Witches will usually carve their palisman from a special type of wood in their teens in school or with parental supervision

• A palisman uses their own source of power outside of a witch's bile sac 

• Witches can join covens when they graduate school, and if they're talented enough they can leave early and join a coven

• Why King wears a collar will be revealed in S2

• Yes, Dana is aware of Lego Eda's existence

[dizzydizney]

Hello!

So I was thinking about college and what the vks and aks would choose for a major, but you know, in every fic there's the stereotypical mal-fine arts, evie-fashion design, jay-sports scholarship, carlos-computer science, ben-king etc

(which are gret and very fitting) but what if those weren't options?

Like, I could tottaly see jay as an architect, fumbling with papers and huge A1 sheets full of crooked buildings, led covered hands and shirts, hair tied up in a bun and held in place by pencils

and carlos maybe a physics or chemistry major (or very early phd cause he's an absolute genius), mad scientist vibes and all that good stuff

Mal could surely pull off a forestry & environmental sciences degree, being an activist and trying to become the voice of the fae residing in the auradon forests, those that are forgotten by the law

oh! and audrey being in the same major as mal, preparing for her future ruling on the throne of roses

Chef!Ben my beloved < 3

Entitled cop chad or kind-hearted musician chad????

Doctor!Evie, cause being exhausted by the constant pressureof school AND about having the lives of your patients in your hands is totally on brand for her

Wow, this got long, sorry I'm just rumbling and haven't even touched the sea three

I really want to hear your opinions though

Oh my gosh okay so first of all, love all these suggestions! They're definitely less conventional and less popular but that just makes them more fun to hear!

But honestly, Mal doing anything in the arts would be wonderful. Aside from spray paint and one doodle, we didn't see her do much in canon even though we know it's an interest of hers. She didn't have time to pursue it like Evie with fashion or Jay with sports. So I'd be fine with that. But her being an environmentalist is also good. I LOVe the tie to nature and her faerie heritage. That's something worth exploring

Jay as an architect is interesting. You provided a very lovely visual to go with it 😍 I could get behind it. Like imagine he just gains an interest in architect from all his parkour and scaling buildings sksks. That'd be so funny

I also feel like we didn't get a lot of Carlos's hobbies in the movies either?? It was Dude, Jane, and sport that he didn't even like. I do love mad science vibes for Carlos, but I could see him doing a ton of stuff. I love the idea of this Cruella being the head of a huge fashion house like Glenn Close's Cruella, and Carlos learning the ropes at that. But using his tech genius mind in the fashion industry. Creating sustainable pieces out of recycled material, and mingling wearable fashion with modern tech. Basically slaying the entire "Fashion in the Age of Technology" Met Gala better than anyone who actually went. But he's my fave of the Core Four, he can do literally anything

Could so see Doctor!Evie happening. She's a caregiver, she would want to do what she can to save people. But I could also see her being an activist, or doing the whole fashion meets technology thing. But yeah, these characters are versatile, you don't always have to pin them to one interest and one future only

Love activist!Audrey as well. Ooh, or could see her doing something with animals. Bring back first book Audrey where she's just a sweetheart angel and woodland creatures flock to her side

Chef!Ben... You said it all. Would love an au where his biggest responsibility is running the most popular boulangerie in town

Haven't really thought about Chad a lot. Don't like the idea of anyone being a cop lmao buuut something "entitled" would suit him. Literally I just see him as some cheesy social media influencer sksksk

And yeah this is long so I won't start on the Sea Three lol we can save that! But I loved the long ask so don't apologize about being in my inbox lol I love you for it! ❣️❣️❣️

[thinkingimages]

Joan Bennett in the film Secret Behind the Door

Sexuality and Space edited by Beatriz Colomina

Elizabeth Wilson

In the early 1990s the addition of “sexuality” seemed to take the vibrant debate on space into new territory. The very title of Sexuality and Space reflects this, and as Beatriz Colomina remarks in her brief introduction to the collection of articles it comprises, to insist on “sexuality” as a component of space can be, at one level, to insert feminist concerns into a masculine discourse—although it is dispiriting if sexuality is still perceived as women’s domain, somehow suggesting that anatomy still is destiny and/or that women are still equated with the bodily in a way that men are not. As Colomina makes clear, however, the volume, like the symposium at which the papers it contains were initially presented, aims to do more than simply “include women.” Nor does it aim simply to explore “how sexuality acts itself out in space,” although this would have been an interesting subject in its own right: how actually existing urban, architectural spaces are used intentionally or illicitly for sexual purposes. We could have had papers on the role of the “cottage” (public lavatory) in gay sex, on museums as pick-up grounds for intellectual singles, on the voyeurism of peep shows, and so on. But this would presumably have been too literal a project for the theorists gathered. Instead we are invited to treat architecture as a “system of representation” on a par with film and TV, and to ask how space is “already inscribed in the question of sexuality.” Gender is inscribed in space and space is never designed in a gender-neutral way.

Accordingly, the articles range across the visual arts in a fashion that at first glance seems not so much interdisciplinary as wildly eclectic—Atget photographs of Paris, Alberti’s writings, an Australian advertisement for real estate. The approaches taken by the authors are also widely divergent.

Jennifer Bloomer has missed an opportunity to explore the purported “effeminacy” of Louis Henri Sullivan’s architectural work. She raises the interesting issue of the assumed relationship between gender identity (and/or sexual orientation) and allegedly “feminine” architectural forms and decoration, but instead of developing this theme she flirts with it, creating a theoretical bricolage that fails to achieve intellectual coherence, her discussion of the function and symbolic importance of ornament not fully meshing with the problematic figure of Sullivan. A similar collagist approach is used by Catherine Ingraham, and I can see that it may be a kind of postmodern criticism; but while it permits the introduction of a variety of interesting, if only tenuously related, points and theories, it has a modish feel, especially when the usual theoretical suspects are rounded up for an airing, Lacan’s lavatory doors making repeat appearances. By contrast, Alessandra Ponte’s essay on the 18th-century antiquarian Richard Payne Knight is very focused (as is Molly Nesbit’s meditation on the absence of “la Parisienne” from Atget’s photographs of empty corners of his city), a piece of historiographical excavation revealing the phallocentrism of 18th-century theories of architecture.

Yet most of the articles, despite their apparent divergence of subject, are united by theoretical protocols as well as by the central concern of the book as a whole, which is not eroticism but gender, and not architecture but space in a variety of manifestations, many of them historical. The main uniting factor is psychoanalytic theory.

The material throughout is rich and detailed. Beatriz Colomina contributes an analysis of representations of house designs, particularly interiors, by Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier. She explores the way in which these houses are photographed, and some of the ideas informing them, drawing out the way in which these utopian, perfect rooms are—paradoxically—theatrical sets for dramas of domestic life. There is an implied contradiction between the architect’s dream of perfect space and the actually existing mess of daily life; but either way the woman is always positioned as hidden and within, object of the male gaze. Surprising similarities (or perhaps they are not so surprising) are revealed between these modernist architects and the Renaissance architect and philosopher Leon Battista Alberti. Mark Wigley shows how Alberti, both in his treatise on the family and in his architectural writings, describes the ideal house as a building that encloses, conceals, and ultimately fetishizes heterosexual intercourse; the separate rooms of husband and wife may be entered by a private intercommunicating door, so that other members of the household need never know when the partners engage in sexual relations. More generally the domestic interior becomes, in Alberti’s propositions, a prison house for women, although Wigley suggests that this architectural manifestation of patriarchy only fully came into its own with the 19th-century bourgeoisie.

Patricia White’s paper is concerned with the filmic representation of a house, “Hill House,” as explored in Robert Wise’s 1963 horror classic, The Haunting. As she points out, this film is truly terrifying, but achieves its effects without any special effects or any actual representation of anything horrific. White identifies the underlying horror as arising from the film’s exploration of lesbian sexuality, demonstrating convincingly how the film’s central character, Eleanor, played by Julie Harris, although destroyed by Hill House, whose “gaze” she cannot escape, yet manages to “exceed” the narrative, speaking finally in voice-over from beyond the grave. White’s deployment of psychoanalytic film theory seems particularly apt and nonreductive; she uses it to bring out the ambiguity of the film, in which lesbian desire is apparently defeated and yet remains disruptive, “exceeding the drive of cinema to closure.”

Patricia White inevitably refers in the course of her argument to Laura Mulvey’s well-known article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”1 I have never entirely understood why this article became so hugely influential, given its negative and pessimistic reading (especially from a feminist point of view) of cinematic pleasure. But perhaps that was the point: as this volume itself demonstrates, psychoanalytic theory (especially its Lacanian variant) has been the basis for a “criticism of suspicion,” by which I mean a criticism that not only deconstructs the way in which effects are achieved and exposes meanings that might otherwise be hidden from an “innocent” audience, but invests all aspects of any aesthetic work with doubt and dubiousness. The excavation of cultural products must always, it seems, uncover skeletons. In this regard, architecture and cinema are two forms of cultural production particularly vulnerable to what Martin Jay has termed a 20th-century “denigration of vision” that has supplanted its earlier (Enlightenment) celebration.2 Viewing and the gaze, the totalizing vision and the nobility of sight, have been comprehensively delegitimated as (white, Western) masculine methods of control and domination.

In Laura Mulvey’s original article there was no place for the female spectator to lay claim to the gaze other than by becoming masculinized. Mulvey has since sought to modify this view, while never renouncing the underlying assumptions on which it was based, and she contributes to the present volume a meditation that considers Pandora and her box (“the box can … stand as a representation of the enigma and threat generated by the concept of female sexuality in patriarchal culture”), the Hitchcock film Notorious, and the idea of female curiosity as a transgressive exploration of forbidden spaces. For her, psychoanalytic theory as used in feminist criticism is transgressive, for “curiosity describes the desire to know something that is concealed so strongly that it is experienced like a drive, leading to the transgression of a prohibition,” and feminist curiosity then constitutes an unmasking of the patriarchal structures of popular, or indeed any, culture.

Yet, as Victor Burgin argues in his essay on the photography of Helmut Newton, Mulvey’s original article has itself been fetishized; its influence has neither diminished nor evolved. Having made this statement, however, Burgin himself makes little further attempt to develop it, confining himself instead to an analysis of a Newton image, interesting enough, but much narrower in focus than his opening sentence had led this reader, at least, to expect. Burgin is rightly dismissive of the way in which psychoanalytic theory has been “sociologized” and collapsed into a vulgar-Marxist version of woman-as-commodity. He might feel that Lynn Spigel’s essay on television and the postwar American suburban home is too “sociological,” but this is one of the clearest articles in the collection, a model of structural simplicity and accessibility, in which the ambiguity between public and private, outside and inside, created by the plate glass doors and picture windows of the suburban home, is shown to be reproduced by the advent of television with its concomitant notions of the living room as theater and the TV space as a safe, sanitized public space introduced into the home. (Indeed, although television created fears of a new generation of what we now would call “couch potatoes,” the screen community of the sitcom often seemed preferable to the real-life communities of the new suburbs.)

With Elizabeth Grosz’s article on bodies and cities we return to a more euphoric postmodern take on the relationship between sexuality and space. Grosz moves the discussion beyond traditional metaphors of the “body politic” or the humanist idea that at one time people unproblematically built cities; instead she explores the way in which “the city is one of the crucial factors in the social production of (sexed) corporeal bodies: the built environment provides the context … for most contemporary … forms of the body.” But disappointingly she does not develop this idea, falling back instead on a familiar and arguably exaggerated vision of a cyborg future: “the city and body will interface with the computer, forming part of an information machine in which the body’s limbs and organs will become interchangeable parts with the computer.”

Meaghan Morris’s contribution, too dense and theoretically “over-egged” (i.e., incorporating too many ingredients) to summarize, rewards several readings, and is a serious attempt both at a critique of theories and at an analysis of two specific cultural events concerning property speculation in downtown Sydney. It is insightful and thought provoking; nevertheless it illustrates both the virtues and the flaws not just of the book as a whole, but of the general state of cultural studies. Simultaneously populist and obscure, such studies can become both incoherent and philistine (although the latter is certainly not an adjective I would apply to her essay or any of these contributions).

Indeed, this is a (probably rash) generalization, not a comment on any particular article in Sexuality and Space, but if I have seemed to single out some authors for negative criticism, it is less on account of their specific contributions than because they are the heirs of what for me are ambiguous, indeed dubious, tendencies in contemporary cultural criticism, in which the debunking of Marx and all Enlightenment thought is married (or at least engaged) to a fundamentally uncritical appropriation of Freud (or at least Lacan). I have gone terminally off Lacan since I discovered that, when Antonin Artaud was his patient during World War II, Lacan showed little interest in the deranged playwright3; an illegitimate ad hominem argument, I know—but the grip of his theory on academic critics has always been mysterious to me. Even worse is a practice, which I fear may have been on occasion my own, whereby a critic distances herself ironically or cynically from an assortment of postmodern theorists (Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, even Derrida and Foucault) while simultaneously appropriating their thought, not infrequently in the form of spurious generalizations—a feature, Meaghan Morris suggests, of the work of Deleuze and Guattari themselves in relation to Freud. The whole is then likely to be couched in dauntingly arcane and grammatically tortuous language. Faced with this bricolage, I am totally with Edward Gibbon—who identified one aspect of the decline of the Roman Empire as the decadence of its later literary tradition, when, he complained, “a cloud of critics … darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste”4—and I cannot but feel that this kind of postmodern criticism is indeed an index of decay.

But I suppose that postmodernism in general and contemporary psychoanalysis in particular is the theory our epoch in history deserves. Psycho-analysis has certainly been reconstructed to fit; in contrast to the highly moralistic and adjustive Freudianism of the 1950s, which was in any case a therapeutic and sociological rather than a critical tool, we have today psychoanalysis as an ideologically empty vessel, a theory without consequences. A fractured body of thought pleasingly open to endless reinterpretations and deconstructions, a detheorized (or perhaps etherealized) theory, it holds up a (splintered, it is true) mirror to assist in the contemplation of ourselves, one which can be thrillingly seen as “transgressive” while remaining devoid of any calls to action or any social or moral imperatives. Truly a theory for our postpolitical times.

1. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975): 6–18.

2. Martin Jay, “In the Empire of the Gaze: Foucault and the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought,” in David Couzens Hoy, editor, Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 178.

3. See Stephen Barber, Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (London: Faber and Faber, 1993).

4. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 83.

Elizabeth Wilson is on the faculty of the School of Information and Communication Studies at the University of North London; her recent books include The Sphinx in the City and Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader.

[lumelii]

BREAKING IN ~|~ FUSHIGURO TOJI X FEM!READER

Summary: Your business partner and you are celebrating the end of a difficult project. Lucky you. 

Content Warning: nsfw, smut, fwb situation, FEM!READER established "relationship", dilf!Toji, face fucking, slight degradation, face slapping (just once) (if I forgot any let me know)

Note: Big thank you to Moni and @shokami for being my guinea pigs on this one. 

Word Count: 5.1k

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were few things Toji liked about traveling for work. He liked seeing new places. He hated long plane rides. Hotels were nice, but sleeping on the mattresses for too long wreaked havoc on his back. He enjoyed making new business connections. Most importantly, however, he hated leaving his kids for long periods.

They were on his mind now, as he checked his phone periodically through the business party he was attending, celebrating the completion of another building Fushiguro Design Group had planned and engineered, this time in New York City. It was almost time for them to go to school in Tokyo, usually one of them called before they left so he knew they were up. His finger paused over the home phone contact for a moment before he put it away with a sigh. Megumi and Tsumiki were both teenagers now, almost in high school. They didn’t need him hovering all the time.

“Congratulations on another success, Mr. Fushiguro.” One of the executives of the company who contracted the firm came up to shake his hand. “You really outdid yourself this time.”

“It was a group effort.” His eyes searched the room, hoping to find a distraction to get him out of this conversation before he put his foot in his mouth. He didn’t deal with clients, he had employees who did that. He wasn’t great at curtailing his frustrations when in conversation. Especially with this client, who changed their design at least four times, which meant he had to redo all the math. Four times.

Luckily, his distraction came just a few seconds later as his phone began to ring. Looking at the caller ID, he felt a wave of relief seeing his home phone number. At least that meant one of the kids was up. He wasn’t counting on Gojou.

“Please excuse me.” Toji stepped away and walked out onto the balcony just off the ballroom, closing the door securely behind him before answering.

“DAD!” He held the phone away from his ear just slightly when Tsumiki yelled even before he said hello. He brought it back to his ear once he was sure his eardrum wouldn’t be ruptured.

“Good morning to you too, princess.” He answered sarcastically. “How are you? Getting ready for school?”

“Megumi stole my notebook again!”

“I did NOT!” Toji heard Megumi yell in the background.

“It had my homework in it! If I don’t get it back, the teacher is going to dock points!”

“Did you already look in your backpack? Everywhere in your room?”

“No, because Megumi took it!”

“Princess, look in your backpack and your room first. If you can’t find it, have Gojou help you. Now give the phone to Megumi.”

He heard her huff and set the receiver down, yelling for Megumi to get on the phone. A few moments later, the receiver was picked up again. This time, Megumi’s voice. “Hi Dad.”

“I swear to god, Megumi, if you have her notebook and you’re lying about it just to bother her—” Toji warned.

“I’m NOT!” He yelled again. “I was over at Yuuji’s house last night anyway, why would I need her homework when we did ours together?”

“Why weren’t you home last night?” Toji’s eyes narrowed even though his son couldn’t see him. “It’s a school night.”

“Yuuji and I were working on homework. Plus his neighbor made sweets. She sent some home with me. I’ll save you some. Are you coming home soon?” His tone was hopeful. It made Toji’s chest hurt. He missed his family.

“I’m going to be on the first flight back tomorrow morning, I promise.” Toji told him. “Are you ready for school?”

“Not yet. I can’t find my slacks.”

“Look on the right side of your closet, they’re probably in there. Where’s Gojou? Can you put him on the phone?”

“I think he’s still sleeping.” The phone was set down again, and Toji had to wait what felt like forever until he finally heard Gojou grumbling on the other end of the line.

“G’morning sunshine.” He yawned. “What’s up?”

“Are you aware the kids are ready to tear each other’s throats out?” Toji frowned. “And why are you still sleeping? They’re almost ready to leave for school.”

“Kento was on the phone late last night freaking out, I had to calm him down.” Gojou stifled a yawn again. “I made sure they have their breakfast and their school stuff is ready.”

“Tsumiki’s missing her notebook.”

“It was in the living room last I saw, I’ll make sure one of the dogs didn’t take it.”

“I KNEW IT!” Tsumiki screeched in the background.

“Shit, I have to go, Toji. Call later.”

The line went dead before Toji could ask any questions. He looked down at his lock screen with a frown, debating on calling back but ultimately deciding against it while he put his phone away. He would call later once both kids were at school, and keep an eye out for breaking news of fratricide in Tokyo.

He looked to the balcony doors when they opened, relaxing slightly when he saw his preferred distraction walking out with two drinks in hand. 

You closed the door behind you before walking up to him, holding out his favorite, an Old Fashioned. “I thought I’d find you out here.”

He took the proffered drink and downed it in one gulp while you sipped your Gibson carefully. “Am I that predictable?”

“When it comes to these kinds of parties, yes. Either you were about to lose your temper and needed a breather, or you had to take a call.” You answered. “Problems at home?”

Toji shook his head. “Just wish we were back.”

“It’s been a month. I can’t wait to get back to Tokyo. No matter what anyone says, no one can beat Tokyo ramen.” You leaned your elbows on the balcony railing. He leaned next to you, copying your pose while you both looked over the glittering New York skyline in silence.

“Why don’t we focus on projects at home for a while?” You offered. “Or in Japan, at least. That way we wouldn’t have to be gone for too long, you’d still be able to go home at night.”

“We have some pretty big clients lined up in Dubai and Europe. I don’t think they’d want to wait until we felt like traveling again.”

“You’re the boss. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.” You reminded him with a smile. “I can take someone else with me, then send the specs once we’re done. I’ll even let you pick your stand-in.”

“I’ll pick my stand-in whether you like them or not.” He smirked before continuing. “I’m the boss.”

You rolled your eyes and took another drink. “Just don’t make it fucking Ren. I can’t stand that asswipe.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He promised.

The conversation wasn’t typical between a boss and employee, but you were more than that. You were partners at the firm, Toji was just the one in charge. You’d built the firm together from the ground up, making it the success it was today.

He had come to you, needing an architect for his own firm back when it was only an idea, offering two-hundred million yen out of his personal coffers as an incentive. But it wasn’t the money that had made you say yes. It was the almost maniacal determination in his eyes. He had something to prove, and he would burn the world to the ground to do it.

You learned later his wife had just died a few weeks prior, and it was part of his promise to her on her deathbed that he follow through with his plan of opening his firm. You’d been with him since the beginning, in the early days where you both spent countless sleepless nights completing projects other firms only dared to take on, through the intervention staged by his two closest friends Nanami Kento and Gojou Satoru, as Toji became consumed by his work as a way to suppress his grief, to the point where his son almost didn’t recognize him when he came home. You’d been by his side through the boom of success that befell the firm just a few short years after its founding, along with the money that soon flooded both your pockets, and his second “marriage” to a model he met at a film festival, who promptly disappeared after moving her daughter into his home. He had been surprisingly calm through the whole ordeal, submitting the paperwork to make Tsumiki his own once they were completely certain her mother was never coming back, with a hefty cash incentive and NDA to tie it with a nice bow.

He’d been through a fair amount with you as well, dealing with toxic family that had come out of the woodwork as the company started to increase your wealth, demanding money for so-called “investments” they had made into you by providing basic care until you finally left at fifteen. Through the sudden death of your fiancé, where Toji was the only one who could understand and help you navigate through the unending darkness that consumed your life for almost a year afterwards. He’d ignored some of your questionable choices as you tried to adjust to your new normal, but also was not afraid to step in when necessary if the choices turned destructive. You had thought it was just to protect the interest of the firm, but when he had come to your apartment after a sobbing phone call on the anniversary of your fiancé’s death and held you so you wouldn’t feel so alone, you knew it was because he cared about you.

“Are you ready to go back inside?” You asked after watching the sunset sink below the horizon, breaking you both out of your reflection.

“I’d rather drive an ice pick through my skull.” He admitted. 

You laughed, the sound echoing off the glass windows and empty air around you. “We could always dip.”

“Wouldn’t they be offended, us leaving early?” He turned to face you with one hand on the railing. You ignored the way his suit jacket strained against the hard planes of his chest.

“Mari’s in there, it’ll be fine.” You said, referring to your project manager. “She loves people. She’ll have them eating out of the palm of her hand.”

“If you say so.” He took the empty glass from you, setting it on the railing before taking your hand to thread it through his arm. “Shall we?”

“Lead the way.”

You made a hasty exit from the party, repeating your excuse of an early flight at least a dozen times so no one would hinder your escape. No one bothered to ask follow-up questions. If they had, they might have found out you were flying private back to Tokyo, and the plane could leave whenever you goddamn pleased, obliterating your excuse.

Luckily, the lie held until you were safely in the cab of an elevator, heading up to the floor that held your two hotel rooms. The company had offered the two massive adjacent suites to you both, taking up an entire floor of the newly constructed hotel. Toji probably could have brought his kids if he had wanted, but he didn’t want to pull them out of school for that long. You were happy to have the entire suite to yourself. It meant you didn’t have to listen to neighbors through all hours of the night, and you didn’t have to worry about keeping anyone up when working late at night. 

“The flight leaves at six tomorrow morning.” Toji told you as you stepped off onto your floor. “There’s going to be a car to pick us up an hour before.”

“Did you already send your bags with the service?” You stopped just outside your door, directly across the hall from Toji’s. 

He nodded. “I saw yours were ready, I had them sent as well.”

“Thank you.” You looked behind your shoulder to your door then back at him, his hands in his pockets, watching you like he was expecting you to say something else. He looked downright sinful in his all-black designer suit, his normally straight hair styled back with hair gel but still looking soft to the touch. The watch that cost more than most people’s houses glinted in the warm light of the hallway as he played with his cufflinks, also worth a small fortune. You would know. You bought them. 

He quirked his eyebrow at your examination, almost like a challenge. Damn him. 

“Do you want to come in for a nightcap?”

A slow smile spread across his face. “I thought you would never ask.” 

You smiled back and turned to the door, inserting your keycard to hear the small click of the lock disengaging, slipping inside with him closely following. “We haven’t broken in this one, yet.”

He was on you before you had the chance to slip out of your shoes. Maybe it was the alcohol that gave him a sense of urgency, the sweet bourbon still on his lips as they slid over yours with a practiced ease, or that you had an early flight in the morning and needed as much sleep as possible to prevent jet lag. If it were the latter, this was definitely not the activity to be participating in.

These liaisons only happened on trips, or late nights at the office or your apartment, where there would be no prying eyes. You both didn’t need questions. It was fulfilling a primal desire, one that burned within you even as both your hearts were locked by grief. There was an understanding. You cared for him, and he for you, but not in a romantic way. You were making sure the needs of a friend were met.

The “breaking in” was also a tradition as well, ever since your first major deal had been completed. When the building was finally complete for a major project, you and Toji would sneak off somewhere to do the deed, christening the building like a bottle of champagne before a ship’s maiden voyage. It had started as a joke, a way to release the pent-up stress that resulted from design and construction but eventually became a tradition. As the business grew over the years, you and Toji had christened well over a hundred completed projects with none the wiser. 

You pushed his suit jacket off his shoulders before moving your hands between your fused bodies to start undoing the buttons of his shirt, working quickly in the tight space as Toji didn’t allow you any room to pull away. You struggled to focus while his kisses moved down to your chin and then your neck, licking and sucking the skin with reckless abandon. You let out a breathy moan as he bit your pulse point with a low growl feeling your heartbeat thrum beneath his teeth. Toji pushed your hands away when his shirt was finally on the floor behind him. He grabbed your face between his hands bringing your attention back to him to kiss you. Ever the multitasker, his tongue explored your mouth while he began his task of getting you naked. 

“Don’t rip the dress.” You warned under his kiss while his large hands grappled for the zipper. “I borrowed it, it has to be in perfect condition.”

“I’ll buy Mei Mei a new one.” Gripping the top of the dress with a hand on each size of the zipper, he yanked hard, the fabric splitting like he had just ripped a sheet of paper as it fell off your body. His eyes went wide as the dress pooled at your feet, revealing the matching black lace set you had underneath. The cups barely contained your breasts and did little to cover your most delicate areas, nipples peeking through the sheer fabric.

“Fucking hell.” He breathed.

You grinned and kneeled in front of him, starting to undo the buckle of his pants. “Paris paid off, then?” 

A sigh fell past his lips as you finally pulled his pants and boxers down, wasting no time to wrap your hand around his thick cock, pumping languidly. His breath hitched as you licked his angry red tip slowly, pulling back to prevent him from pushing past your lips when his hips moved forward. His hand went to the crown of your head, tangling his fingers in your hair. “Shit. You’ve been saving that since Paris?”

“I’ve worn this plenty before. You’ve just never seen it.” Your smirk was devilish. His grip on your hair tightened as you took him to the base, neatly trimmed hair tickling your nose while you forced your throat to relax. You tried to gather as much spit as you could to make the glide easier as you bobbed your head. Toji was a large man with an equally large and impressive dick, almost too much for you to take in. Through years of practice, both on him and several inferior specimens, you had learned just how to hollow your cheeks, how to move, and how to swallow to have a man cumming in minutes flat. 

“Fuck, you okay?” He panted when he thrust involuntarily, hitting the back of your throat and making you gag slightly. Once you composed yourself, you hummed around his cock and nodded. Grabbing his other free hand, you placed it on the back of your head with his other one before taking him back down your throat. A silent invitation. 

He wasted no time responding, beginning to thrust into your mouth with no reserve. You grabbed his hips to steady yourself as you relaxed and remembered to breathe through your nose. Tears ran down your cheeks while he choked you with his massive cock, mixing with your mascara and staining your skin black. The salty tang of precum hit your tongue, mixing with the saliva that fell from your lips the faster he moved. You smiled around his cock when you cupped his balls, squeezing just enough for him to let out a loud groan. 

“Stop.” He growled, pulling you off him and tilting your chin up. He took in your tear-streaked face, your chin and neck covered with a mix of saliva and pre-cum. When he dragged his thumb over your bottom lip, you caught it between your teeth, sucking him in and lavving the digit with your tongue. He chuckled darkly, hooking his thumb in your mouth and using it as a guide for you to stand up in front of him. 

“Messy doll.” He crooned. You had to admit, you were shocked as he leaned forward and licked up your neck, tasting both of you on your skin. While you were distracted with his sinful lips, you heard another distinct ripping sound before you felt the cool air of the room against your bare ass. You broke away and looked down to see your panties in tatters on the ground. 

“Can you at least leave one piece of my clothing intact tonight?” You frowned at him, your voice slightly hoarse from his antics. “Those were expensive. I know we’re made of money now, but I’d prefer not to spend it all.”

He ignored you and reached around to plant a firm smack on your cheeks. “In the bedroom. On the bed.”

You knew exactly what he meant, but you decided to have a bit of fun as you walked through the massive suite. You could feel his eyes on you, almost predatory when you entered the bedroom and caught sight of the king-sized bed, made with fresh linens and piled high with pillows, accented in the light greys and blacks that matched the rest of the suite. You flopped down on the bed with a giggle, back down, and propped yourself up on your elbows to look at him. 

He frowned at your position as he walked forward. “I said on the bed.” He rumbled. 

“I am on the bed.” You played dumb and cocked your head to the side. “What did you mean?”

He shook his head and stopped at the edge, towering over you. “You’re such a brat sometimes, you know that?” 

“It’s a nice break from those girls that call you daddy, isn’t it?” You purred. 

The growl that ripped through his chest made your heart jump and another wave of arousal coat your lips as he surged forward, gripping your hips to flip you onto your stomach and pull them up so you were on your knees, your throbbing center level with his cock. He ground against you, slipping his length along your drenched labia to coat it, the glide easy as your spit mixed with your slick. He was more than ready to pound into you. 

When you tried to prop yourself up on your elbows, he put a hand on your neck and pushed you down so your face was pressed into the mattress. A shiver ran down your spine when you felt his hot breath on your back and trailing up as he bent over you to whisper in your ear. 

“You know, I was going to be nice, maybe take it slow at first so you wouldn’t be absolutely wrecked sitting for fourteen hours on our flight tomorrow.” He hummed. “But now, I think I’m going to like seeing you squirm.”

It wasn’t even a second later before he slammed into your pussy, the stretch almost painful as you wailed at the intrusion and he began a brutal pace that rivaled his speed while he was fucking your face just moments before. You were already sopping wet from sucking his dick earlier, turned on beyond belief as you thought about what lay in store for you after he was done with your mouth being his personal fleshlight. 

“Shit, you’re so tight.” He hissed, spanking your ass to feel you clench around his dick. “No one can stretch this cunt as good as I can, can they? You need a fat cock to satisfy you, those skinny dicks can’t even get you wet.” 

You moaned an affirmative, playing along with his narrative as he pistoned his hips into you. You could feel every vein on him as they dragged along your walls, his tip hitting that soft spot inside you with every thrust. There were plenty of other dicks that had gotten you wet, but it was true his was the most impressive, and the one that had more knowledge of just how to make you scream, monster dick or not. He had that advantage over every other man you slept with. 

The slap of his hips against yours echoed through the cavernous room as Toji grabbed your upper arms, pulling them behind your back and forcing your back in arch, his thrust becoming more shallow but no less punishing. You bit your lip to control the noises you were making, but whines still escaped. 

When the new position didn’t produce his desired response from you, he released your arms without any ceremony causing your upper body to fall limp back to the bed. You gasped as Toji pressed his hips flush to yours, curling his body on top of yours with one powerful arm wrapped around your waist to keep you from pulling away while his tip continually massaged your g-spot with every roll of his hips into you. 

“Tell me how it feels.” He murmured in your ear, his voice steady without any sign of effort. His stamina was something to marvel. 

“You know how it feels.” You moaned back, unable to control yourself. You were so close, just ready to reach that peak if he would only speed up. You reached back with one hand and gripped his hip hoping that would encourage him to resume his previous pace. 

He took your hand from his hip and put it back near your head, delivering a harsh smack to your ass. The sharp sting of pleasure was what you needed for your back to arch, squeezing around him while you fucked yourself back onto his cock to prolong your climax as much as you could. 

Toji pulled out as you finally slowed down, his heavy cock bouncing against his leg as he sat up against the headboard and patted his thigh, signaling for you to climb on. You wasted no time in doing so, raising yourself on shaky legs to straddle his lap. His hands moved to cup your ass as you settled over him, taking his length in hand and sinking down onto it with a sharp exhale through your nose. You could almost feel him in your throat in this position, the stretch still borderline uncomfortable even after he had already stretched you out, coupled with the sensitivity of just having orgasmed. 

His gentle grip turned hard just as you were about to start bouncing to stop your movements. You gave him a confused look but understood when his hands started to guide you in grinding on his lap. The added friction on your clit against his pelvis made you sigh in pleasure, just a tinge of overstimulation creeping through the tightness already building in your stomach again. In this position with the lack of harsh movements he was able to play with your breasts, which he always gave proper worship. 

His large hands made your breasts look small as he covered the left, slipping your nipple between his fingers and rolling it while he cupped the other, pushing it up and licking at the flesh. You sighed at the rough texture of the scar marring his lips against your sensitive skin and wrapped your arms around his head, tangling your fingers in his hair to hold him close. He loved to tease, licking and sucking all around your breasts until you were about to beg, arching your back further into his touch. You hated begging him, hated admitting how well he could affect you. But you had known each other for so long, you knew each other better than anyone else. 

You whined as his lips finally closed around the pert bud, laying the flat of his tongue over the sensitive skin. You felt his lips stretch into a smile against your skin at your vocalizations before he moved to your other breast, immediately latching onto the nipple to produce a breathy moan. You knew he was enjoying himself from the way his hips matched each roll of your own, driving deeper as he got lost in the feeling. 

“I got your milkies.” You whispered, part of your sinister trick to bring him back to earth. You were starved for actual friction, grinding not providing the drag on your insides you craved. 

He pulled back with a soft pop and frowned, though his pupils were still blown out. “You did not just say that.”

You shrugged. “I thought it was funny.”

“Way to kill the mood.” He mumbled, pushing your breasts together to bury his face between them, licking through your cleavage and up your chest.

“Then why are you still hard?” You squeezed down on him deliberately. His eyes grew dark as he looked up at you through thick lashes and you knew you were in for it. 

With one quick movement you were under him, back pressed into the pillows while he kneeled between your legs still holding your waist so he could stay buried inside you, your hips tilted so you were at an angle. You struggled to sit up trying to resume your previous position, but his strong hold on you didn’t allow you any room before he continued burying himself in your velvet walls. You could barely breathe from the force of his thrusts, twice as hard as before but just as fast. 

You could have killed him from how composed he looked as he watched you slowly lose control. He watched you with an almost curious expression, studying how your brow drew together and short gasps fell past your lips while he was barely breaking a sweat. You refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing your moans. If he wanted them, he’d have to earn them. 

“I know you like taking it from the back, but I think I like this better.” He mused, voice even like he wasn’t balls deep in your cunt. “I can see the look on your face when you lose control.”

“Fuck you, Toji.” You gasped, your words stuttering with each of his thrusts. 

“No, that’s your job.” He grinned devilishly and bent down over you, resting on his elbows. “Scream for me, little slut. Let the floors around us know how good I fuck.” 

You opened your mouth to retort but a loud scream came out instead as Toji sneaked his hand between you to roll your clit between two fingers. You barely felt his breath on your skin as you shattered beneath him, screaming just like he wanted as your orgasm crashed over you, ten times as intense as the one he had just given you. You gripped the pillow under your head and turned your face into it so he couldn’t see just how much you were enjoying this. 

In an instant, you felt the pillow ripped from beneath your head and his hand come into contact with your cheek. The sting of his slap was dulled by the pleasure still running over your body as he gripped your chin tightly in one of his large hands, forcing you to look in his eyes, your noses almost touching. Your eyebrows knit together and mouth open on a silent moan made him finally push as far in as he could on a final thrust, painting your inner walls white with his cum as he groaned loudly. The roll of his hips didn’t stop until he deposited every last drop within you, until you could feel his cum leaking out the sides of his dick. How could he cum so fucking much?

His hands turned gentle as he pulled out, smoothing your hair off your sweaty forehead and tracing his fingers over the hickeys he’d left on your neck. He bent down to ghost his lips on your hairline before hauling himself off the bed and walking toward the bathroom. You could faintly hear him rummaging around through your post-coital fog, coming back with a warm damp towel and starting the task of cleaning you up. 

While he did, he grabbed the phone from the room and dialed room service, ordering two meals, along with ice cream at your insistence, billing it to his room. Not that it mattered, you were staying here on your host’s dime. When he was done cleaning you, he laid on his side next to you, smiling down fondly as you still tried to catch your breath. 

“You did good.” He whispered, caressing your face. You managed a weak smile and laughed. 

“Don’t get soft on me now, Fushiguro.” You sighed. “I might just lose respect for you.”

He smiled down at you, basking in the afterglow of your liaison. “Wouldn’t dream of it, doll.”

Tags: @oikawaandkuroostan, @gummy-dummy

[yamayuandadu]

For the character breakdown, I’d love to see hadad, anat, shapash, yam, mot, athtar, kothkar and khasis... really any of the ugaritic pantheon, of course you don’t have to do all of them >.<, I’d just love to see your hot takes

I shall rise up to the challenge! I’m the only person on this site obsessed with Ugarit as far as I can tell... I covered everyone you asked for plus Ashtart and Yarikh. As much as I like burrowing through jstor and academia edu and persee and so on, I kind of wish there were more people approaching Ugaritic, Mesopotamian, Hittite etc. myths the way many do with Greek ones tbh - sometimes i’d just like to see which figures people think would be into gossiping and so on or which tacky modern fashion they think suits them equally as much as I want to find out if Yarikh’s portrayal in Ugaritic poetry owes more to Nanna/Sin or to the Hittite moon god. ALSO as far as this sort of light hearted takes go, there are two japanese artists on twitter who draw Baal cycle fanart: here and here.

Hadad: How I feel about this character: one of my fave mythical protagonist. I think I genuinely only like Inanna more. Going from a very relatable desire to get his own house to triumph over death is quite the journey. The relative powerlessness many interpreters point out is interesting, too - the fact he mostly gets somewhere because of allies and because even if El was the king of gods, Hadad’s attributes made him the king of people’s hearts arguably, so he has to win against overwheming odds. All the people I ship romantically with this character: Anat, Ashtart/Astarte/however we transcribe her name this week... Kothar? My non-romantic OTP for this character: given the Seth-Baal equation in Egypt and the uncertaininty over whether Astarte papyrus is about Seth or Baal under Seth’s name it’s funny to imagine them as friends. Also I’ll talk about it more underneath but since Dagan was a god with similar purposes further inland (and is attested earlier iirc) and Ugaritic texts - even though they rarely feature him - call him Hadad’s father - it would be cute to assume he also taught Hadad everything. My unpopular opinion about this character: I’m a Dagan parentage truther against all odds. It was the norm outside Ugarit! I think “Dagan isn’t in Ugaritic myths because they take place in Ugarit but people thought Dagan lives further inland in Tuttul based on prayers etc.” is enough to explain his absence from myths, and also note that in the epic Baal is “Dagan’s son” even when he’s at a low point (ex. when Yam demands he gives up his freedom or when he’s dead) and only El’s and Asherah’s son when he’s victorious for the most part (ex. during palace construction) - imo this makes it plausible that Dagan is his real dad and El and Athirat are only his parents in the way vassal rulers called emperors fathers. Likewise I think any references to siblings can be interpreted in the light of ex. kings of Ugarit calling kings of Carchemish or Alashiya brothers. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I really like how corny the Hittite/Hurrian storm god cycle is with Kumarbi constaly raising new challengers to attack Kummiya and dethrone Teshub/Tarhunna, I actually wish the Ugaritic one was longer too via a similar plot device. Also I wish Dagan actually appeared in myths alongside his son - Noga Ayali-Darshan had a theory he was in some oral tradition predating Baal cycle as the god announcing Yam demands a tribute since in Hurrian “Song of the sea” and in Egyptian “Astarte papyrus” a grain deity does this but a possible reconstruction isn’t much... Anat How I feel about this character: well, she’s not Inanna, but she’s still pretty good. I mostly like the parts of the Baal narrative which show her unpredictable character, like her probable parents being afraid of her, listing various never shown enemies she vanquished, or Mot’s death. Aqhat myth doesn’t interest me much. That myth fragment where she and Ashtart pity Yarikh because other gods treat him poorly is interesting, too. All the people I ship romantically with this character: Baal, Ashtart, that’s it I think. My non-romantic OTP for this character: she seems to get along really well with Shapash during the segment of the Baal cycle where Baal is dead. My unpopular opinion about this character: I really hate the speculation popular among bible scholars which amounts to making her, Ashtart and Athirat interchangeable to justify her irrelevance in the iron age. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: honestly? I wish an “Anat cycle” existed. She pretty clearly had a fair share of own adventures considering Baal enlists her help on the account of past accomplishments. Yam How I feel about this character: out of all antagonists in the basic middle eastern “storm god vs sea” narratives I think he has the most fun personality - Hedammu is barely a “character” and Tiamat lacks the more human dimension Yam has. All the people I ship romantically with this character: nobody, he has to move past the Astarte papyrus characterization and learn some respect for that smh My non-romantic OTP for this character: his nameless rude messenger who refused to bow down when speaking to the assembly of the gods My unpopular opinion about this character: contary to what this (very good) paper says, the Yam battle is more thrilling than the Mot one - the strength of the Mot part of the narrative comes from the visceral descriptions of Anat’s emotions but Mot is a flat villain compared to Yam. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: he had a seemingly positive role in cult and there are 13 known people with Yam theophoric names (out of 6000 or so people from Ugarit known by name) so I sort of wonder if there’s some lost myth where he’s the hero or something. Mot How I feel about this character: if nothing else, feeling offended by being offered bread and wine instead of corpses is pretty funny and a great introduction. And the pathetic attempt at a comeback shut down by Shapash is All the people I ship romantically with this character: unshippable by design tbh. My non-romantic OTP for this character: if the theory about Horon - the god from the “anti-snakebite text” and the “may horon crack your skull” curse - being a cthtonic god too - just a generally benign one - is true I think they could have a lot of comedic potential. My unpopular opinion about this character: I don’t understand where the idea of a nonexistent myth about Mot kidnapping Shapash and Yarikh comes from and I wish it wasn’t all over the place online. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: some more detailed description of the afterlife - Mot, rephaim, Horon if he really lives there - would be useful... Shapash How I feel about this character: she seems severly... underrated? There are maybe two papers about her (and one underlines the fact there isn’t much research on her) and yet she’s the second most prominent goddess in the Baal cycle AND has her own narrative in the anti-snakebite texts! She might actually be more remarkable than her Mesopotamian counterpart - with all due respect for Utu/Shamash, in myths he’s the boring sibling between himself and Inanna/Ishtar... All the people I ship romantically with this character: I don’t have any real ideas, some papers assume she and Horon were a thing but this is disputable and Horon is pretty nebulous himself... My non-romantic OTP for this character: “Kothar - your close friend!” from that one hymn has that covered. Since she’s basically a divine herald perhaps they travel together? My unpopular opinion about this character: I suspect the reason why she isn’t studied more is because many researchers are stuck with some sort of false “good mother goddess - evil sex goddess” dichotomy of ancient middle eastern religion and while you can force Athirat, Anat and Ashtart into these roles, Shapash with her aura of a divine equivalent of a mundane earthly official doesn’t fit into it and as such is ignored. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I said I hate the false Mot myth spreading online but I actually do wish there was a myth or at least a cult text of some sort showing what sort of relation existed between her and Yarikh - safe to say it didn’t mirror Shamash and Sin... Kothar-wa-Khasis How I feel about this character: huge fan of artisan gods and he seems genuinely nice. One of my Ugaritic b-list favorites. I like that he’s a reneissance man - armorer, architect, even a musician... The theory that he was developed based on Ptah since Memphis had a large foreign population is great. All the people I ship romantically with this character: Baal sort of? I imagine Baal is actually relatively knowledgeable about architecture given the length of the window debate in the Baal cycle... My non-romantic OTP for this character: Shapash, as I said earlier. My unpopular opinion about this character: based on the tale of King Keret some researchers argue he’s meant to be ugly like Greek Haephestus, but since I like the Ptah theory and his appearance isn’t described elsewhere AND King Keret might be satire where everyone is their worst self possible, I prefer to imagine him as handsome One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: supposedly from Caphtor and yet we never see Caphtor (Crete) in Ugaritic myths... come on, ancient scribes, surely someone went there? Maybe even recorded some proper Minoan myths? Ashtart How I feel about this character: she’s my favorite Ugaritic figure of limited relevance. An Ishtar/Inanna equivalent who seemingly curses other gods and presides over political pacts is a pretty solid premise! And it’s funny she rebukes Baal seemingly for insufficient dedication in battle. I wonder if the Egyptian fragment which implies Yam acted lecherous towards her is a factor in this tbh. Perhaps an earlier oral tradition had both these elements...? All the people I ship romantically with this character: Baal (her title is “face of baal”/”of the name of baal”, c’mon...), Anat (almost always listed together!) My non-romantic OTP for this character: Keret curses his son with a formula invoking both Horon and her so perhaps that’s who she’s learning curses from. My unpopular opinion about this character: I hate that “Astarte is Asherah” is widespread just because people want to defend the historicity of the biblical Jezebel narrative which probably even the biblical compilersdidn’t view as historical. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish she didn’t vanish from the Baal cycle after Yam’s defeat :C Attar How I feel about this character: this sure is... a guy. He’s so pathetic in the Baal cycle it’s hard to even see him as an antagonist - sorry, Handbook of Ugaritic Studies... All the people I ship romantically with this character: nobody, Shapash points out he’s single as the reason why he can’t rule and i don’t think that changes in any subsequent texts? But then Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh iirc mentions he has a daughter... My non-romantic OTP for this character: again, nobody. My unpopular opinion about this character: he’s actually a pretty vital part of the Baal cycle and the fact he gives up on own accord makes him more interesting than the other “failed god” in a similar narrative, Ashtabi. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: a god with the same name was prominent in present day Yemen so I guess finding some direct connection would be nice - it fits with him leaving to “rule elsewhere” in the myth! Yarikh How I feel about this character: he’s so pitiful in the fragment which compares him to a dog begging for scraps... His main myth is pretty good too, tbh it’s the best middle eastern marriage myth imo - I actually don’t care for Dumuzi much, but Yarikh is cool. All the people I ship romantically with this character: only Nikkal-wa-Ib My non-romantic OTP for this character: given his mistreatment and Nikkal’s father(?) saying he could be a son in law of Baal I assume that in some unknown texts they must have been allies. Note that the Hittite storm god has the sun and moon gods acting as his metaphorical eyes warning him against Kumarbi’s new plots in song of Ullikummi. Also I assume Anat and Ashtart must consider him a friend given how they help him when nobody else does? All around he feels like a god in Baal’s orbit even though we have 0 direct proof for it. My unpopular opinion about this character: I think trying to correct him to Nanna is a doomed endeavor tbh. Their wives have similar names but Yarikh doesn’t give the impression of a “Father of gods” type deity in what little we know about him. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: more myths. None we know show him as the moon even though it’s literally his name! I am afraid I don’t have anything interesting to say about El and Athirat. Handbook of Ugaritic Studies has an amazing El summary that I generally stick to, I can post a cap if you are interested.

[dwellordream]

“...Historians concur that live-in domestic service was primarily an urban phenomenon in the late nineteenth century. One estimate suggests that between 15 and 30 percent of northeastern city-dwellers hired live-in domestics. The historian David Katzman, who has generated the most refined statistics, demonstrates that even within relative geographical proximity, city-dwellers hired servants more often than did rural dwellers, and city-dwellers with large pools of foreign labor more than city-dwellers without. Nationwide at midcentury there was one domestic servant for every ten families, with a considerably higher ratio in large cities like Boston and New York. 

A greater proportion of Bostonians hired domestic servants than did residents of any other northern city, with 219 servants per thousand families. With traditions of household service born in slavery, even after the Civil War, the South led the nation in its reliance on domestic servants, with Atlanta in 1880 boasting 331 servants per thousand families. Even in the South, though, the difference between city and country was notable, with Atlanta in 1900 hiring four times as many servants per thousand families as in the rest of Georgia. Together these figures suggest the flourishing of an era in the history of Victorianism. It was common for American bourgeois city-dwellers on the Atlantic seaboard, even ones of modest means, to rely on the labor of maids to sustain their households.

Of course, the end of the story is popular cliché. With the opening of more lucrative and less degrading jobs for young women as sales clerks, ‘‘typewriters,’’ and teachers, the ‘‘servant problem’’ became terminal, and by the First World War, American housewives could not depend on the hiring of live-in domestic help to assist them in their housework. It is significant, though, that even when ‘‘necessity’’ suggested the reintegration of daughters into the domestic economy, they were gone for good. The culture had put girls to other uses, from which they would not return to their mothers’ sides.

We still might ask why girls were often excused from domestic labor— especially given the compounding weight of the advice literature recommending otherwise. The answer lies in the increasing role played by daughters and servants in the bourgeois quest for refinement. Even when the gross number of live-in servants declined as production moved out of the home, the hiring of at least one domestic remained a prerequisite for middle-class status. The statistics on who hired servants bear out the middle-classness of this phenomenon, with 65 percent of servants in the Northeast in 1860 working in households with no other servants. In an increasingly mobile and prosperous society, hiring servants was one way to demonstrate standing, a concrete and conspicuous way of demonstrating what you had left behind. 

One historian argues that the cultural importance of servants should be measured in the amount that some less prosperous families were willing to spend to hire them—sometimes as much as one-third of family income. Clearly, the freeing of daughters from steady household work and the hiring of domestic servants of lesser, often foreign, status went in tandem with the changing purpose of the home itself. Eighteenth-century households had required helpers to assist in domestic production. The homes of the mid– nineteenth century elite instead featured housework ‘‘as the creation and maintenance of comfort and appearance,’’ in the words of the historian Christine Stansell. 

As the Beecher sisters observed, families were increasing ‘‘in refinement’’ such that they no longer wished to live in close intimacy with ‘‘uncultured neighbors,’’ far less daughters of foreign shores, who were working as servants. Thus one mill-owning family in rural Vermont made a point of hiring Irish help rather than the daughters of neighboring farmers, who might object to eating in the kitchen and expect to be ‘‘one of the family.’’ Architects reflected such changes by midcentury, such that servants’ quarters were designed as discrete parts of the house, with back stairs and separate entrances. Custom increasingly favored uniforms and servant dining tables in the kitchen. 

At the same time that middle classes aspired to higher standards of comfort and appearance in accordance with new possibilities, women’s primary responsibility shifted from the supervision of a household manufactory to family nurturance, the raising and socializing of children. Much has been written about the evolution of new ideals for motherhood following the American Revolution, as women gained responsibility for raising virtuous citizens. ‘‘Republican mothers’’ shaped new daughters as well as new sons. Initially considered necessary allies in the steady work of processing the stuff of survival, the daughters of middle-class families became themselves the prime products the home produced—the embodiment of the principles of sensibility and refinement. 

Mothers’ new responsibilities did not erase old ones. The historian Jeanne Boydston has appropriately criticized the readiness of her colleagues to mistake the ideology of domesticity for reality, arguing that by no means did the productive work of the home cease with the industrial revolution. Instead, Boydston argues, the emphasis on the emotional task of mothering tended to eclipse from view, but not eliminate, the continued real labor—the making of clothing, the putting up of preserves, the carrying of fuel—still carried on in the middle-class home. She is right in her argument that ‘‘paid domestic workers did not free the mistress of the household from labor.’’ 

But even Boydston acknowledges that domestic servants instead did the work that would have been done by other females in the household—including adult female relatives and daughters. An interesting case in point is the urban family of woman’s rights advocates Henry Blackwell, Lucy Stone, and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell. As Boydston tells us, Lucy Stone, who was raised on a farm, still kept chickens, worked a garden, and tended a horse and cow, even as she lived a prosperous middle-class existence outside of Boston. Alice Blackwell later remembered that ‘‘she dried all the herbs and put up all the fruits in their season. She made her own yeast, her own bread, her own dried beef, even her own soap.’’ 

In her lively diary, however, Alice Blackwell reports doing little household work. Such chores as emerge in her diary were designed to interrupt her incessant reading, which was thought to be responsible for her bad headaches. Thus her cousin, visiting the household, ‘‘had undertaken to find me something to stop my reading: churning; and I churned in the cellar till the butter came.’’ In fact, advice writers who had failed in their efforts to promote domestic work for daughters on other grounds often focused on the value of domestic labor as a source of exercise. The Beecher sisters observed that if girls did strenuous housework, their parents would be spared the expense of gymnasiums. ‘‘Does it not seem poor economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for us?’’ 

Louisa May Alcott, whose collected opus represents a powerful gloss on the domestic debates of late-Victorianism, repeatedly suggested the healthfulness of housework, ‘‘the best sort of gymnastics for girls,’’ according to Dr. Alec in Eight Cousins. Her Old-Fashioned Girl explicitly contrasts the healthy republican daughter skilled in domestic arts with the languid late-Victorian belle, afflicted with boredom because of her lack of home chores. Mothers undoubtedly continued both to supervise and perform much household maintenance, but they did so assisted by domestics rather than their own daughters. What did middle-class girls do instead of housework? 

This was a question which greatly concerned commentators, who asked, as did Mary Livermore in 1883, ‘‘What shall we do with our daughters?’’ Mary Virginia Terhune, too, lamented the passing of housework as girls’ raison d’être and with it ‘‘that prime need of a human being—something to do.’’ Parents found a range of things for daughters to do, including the ornamental skills of sewing, playing piano, writing and reading associated with self-culture. Increasingly, also, they sent daughters to school. Common schools designed for both sexes did not include sewing. 

In later years, the Beecher sisters observed, ‘‘A girl often can not keep pace with her class, if she gives any time to domestic matters.’’ And they noted, ‘‘Accordingly she is excused from them all during the whole term of her education.’’ Girls themselves noted the increasing power of lessons in any competition with housework. Agnes Hamilton remarked that first her French tutor and then her German homework prevented her from doing her ‘‘share of Monday’s work.’’ It was not long before the work of some girls was reassigned. 

Those who were serious about domestic education, such as a composer of ‘‘An Ideal Education of Girls’’ that appeared in an 1886 issue of Education, suggested, in fact, that this disjunction be acknowledged. A girl should receive the same education as a boy until the age of twelve, its author suggested. At that time a girl should drop out of school for two years and learn the complete running of a household, returning to school only with that formal apprenticeship accomplished. Only such complete separation of activities would allow the household its due.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Daughters’ Lives and the Work of the Middle-Class Home.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

[architectuul]

The Introverted “Seismograph”

Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. - Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900

How can an architect sense underground vibes of the present time and translate them into the future? This was the question that Hans Hollein posed at the 6th Architecture Biennale in Venice in 1996: Sensori del futuro. L’architetto come sismografo [Sensing the Future - The Architect as Seismograph]. The title contained a faint echo of Porthoghesi’s Biennale The Presence of the Past, dealing between past and future memories, laying the ground for the Next Biennale in 2002. Hollein was the first non-Italian curator following the Unnamed Biennale in 1991 when Dal Co invited foreign countries, introducing national pavilions and opened the prestigious Arsenale with an exhibition of 43 architectural schools from all over the world.

Read also “Teatro del Mondo: An Odyssey” and “The Greek Experiment”

Kyriakos Krokos | Photo © S. Staveris

Hollein portrayed several international star architects-including himself-via their hands, comparing them to a super powerful apparatus that can make predictions. Most of them are sketching, others are playing the piano, working at the computer or just explaining something. Some of them are dealing with the memories of utopias like Arata Isozaki, Massimo Scolari and Peter Cook whose captivating drawings revived past memories from previous Biennales. And some others are dealing with their own personal memories, looking into their past experiences, recalling colours, textures and materials and managing to display all these fragments of memory in such a way that when they are seen together, through analogies, they can convey deeper meanings and create dialogues. Kyriakos Krokos was one of them.

Greek pavilion at Venice Biennale in 1996: Kyriakos Krokos, curator Andreas Giacumatos | Photo © A. Giakoumakatos 

Among all these powerful seismographs Kyriakos Krokos (1941-1998) made his appearance through his work in the Greek pavilion. An architect who dealt with his memories with the same passion and even more dedication than Pikionis (one of the few Greek architects who received international recognition and his work was showcased in the first Greek pavilion in 1991). 

August of 1975 | Drawing © K. Krokos

“I wanted to get closer to my childhood senses. (…) Memory for me was a tool of liberation from the bonds the architecture school created” said Krokos and maybe that’s why he never wanted to be part of the architecture academic community. Back in the 1960s, he was struggling with the modern fashion as he referred to his studies at National Technical University of Athens where the influence of the modern movement is still present. How current remains this discussion even today when architecture schools create limitations and produce architects with restrictions following contemporary movements or star-architect clones. For Krokos, the only way for someone to be free of these bonds is to look inside oneself and try to see the world with the eyes of a child “..when everything was enchanting us (…) I felt the art as a substitute for innocence, that everything was trying to drown, and the great works to show the way back”.

Krokos’ drawings © K. Krokos

He stood away from the avant grade of his era, showcasing in Venice Biennale local construction materials and fragments of his memories growing up in the agrarian island of Samos. Thus he managed to recall not only his own personal experiences and his path of becoming an architect but also pieces of collective memories from the people who lived and worked in the same region.

Museum of Byzantine Culture Thessaloniki | Photo © A. Giakoumakatos

For Krokos, architecture exists in time before and after its completion and he sought to attribute an active role of participation of every agent related to the construction. This practice implies an ethos, an attitude of life; to live according to who you are, to think and build as you live. Krokos saw the architect as craftsman, being actively engaged in the construction, introducing participatory methods, formulating a collective vocabulary, (thus very specific for each project) combing memories, materials, local techniques, colors, light and shadow in a section. "There are no right materials, there is the right relationship of materials” said in one of his few interviews, talking about principles which relate to bioclimatic factors, about sustainability and passive building systems. “The beginnings of the new fashion with concrete as the dominant material - this is not to blame, of course - confused us. The engineer now had to say how the house would be done. People no longer say I will build but I will pour a slab.” The 6th Venice Biennale was for Krokos his last work, redefining the question of making architecture, characterised by humanistic power with respect to both living bodies and the environment.

Fasianos house/museum by Krokos | Photo © A. Giakoumakatos

Is Krokos relevant today? Maybe his architecture wasn’t contemporary in his era either. His projects stand timeless, allowing us to look back when we feel the need. To look our own experiences, memories and traces of our bodies. To understand the environment we inhabit and coexist, comprehend our inter-connections, try to find associations between diverse places and the particularities of physical and non-physical elements. In an era that the architect as an autonomous persona has ceased long ago, maybe it is interesting to look into architecture through collective memories, as negotiation between rural and urban, individual and collective, text and context, political and planned, local tradition and digital technologies, moving away from fixed dichotomies. 

Carl Jung in one of his letters to Freud explain the concept of analogy and analogical thought: Logical thought is what expressed in words directed to the outside world in the form of discourse. While, Analogical thought is sensed yet unreal, imagined yet silent; it is not a discourse but rather a meditation on themes of the past, an interior monologue.

The medium of analogical thought is memory, where the medium of logical thought is the language.

***

VAB 10: Christina Serifi

Photo © Norman Posselt 

Christina Serifi is an architect, researcher and urbanist, co-founder of TiriLab (Future Architecture Platform Fellow) an initiative which explores multi cultural heritage related to techniques, technologies and culture specifics from communities in northern Greece. Christina is associate researcher in Terreform, where she has coordinated various publications regrading indigenous knowledge, alternative educational models and self sufficiency. Her work investigates forms, collective memories, typologies and local practices, focusing on urban fragments, in-between spaces, as well as osculation of architectural and social space, Christina has been awarded with the Fulbright fellowship and Urban Design Award ’14 from CCNY.

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Acting Your Age (Part 4)

Summary: When Jensen returns from a business trip, he and the reader have a few more dates and a few sleepovers as their relationship continues to develop...

Masterlist

Pairing: Jensen x reader

Word Count: 7,000ish

Warnings: language, age gap, implied smut 

____

You hummed when you plopped down in your bed that night after your shower, smiling to yourself.

You’d spent the afternoon in the pool and had some barbecue for dinner, Jensen like a puppy dog and always smiling whenever you saw him. He had some paperwork to catch up on and eventually headed home though, letting you get in some playtime with the kids.

“Someone looks happy,” said Gen, stepping into your room that night.

“Mhm,” you said, staring up at the ceiling.

“Thinking about lover boy?” she teased as she walked in and lay on the other side of your bed.

“Sorta. I don’t know. I had fun today,” you said, closing your eyes. “I have a voicemail from my ex.”

“Really? What’s that about?” she asked.

“He saw my picture online. Told me not only is he younger than Jensen, by like two years, but, he also has way more money and is way more attractive. He wants me to go on a trip to Greece with him so we can ‘reconnect’ on his yacht,” you said. “He was a stock broker.”

“Oh boy. Someone realizes what they lost out on,” she said.

“When we were alone, he was great. But he was embarrassed of me, even when we went out to dinner. He was a lot more outgoing than Jensen but Jensen is the guy bragging that his girlfriend broke the woman’s record on hole six this morning at lunch to the waiter. He’s a quieter guy but he’s not embarrassed of me, you know?” 

“Honey, Jensen is head over heels. He’s also not a douchebag so I don’t think you have to worry about that. I think he’s more concerned about trying to make sure you’re able to keep some of your privacy. He’s no big movie star but he gets attention,” she said.

“I don’t care,” you said.

“Good. You’re gonna need that. Trust me,” she said. “The internet can be a cruel place.”

“He’s not gonna be like, showing me off at an award show or anything. He doesn’t need to worry about that crap,” you said.

“Boys are weird,” she said. You laughed and nodded, looking over at her. 

“What’s your honest opinion on me and Jensen? You’re my sister in law. You’ve always been the one keeping an eye out for me. What do you really think?” you asked.

“I think you should be with someone that respects you, is your best friend and that you can see spending the rest of your life with. That’s it,” she said.

“Gen. Come on. If I brought home a guy like Jensen but you didn’t know him,” you said.

“Exactly what I said. It’s not rocket science,” she said. “Jensen’s good. You’re under his skin. Enjoy it.”

“I am,” you said. “You wouldn’t happen to know any architects or interior designers looking to hire in town, do you?”

“I may be able to hook you up. A friend of ours just bought a house and they’re looking to redecorate. I know you’re very good,” she said.

“Independent contractor? I’ve never done that before,” you said.

“Maybe you could while you look for a place. I’m sure it’s not a ton of hours,” she said.

“Maybe. Taking Jensen out to dinner last night was a tad expensive. It was great but my funds are dwindling,” you said.

“He didn’t even go Dutch?” she asked as she sat up.

“He tried to pay but I caught the waiter and gave him my card instead. Jensen was a little mad over that I think,” you said. “But I want to be able to take him out on dates too, you know?”

“Let him pay next time, he’s got the money,” she laughed. “Take him hiking around Austin sometime and then do food trucks. Super cheap date and it’s fun.”

“Sometime,” you said, closing your eyes again.

“Get some sleep. You’re exhausted from playing all day,” she said as she sat up, pulling your covers out from under you.

“Alright, mom,” you said, turning into your pillows with a laugh. “Night Gen.”

“Night,” she said, closing your door part way. 

“She’s asleep already?” you heard Jared whisper outside the door.

“What?” you called, not bothering to open your eyes.

“I was wondering if you guys wanted some ice cream and to watch a movie but-“

“There’s always time for ice cream,” you said as you sat up with a smile.

You woke up on the couch the next morning, Odette poking your cheek until you opened your eyes.

“Hi Aunt Y/N!” she said loudly, your body letting out a large groan as you heard Jared laugh from the kitchen. “Daddy made pancakes.”

“Awesome,” you said, her little hand peeling your eyes open. “Jared.”

“That’s not nice, munchkin,” he said. “Why don’t you and your brothers get your Aunt some orange juice.”

“I got it,” you said, standing up wearily and taking a plate when it was shoved in your hands. You took a seat at the table between the boys, digging in with a hum.

“Dad, are Aunt Y/N and Uncle Jensen gonna get married?” asked Tom. You nearly choked on the food in your mouth, Jared whacking your back as he went past.

“They’ve been dating a whopping five days. Let’s hold off on the wedding bells,” he said and setting down some orange juice. “You okay?”

“Yeah, uh, I am not getting married anytime soon,” you said.

“I think you should,” said Tom. “Before you’re too old.”

“How old do you think I am?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged.

“How old is dad?” asked Gen as she cut into her food.

“37!” said Shep.

“Yup. Y/N is about ten and a half years younger so she’s…” she trailed off.

“Two...something,” he said.

“Twenty six,” you said. 

“Daddy, why you so old?” asked Odette.

“Mom’s older than me!” he said.

“I live with five children,” she sighed.

“I’m like a child half time,” you said, Gen giving you a smile. “So what are you guys up to today?”

“School,” said the boys.

“Swimmies!” said Odette. 

“Sounds fun,” you said. “Mom and dad gonna swim with you?”

“Mommy. Daddy’s playing at Uncle ‘ensen house,” she said.

“I’m gonna help him film his audition tape,” said Jared. “Your unemployed ass is welcome to join.”

“I’m actually going to take a me day, maybe talk to those friends of yours with the new house,” you said.

“Nice,” he said. “I’m running to the grocery store after so write down what you want on the list.”

“Sure thing,” you said, taking another bite of food when the doorbell rang.

“I wonder who that could be,” he said with a smile, nodding for you to get it. You stood and walked to the door, knowing they must have expected someone if they’d left the gate open. You tried to fix your bedhead as you opened it, giggling as you saw the ticket on the ground with a sticky note attached to it.

Something unexpected popped up at the brewery, potential opportunity so I will unfortunately be flying out of town this afternoon. I’ll be gone until Sunday night but there’s a concert downtown if you’re interested. Text me whatever you decide. I’ll meet you there, kiddo.

“He’s adorable,” you said, laughing as you grabbed the ticket and note, walking back inside and setting it on the counter. “Most guys would just text.”

“He’s old,” said Jared. “Fashioned.”

“He’s sweet,” you said. “And dorky.”

“Are you blushing?” he teased. You shook your head as you sat down.

“Your face is all red Aunt Y/N,” said Tom.

“Eat your breakfast kid,” you said, ruffling his hair with a smile. 

Sunday Night

You felt a tap on your shoulder, spinning around to find a smiling Jensen behind you.

“Hey, kiddo,” he chuckled.

“Hey! How’d it go?” you asked, giving him a hug, getting a peck on the lips quickly from him.

“Eh,” he shrugged. “It’s a good opportunity but I don’t have the manpower for it, namely me. I’d probably have to give up acting for good and that’s not something I want.”

“Well that’s too bad. Can’t you hire someone to help?” you asked.

“See,” he said, grabbing your hand as you headed into where the outdoor concert was going to be playing soon. “There’s this farmhouse on the land the brewery is on. It’s a few hundred feet away. It’s a gorgeous building. A bit run down but the bones are good. It was always sort of this side idea to make that into something. Restaurant. Bed and breakfast. Fancy tasting room. Something cool. I settled with the bed and breakfast since I thought that’s kind of a little of the restaurant and there could be a tasting room too or something. But I don’t think I can run two businesses and then act on top of it, you know?”

“Do you want to do it?” you asked.

“Yes. The brewery is pretty self-sufficient now but there was so much aggravation getting it set up and trying to work at the same time. I don’t want to go through all that again,” he said.

“Don’t you have more free time now?” you asked.

“It was just a really sucky time in my life I’d rather not go through again,” he said.

“Well I think if you really want it, you should do it,” you said. “Free manual labor, right here.”

“My last girlfriend broke up with me because of that whole incident so I’m not playing with that fire,” he said, smirking at you.

“Well now you totally got to do it,” you said. “I’ll help if I can. I’m an independent interior designer now so I make my own schedule.”

“Really? That’s awesome. Being your own boss is the best,” he said.

“True. Kind of scary though,” you said. “We’ll see how it goes. But you should go for it.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, wandering the two of you over towards a beer tent, ordering two. 

“Well the internet thinks I’m a slut over one innocent picture so if I can handle that, I can handle a little overworked Jensen,” you said. He stared at you, taking the beers and handing you one before you took a sip. “Yeah, I looked. Fuck ‘em.”

“You really shouldn’t get in the habit of doing that. It’s a nasty rabbit hole to go down,” he said.

“I found it amusing,” you said, grabbing hold of his hand again. “Plus I needed to. So you fix up that farmhouse and don’t worry about this, alright? I like spending time with you but I don’t need constant attention. I’m not Jared after all.”

He chuckled and nodded, swaying your hands as you walked.

“I hope you like rock music,” he said. “Please say you like rock music or else this is going to be a very long night.”

“I’m like, totally only into Top 40,” you said, giving him your best bitchface. 

“Something tells me that’s not the truth,” he said with a smile. “What about country?”

“Eh, some country. Depends on how much I’ve had to drink honestly,” you said. “I like most music.”

“Me too,” he said. “I’ve never heard these guys before. I figured it beat dinner in a restaurant again.”

“It’s not that late. Did you not want to grab a bite after this?” you asked.

“Oh, I do. But something...easy,” he said. “Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Wow,” you said, carrying your fast food in one hand as you followed Jensen into his house a few hours later. “Wow.”

“It’s not that nice,” he said, showing you where to put your shoes. You walked into the kitchen and set the bag down on the counter, Jensen going to the fridge and pulling out a few beers, some of his brewery’s brand from the looks of it. He set his bag down on the counter opposite you and sat up on it, letting his feet dangle off the edge while you started to pull out food. 

“You got to show me around your house after we eat. It’s so...interesting,” you said, glancing at the ceiling above you. “Nice beam work.”

“I bet you tell that to all the boys,” he said, earning a laugh from you. “It’s alright. I let some designer do everything once the house was finished being remodeled.”

“It’s nice. Not exactly what I would have thought your style would be. There’s definitely some unique things,” you said.

“I was had a girlfriend when the house was being updated. She picked out some of those things,” he said. “The girly stuff.”

“In the designer world we like to say feminine,” you said, taking a bite of your taco. “Same chick that didn’t like you working so much?”

“Different one. We were gonna live together which is why she was helping. That didn’t work out,” he said. “Obviously.”

“It’s still a very lovely house,” you said.

“Could I hire you? To re do some of that stuff?” he asked.

“Sure. We could work out some kind of deal I’m sure,” you said. He nodded and started to eat, swaying his feet again like a kid would.

“You probably think I move fast in a relationship huh,” he said.

“No. All you said was you almost lived with a girl. I’ve lived with a guy before. You’re a whole lot older, I sort of expect you’d have had more relationships,” you said.

“I think I thought us working on this house together would fix the stuff that was wrong, you know? I don’t know how I ever thought that was a good idea,” he said.

“Going through something hard teaches you more about a person than everything being easy breezy,” you said.

“Kinda like you and your brother?” he asked. 

“You didn’t have to drive down there to fix that last week you know,” you said.

“I’ll take the not easy breezy stuff too,” he said, giving you a smile.

“That wasn’t us though. That was something…” you said.

“If I’ve learned anything from my married friends, it’s that a relationship is picking a partner that doesn’t just do cute stuff. They have your back when shit happens. It’s just finding someone that you want to go through the highs and lows with. Never found anyone yet who wants to stick around for a low is all,” he said.

“You got someone to take care of you when that happens?” you asked.

“Yeah. Sorry, this going into a much deeper conversation than I intended,” he said.

“So?” you said. “The lows don’t scare me.”

“Not sure much does, kiddo,” he chuckled. 

“I’m serious,” you said.

“Well that girl was the last time I dated. A few years ago now,” he said.

“I should set her up with my ex,” you said.

“The British douche?” he asked.

“He called me last week. More than once. I politely told him where to shove it,” you said.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “Why’s he talking to you again anyways?”

“Oh, I think he’s jealous of you. I told him maybe he should try being a bit more respectful for like my new boyfriend if he wants a girl to stick around,” you said. 

“Maybe I should set this guy with her,” he chuckled. “She only ever wanted money after a certain point anyways.”

“Peter was an idiot that wasn’t comfortable with our age difference is all,” you said.

“I thought he made you feel stupid though,” he said.

“Oh yeah. Never mind, throw him to the wolves,” you said.

“Remind me to never break up with you,” he said as he ate.

“I’m not letting you go so easily,” you said. 

“Good,” he said with a laugh. “Not to mention your willingness to eat fast food at one in the morning makes you far more attractive than anyone I’ve ever dated.”

“I’m a cheap date,” you smiled.

“You know last week, you paid for dinner at the restaurant. That was a pretty pricey meal,” he said. 

“I can afford it,” you said. “You’re just gonna be getting happy meals for the next six months but I can afford it.”

“Let me pay next time,” he said.

“Alright,” you said. “But I get to pay the time after that.”

“Y/N.”

“Jensen.”

“Well since we’re not gonna be able to agree on this, let’s settle it with a bet,” he said.

“What kind of bet,” you asked. 

“Arm wrestling,” he said.

“That’s so not fair,” you said.

“I mean, I know you’re probably going to win but…” he said, biting his bottom lip. “Oh, that’s adorable. Your little cheeks are red but you’re kinda grumpy too.”

“Such a boy,” you groaned. “Fine. You win. But...nice dinners are not the norm, agreed?”

“Deal,” he said. “So I can totally get like, the cheeseburger happy meal though right?”

“Wow,” you said, shaking your head as he laughed. “Yeah, we can go all out on that.”

“Sweet,” he said, taking another bite when the lights flickered. You looked overhead, watching it happen a few more times before they shut off and the house was dark. You heard a hum and the refrigerator kicked back on. “At least the generator works. Only keeps the kitchen and bedroom going though.”

“It’s not even storming,” you said, a loud boom of thunder overhead. You finished the rest of your food and cleaned up, Jensen looking out the front windows at the pouring rain.

“I’m sure it’ll clear up in a minute,” he said. You grabbed your phone and checked the radar, the storm slow moving and another one right behind it. 

“It’s like solid red for a few good hours,” you said, a big crack of lightning appearing, Jensen stepping back from the windows. He turned to you in the dimly lit kitchen, a question on his face. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“I can sleep in the guest room, you take my bed. The power works in there,” he said.

“We could share,” you said. “Just sleep.”

“Yeah,” he said. “As long as you’re comfortable with that.”

“Yeah,” you said. He nodded and you followed him down a short hall, Jensen pointing to a dark space.

“Bathroom. Other side is the closet,” he said, stepping through the open door into a large master bedroom. “Comfy bed.”

“Pretty vaulted ceiling,” you said.

“Always looking at the ceiling,” he chuckled. He ducked into his closet, returning after a moment in just a t shirt and his boxer briefs. You kept your gaze up, spotting the shirt and boxers in his arms. “I don’t know if you wanted something to sleep in.”

“Thanks,” you said, stepping past him and going into his closet. “Oh my God. Can I have your closet?”

“It’s a closet,” he laughed.

“It’s huge! There’s so much space you’re not using,” you said, spotting all the clothes in piles on the floor. “Ah, so he’s not Mr. Perfect. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to hang up your clothes?”

“Oh shut up,” he laughed from the bedroom. You changed out of your jeans and shirt, taking off your bra after a moment. You carried your clothes out to the room and set them down on the dresser, Jensen sitting on the edge of the bed. He stared for a moment and ducked his eyes away. “Clothes fit?”

“Mhm,” you said, walking over to the other side of the bed. You sat down and threw back the covers, flinching when there was a loud boom.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Don’t really like storms at night,” you said. “Normally not a problem cause I’m sleeping.”

“S’okay,” he said. You nodded and lay down, flinching again when the storm was louder. He got under the covers and you felt him move closer, turning on his side and putting an arm over your waist. You turned your head towards him, swallowing hard when the house shook. He smiled and nudged a little closer. “You’re alright, kiddo.”

“Forgot about stupid Texas storms,” you said, squeezing your eyes shut as the storm got louder and louder. 

“Come here,” he said, turning you towards him. You didn’t mean to but you grabbed onto the front of his shirt, Jensen moving his arm to wrap around your back. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“Sorry,” you said, moving away when he turned you back.

“Really. It’s okay,” he said. You gave him a small nod before you sighed and closed your eyes, resting your head on his chest. “You’re okay, honey. I promise.”

You blinked open your eyes wearily, catching Jensen rolling over in bed, his arms flailing about before one landed on you. He immediately pulled you into his chest, giving you a big morning cuddle and jamming his face into your back. You giggled when he started to breath softly again, Jensen stirring this time, whole body tensing before his arms were off of you.

“Good morning,” you said, looking back over your shoulder.

“Morning,” he said, rolling away some. You moved to where he’d been, spreading out and smiling at him. “Oh, you don’t get the whole bed young lady.”

“Comfy bed,” you said, turning on your side, tucking your arms under the covers. 

“You look so pretty,” he said quietly. You leaned up and kissed the tip of his nose.

“You’re a cuddler,” you said. He groaned and turned away, your hands shooting out to grab him and move him back. “Oh no. Jensen Ackles is a cuddler and you are not denying it.”

“You wouldn’t dare tell,” he said.

“What do I get in return for my silence?” you asked. He smirked and wrapped his arms around you. “I will accept being paid off in cuddles.”

“Yes, yes you will,” he said.

“I like cuddles too,” you said. He smiled and you moved your leg, a strange noise coming from him as he shifted away. “Sorry.”

“S’okay. No one ever tells you morning wood keeps happening no matter how old you are,” he said as he fixed himself. 

“Here I thought it was me,” you said. 

“That part of me certainly likes you very much,” he said, quickly clearing his throat. “Sorry. I make it sound like…”

“Maybe tonight,” you said with a smile. “If you’re in the mood.”

“I think I could be,” he said, pushing your hair behind your ear. “We’ll see. For now though, all I want to do is make you some breakfast. Thankfully the power is back on.”

“How about you cook and I’ll set the places?” you asked.

“Deal,” he said, moving out of the bed. You followed after him, Jensen chuckling when he looked at you in daylight for the first time. “You look like a grumpy toddler.”

“Joke’s on you, Ackles. Too big shirts are my go to pajamas,” you said.

“I like it,” he said, starting to pad around the kitchen as you discovered where he kept the plates. Less than ten minutes later you had a plate of scrambled eggs in front of you, Jensen sitting two seats down at the counter, back against the pillar in the kitchen, legs spread out over the middle stool.

“Someone’s comfortable,” you said.

“Just enjoying the view,” he said, scooping some eggs into his mouth. “So you’re not a fan of storms, huh?”

You blushed and stared at your plate, eating quietly for a few moments.

“I don’t like spiders. Dolls are super creepy to me too,” he said.

“Yeah, not a fan of storms, at night,” you said, poking at your food.

“Well next time there’s one and I’m not around, give me a call,” he said. You glanced over, Jensen taking a bite off his fork. 

“You don’t think it’s childish?”

“No. I wish maybe you weren’t so scared but it’s not childish,” he said.

“When I was in college, I rushed for a sorority. The last hazing thing was pledges had to stay in this old abandoned house off campus. It ended up storming that night. They were going to prank us but we didn’t realize, some guy was squatting there. He was pretty...terrifying. We thought it was part of a prank but it wasn’t and he got violent super quick. Safe to say, I didn’t join,” you said.

“Fuck. I thought guys were bad. You were alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you said, Jensen staring at you. “I got a little beat up. I was okay. Far more damage has been done wrestling with my brothers.”

“Still. I get why you don’t like stormy nights,” he said.

“It’s silly,” you said.

“You know what I say to Jared when he says that? Tough shit. It’s bothering you so it’s not silly or stupid so let’s try and take care of it,” he said.

“Yeah but how do I take care of something like that?” you asked. 

“Make it into something good. I used to be so afraid of public speaking and now I tell myself it’s okay and it works. It took awhile but it does,” he said. “So next time there’s a storm, turn it into something good.”

“I suppose,” you said, stretching in your seat.

“So you were almost a sorority girl,” he said with a smirk.

“Shut up, pretty boy,” you laughed.

“I am pretty, aren’t I?” he teased.

“You have dried drool on your cheek,” you said. “Hot stuff.”

“You’re one to talk,” he giggled.

“You’re saying this is not the epitome of hotness? Messy hair and a tired face?” you laughed.

“We have very different definitions of how you look,” he said, biting his bottom lip. 

“I think I’m going to get dressed,” you said, sliding off your seat. “You know you aren’t getting this shirt back, right?”

“I figured as much,” he chuckled. You headed into his bedroom, changing in his bathroom and tucking his shirt under your arm. After grabbing your purse, he walked you to his door, carrying a cup of coffee now. “I’ll see you tonight, kiddo.”

“Yes you will,” you said, giving him a short kiss. “Hey, since you made me breakfast, can I cook you dinner tonight?”

“Dinner? It has been a long time since someone has made me dinner,” he said.

“What do you want?” you asked.

“I’m easy going,” he said.

“You like meat?” you asked.

“I love it,” he said.

“I’ll pick something out today. Drop by my place say seven?” 

“Sure thing, kiddo.”

You had just finished pouring the pasta in the pot when the doorbell rang that night. You looked down, cursing yourself for still being in a pair of leggings and your hair up in a messy bun. You jogged to the front door, opening it with a smile.

“Hi,” said Jensen, plucking a flower out from behind his back.

“Well thank you,” you said, Jensen stepping inside as you looked up after him.

“I don’t know what it is. Thought it looked pretty is all,” he said. “Reminded me of someone.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you said, Jensen following you back to the kitchen. “Apparently tomorrow is some teacher workshop day at school so Jared and Gen packed up the kids and shipped them off to our parents house so they could have a night alone.”

“Nice. Sounds like we got the place to ourselves then,” he said with a smile.

“Yes, we do,” you said. “You mind watching the stove while I put on something presentable?”

“Alright. I mean, I’m not in a tux over here or anything,” he said. “I am a very big fan of leggings.”

“I bet you are,” you said, pausing before you decided to leave on what you were wearing. “So what’s your poison?”

“Wine?” he asked.

“Preference?” you asked.

“I’m good with anything,” he said. You walked around to the far side of the kitchen and picked up the bottle you’d gotten earlier, popping out the cork and setting it near a pair of glasses on the counter. 

“Anything I can help with?” he asked, sliding into the kitchen.

“No, no. I’m making you dinner. You just sit there and look pretty,” you teased.

“Can do,” he said, grabbing the bottle and pouring you each a glass. “So are you a cook?”

“Uh, not really so if this goes horribly, I do have the number of a restaurant,” you said.

“You could honestly make me some kraft mac and cheese and I’d be happy,” he said. “Like I said earlier, it’s been a long time since someone cooked for me that wasn’t my parents.”

“Well you deserve to be taken care of too, hm?” you said, giving him a smile as you took a sip of your wine. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I could do with some of that I guess,” he said.

“How about after dinner, I give you the world’s best foot massage,” you said.

“I’d say I could get used to this.”

“Dinner was so good,” said Jensen again as you finished cleaning up. “You’re a way better chef than you give yourself credit for.”

“I’m a better baker than chef,” you said.

“I bet you’re an amazing baker then,” he said. “You gotta let me taste test next time you make something. Quality control.”

“I’ll be sure to enlist your services,” you said, heading into the family room, Jensen taking a seat on the couch. “Alright. You kick back your feet and I will be back in just a second.”

You dashed upstairs as he peeled off his socks, returning with a bottle of cream and a small towel.

“Oh. I see I’m dealing with a professional here,” he teased.

“Just get comfy, Ackles,” you said, Jensen adjusting a pillow behind his back as he turned sideways. You rested his feet in your lap on the towel, squirting some cream on your palms before rubbing them together. You started at the top of the arch of his foot, Jensen immediately closing his eyes.

“Fuck. That feels awesome,” he said, melting back into the couch. “How’d you get so good at this?”

“Dated a masseuse once. Ditched the guy but kept the incredible massage skills,” you said, rubbing your thumb into the skin. “For a guy, your feet are pretty clean to be honest.”

“Don’t laugh but my sister gave me some of those lotion socks for Christmas one year cause my feet always got crackly. I fucking love those things,” he said.

“Boys are allowed to be pampered too,” you said, moving to the other foot, Jensen letting out a large sigh.

“Remind me to yell at Jared for not introducing us sooner,” he laughed.

“To be fair, probably better that we waited,” you said. “It let me figure out what I like.”

“What do you like?” he asked, smiling lazily from the other end of the couch. 

“You.”

“Cute,” he said. “I could say the same about you.”

“Alright then cutie,” you said, sliding his feet off your lap. “Once I wash this stuff off, we can watch a movie.”

You were only gone a few minutes, Jensen already flipping through the TV when you returned. You let him pick, some cheesy 80’s horror movie from the looks of it, and you sat down on the other end of the couch. He hummed and moved his feet to the coffee table, giving you a quick glance. You slid over next to him, tucking your legs under you, his arm going to the back of the couch.

“I don’t even get the yawn and stretch?” you laughed.

“I ain’t tired,” he said, resting his arm over your shoulders. You turned your head, his gaze on you. 

“What are you thinking about?” you asked. His eyes moved around your face, his hand on your shoulders going to the back of your head as he leaned in.

You met him halfway, the kiss already more heated and playful than you’d ever received from him. His free hand went to the small of your back, pulling you into his lap, a tiny smile on his face before you took the chance to invade his mouth. You went back and forth, both of you trying to control it until you needed air and broke off, his hot breath hitting your face.

You took the chance and pushed him back on the couch until you were leaning over him, Jensen going all kinds of gooey.

“You like that, don’t you,” you said, brushing your lips over his ear.

“Normally no,” he said with a quick laugh.

“Gonna make an exception for me,” you said.

“You are something el-” he said, groaning when you cut him off with another kiss. You used one hand to hold yourself up, the other shooting to his hair, running through the strands and messing the short spiky strands up.

He bit at your bottom lip, the two of you going back and forth again until you fell into a harsh but smooth rhythm, his hand rubbing circles against the small patch of skin on your lower back. He pressed his fingertips into the flesh, a shiver running through you.

“That’s what I thought,” he murmured, nipping at your jaw while you caught your breath. He moved his lips, finding that one little spot that turned you into jelly and he sucked, a keening whine escaping you. He pulled his mouth away, staring up at you with dark green eyes. You blushed, a dark smirk spreading over his lips. He moved his mouth again, finding the spot and sucking. Hard.

“Jensen,” you whimpered, already knowing you were going to be sporting a hickey. You only seemed to encourage him, your head dropping as he pulled back with a chuckle you felt through his chest.

“That’s so fucking hot,” he said. You raised your head, staring him down.

“You’re turn,” you said, ducking your head down before he could even blink. A minute later he had the beginnings of a mark on his neck appearing, Jensen bit his bottom lip hard, making the thing even more swollen and red than it was. “Was that a moan I heard?”

“Groan,” he said, narrowing his eyes, grabbing your head and kissing you. His hands started to move though and you felt them on your hips, your breath catching in your throat when he started to tickle your thigh. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what,” you said, resting your forehead against his, your noses jammed against each other.

“You want me to do this, right?” he asked. 

“Touch me? Hell yeah, Ackles,” you said.

“You on anything?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you said. “I’m good.”

“Good,” he said, sliding a hand in front of you, a finger tracing over the top of your leggings against your stomach. He peeled back the elastic and slid his warm hand underneath, staring up at you as he moved oh so slowly. “You have no idea how hot you are, do you.”

“Jensen,” you said, kissing him as he reached your underwear, his fingers curling under it. You sucked in a breath, arching into his hand.

Just as the front door opened in perfect view of where you were on the couch.

“What the fuck!” you heard Jared shout as you immediately shot up, Jensen yanking his hand away as you went to the other end of the couch. He walked in the room, staring at the both of you. “What the fuck!”

“Movie,” you said, Jensen nodding, not making eye contact.

“Were you just...in my family room!” he said. “No sex in the family room!”

“It wasn’t…” you said, squeezing your eyes shut. “You said you’d be gone until the morning.”

“I left my phone here and-”

“He has a hickey,” said Jensen, pointing at Jared’s neck, turning to you. “He can’t blame us for doing exactly what he was.”

“You better not be doing exactly what I was for how long you’ve known her,” he said.

“So sex is cool if it’s in my room?” you asked. Jared groaned. “Well you said the family room is off limits.”

“You got a house. Go have sex over there,” said Jared.

“But we’re here,” you said.

“What are you two? Rabbits?” said Jared, throwing his hands up. “I don’t care. Let’s never talk about this again.”

“Agreed,” you said.

“Oh and Ackles,” he said, pointing at Jensen. “Please never let me see you with your hand down my sister’s pants again.”

“Roger that,” he said, Jared sighing as he went upstairs, returning after a moment and heading outside. “Surprised I’m still alive if I’m being honest.”

“He understands,” you said, crawling back over to him.

“What are you doing?” he asked as you resumed your position from before.

“He’s not coming back,” you said. “I think you were about to do something really fun.”

“I was, wasn’t I,” he said, a mischievous look back on his face. “A whole lot of fun.”

“Morning,” said Jensen when you rolled over in your bed, the sun just starting to fill the room. “Still a bit early.”

“We went to bed early,” you teased, placing your hand on his bare chest.

“We most certainly did not,” he said.

“Can I ask a question? I thought, and in my experience, as guys get older, it takes them a bit longer to recover downstairs,” you said.

“Got a problem with it?” he smirked.

“With you being hornier than a teenage boy? No, no problem at all,” you said.

“It wasn’t too fast for you?” he asked.

“I think you took it pretty slow at some points,” you said, scooting closer. “But no, not for me. Do you-”

“No, not at all. Not that I was expecting anything...I had fun,” he said with a sleepy smile. “I feel like I have a lot of fun with you.”

“I know I do,” you said. He hummed and lay his arm over your back, his fingers dipping into the curve of your spine.

“S’always the quiet ones,” he teased.

“You’re one to talk,” you said, getting a soft lazy kiss from him. “Any big plans for the day?”

“Catch up on a few brewery things. My agent called yesterday. Sounds like they got that part I wanted narrowed down to me and another guy,” he said.

“That’s awesome! I hope you get it,” you said.

“And after I tag up with him, I’m going to call that investor back. Give the bed and breakfast the go ahead,” he said. You gave him a big smile and a kiss, Jensen’s cheeks pink for a moment.

“That’s great. I’m sure it’ll be a big success,” you said.

“I’m okay with little success,” he chuckled. “I’m just happy I’m actually doing it.”

“Well I will be your first guest,” you said.

“If I play my cards right, that may end up being very true,” he said, brushing his nose against yours. “You look sleepy.”

“It’s early,” you hummed, nuzzling into his chest. 

“How about we go back to sleep for a little while and then, we can have some coffee on the back patio?” he asked.

“I like the way you think, babe.”

______

A/N: Read Part 5 here!

[architectnews]

Architecture of 2020: Buildings of the Year

Architecture in 2020, Buildings of the Year, Architects, Major Property Designs, Photos

Architecture of 2020: New Buildings

e-architect Selection of Key Contemporary Architectural Developments

post updated 13 May 2021 ; post updated 1 Jan 2021 ; 20 + 19 + 18 Dec 2020

Major Architecture of 2020

The winner is clearly REE Campus, Madrid, Spain, polling a massive 37.46%, with a total of 481 votes

REE Campus, Madrid, Spain Architects: IDOM photo : Aitor Ortiz REE Campus in Madrid

In second place is the Loop of Wisdom, Chengdu, China, with 28.58% of the total vote, and 367 votes

Loop of Wisdom, Chengdu, south west China Architects: Powerhouse Company photo : Jonathan Leijonhufvud Architectural Photography Loop of Wisdom Museum in Chengdu

In third place is Cosmote TV HQ and Studios, Athens, Greece, with 25.23% of the vote and 324 votes.

Cosmote TV HQ and Studios, Athens, Greece Design: LC Architects photo © Nikos Daniilidis Cosmote TV HQ and Studios in Athens

Happy New Year to our readers!

e-architect have selected some key buildings of 2020.

Our parameters? Architecture designs that stimulate, buildings that ask significant questions, designs that show creativity and innovation.

We have considered the year’s international architecture highlights to pick out the key buildings of the year. We are deliberately not considering the complex task of selecting ‘winners’.

(Adrian Welch, e-architect editor)

We are focusing this year only on completed buildings, not building designs (ie unbuilt proposals).

Buildings / designs are listed in georgaphical order, per our folder structure.

We are still adding projects today, this list wll be finalised over the weekend!

********************

A further selection of buildings around the world – shortlisted but not in the final cut:

Buildings of 2020

********************

Yes, you can now vote on your favourite project:

Architecture of 2020 – which is best?

Major Buildings completed in 2020

Architecture in 2020 – latest additions to this page, arranged chronologically:

AMERICA – USA

False Bay Writer’s Cabin, San Juan Islands, Washington Architects: Olson Kundig photo : Tim Bies / Olson Kundig False Bay Writer’s Cabin, San Juan Island This five-hundred-square-foot cabin serves as a private writer’s retreat and guest cottage. The owners of False Bay Writer’s Cabin asked for a space that felt connected to its island setting—the mild climate, scenic views, and proximity to wildlife. At the same time, they needed a structure that could be easily secured when not in use.

Red Rocks Residence, Camelback Mountain, Phoenix, Arizona Architect: The Ranch Mine photograph : Roehner + Ryan Red Rocks Residence in Phoenix, Arizona Clinging to the side of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona, a Spanish Colonial Revival style house has been transformed into a modern dwelling that creates and elevates a variety of experiences with both the natural and man-made environment.

LR2 Residence, Pasadena, California Design: Montalba Architects photography : Kevin Scott LR2 Residence in Pasadena, California The modern American esidence overlooks Pasadena and its adjacent mountains from its hillside perch. This new 4,200-sqft house is made up of several distinct living volumes and programs.

AMSTERDAM

Diamond Exchange, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Design: ZJA photo © Capital C Amsterdam Diamond Exchange, Capital C Amsterdam The Diamond Exchange, Capital C Amsterdam in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has been awarded with a prestigious MIPIM Award 2020 for ‘Best Refurbished Building’ at the Paris Real Estate Week. The historical building, designated as  a national monument, has undergone a major renovation designed by the architectural office ZJA in collaboration with Heyligers design + projects.

ATHENS

Cosmote TV HQ and Studios, Athens, Greece Design: LC Architects photo © Nikos Daniilidis Cosmote TV HQ and Studios Designed by London-based architecture and design practice LC Architects, Cosmote TV HQ and Studios is a new, innovative building inspired by contemporary media and the constant flow of information.

BANGKOK

Power Wing, Bangkok, Thailand Design: Openbox Group and Openbox Architects photo : Panoramic Studio Car Parking Solar Roof Bangkok After many success OPENBOX design interventions for large scale projects, B. Grimm Power send us a brief to help creating an awareness of the important of sustainable energy to public. The brief was to create an iconic piece of landmark at their Headquarters Office, that can send a strong message.

BEIJING

Courtyard Kindergarten, Beijing Design: MAD Architects photo © ArchExist Courtyard Kindergarten by MAD Architects A kindergarten sited next to a senior citizens’ apartment, reflecting the client’s “intergenerational integration” ethos that blends pre-school education and elder care. The 9,275 sqm site consists of an 18th century Siheyuan courtyard, an adjacent replica courtyard built in the 1990s, and a four-story modern building.

Beijing Zhongshuge Lafayette store interior, Beijing Architects: X+LIVING photo : Wu Qingshan Beijing Zhongshuge Lafayette store design It’s the second time for Zhongshuge bookstore to land in Beijing. This time it joins Lafayette department store, where the classical gardens and the reading space collided from three different perspectives in the fashionable commercial area.

CANADA

New Central Library, Alberta Architects: Snøhetta and DIALOG photography © Michael Grimm New Central Library in Calgary Calgary’s New Central Library aims to welcome over twice as many as previously annual visitors to its 240,000 SF of expanded facilities, the library will fill a vital role for the rapidly expanding city. As Calgary’s largest public investment since the 1988 Olympics, the library signals the beginning of a new chapter in the life of the city, one centered on the creation and innovation of knowledge and culture.

CHINA

Yabuli Entrepreneurs’ Congress Center, North east China Design: MAD Architects photo © ArchExist Yabuli Entrepreneurs’ Congress Center Nestled in the snow-covered mountains of Northeastern China, the project was commissioned by the Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum (Yabuli CEF), one of China’s most influential business organizations. November 18th to 20th saw the venue’s opening ceremony and its first event, the Yabuli CEF’s 20th annual conference, attended by over 600 entrepreneurs.

Regeneration – Free Spring Morning, Suzhou, China Design: LACIME Architects photo © SHANJIAN Photography Studio Free Spring Morning, Suzhou Building As rational consumerism prevails, the traditional real estate design model of spending a lot of money to build a luxury sales office is fading away. The sales office is one of the most important design elements in real estate design, and this element is now going to two extremes – permanent sales offices are paying more attention to the pursuit of high quality, and temporary sales offices are increasingly looking for rapid efficiency.

Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, Fujian, South East China Design: Atelier Alter Architects photograph : Atelier Alter Architects Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, Fujian Over the years of stone mining, the manufacture has discovered numerous fossils. The manufacture decides to dedicate the headquarter building to a museum to tell the history of the fossils and the natural science of researching the fossil. There are two major challenges during the renovation process.

OCT Chuzhou Minghu Experience Center, Chuzhou, Anhui Province Design: Lacime Architects photograph : Schran Images OCT Chuzhou Minghu Experience Center The project site is located in the Minghu Lake area, the southeastern part of the planned new town of Chuzhou city, Anhui Province. It is adjacent to Chuzhou-Yangzhou Expressway and the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway, surrounded with a favorable landscape environment.

Changzhou Culture Center Architect: gmp · von Gerkan, Marg and Partners · Architects photography © Schran Images Changzhou Culture Center Building In the Chinese province of Jiangsu, within the catchment area of Shanghai, lies the city of Changzhou which, with its about 5 million inhabitants, has developed into an important industrial metropolis in the Yangtze Delta region. In the newly created city center of Changzhou, the architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) have created a cultural center with an art museum, library, hotel, offices, and retail areas.

SigMann Showroom, Guangzhou Architects: Spring Design Office image : b+m studio/ Kelvin SigMann Showroom Guangzhou SigMann is a cabinet and home furnishings brand, the name of which is derived from “Sig” and “Manna”. “Sig” is the abbreviation of “special interest group”, which represents cultivated, decent and tasteful elites, while “Manna” comes from Bible and implies food for thought.

Longfu Life Experience Center, Puyang County, Henan Province, China Design: LUO studio photo : Jin Weiqi Longfu Life Experience Center Real estate sales center is a kind of temporary architecture that can only last several months or few years at most, which is usually dismantled after houses are sold out. Even if it can be preserved in few cases, functions are completely transformed.

Loop of Wisdom, Chengdu, south west China Architects: Powerhouse Company photo : Jonathan Leijonhufvud Architectural Photography Loop of Wisdom Museum, Chengdu Living up to the suggestiveness of its name, the Loop of Wisdom embodies a timeless architectural concept. Powerhouse Company’s design for a technology museum and reception center for a new neighborhood in Chengdu, China, is much more than an exuberant landmark.

Imperial Kiln Museum, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Architects: Studio Zhu-Pei photography : schranimage, Tian Fangfang, Zhang Qinquan, courtesy of Studio Zhu-Pei Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum, Jiangxi Located in the center of the historical area, the site of the Imperial Kiln Museum is adjacent to the Imperial Kiln ruins surrounding many ancient kiln complexes. Jingdezhen is known as the “Porcelain Capital” in the world because it has been producing pottery for 1,700 years.

Pingshan Performing Arts Center, Shenzhen, south east China Design: OPEN Architecture photo © Zeng Tianpei Pingshan Performing Arts Center, Shenzhen In tandem with China’s economic boom and rapid urbanization, theaters have sprung up throughout the country in the past decade. Most have extravagant exteriors, but are often spatially monotonous and far detached from the general public and everyday urban life, greatly underutilizing the tremendous public resources invested in them.

Yifang Art Center, Chongqing, south west China Design: YIHE Landscape Architecture photo : Arch-Exist Yifang Art Center in Yubei District, Chongqing The Yifang Art Center project is in a newly developed Dazhulin district in the north of Chongqing downtown. When YIHE Landscape Architecture first visited the site, it had an unfinished concrete structure from previous development.

Kaihua County 1101 Project and Urban Archives, Kaihua County, Zhangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China Design: The Architectural Design & Research Institute of Zhejiang University Co., Ltd photo © Zhou Yifan Kaihua County 1101 Project and Urban Archives This bold Chinese architectural project was commissioned by Kaihua County Urban Construction and Development Co., Ltd. to design a comprehensive office building with three functional requirements: the Urban Archives and the Civil Defense Command Center and the Housing and Construction Bureau at the entrance of the scenic spot. The project has a superior geographical position.

Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen Architects: Rocco Design Architects Associates image courtesy of architects office Chinese University of Hong Kong Campus Shenzhen The CUHK SZ brings the global perspective and academic excellence to the city Shenzhen – China’s rapidly-growing innovation and tech hub.

White Square, G54 exhibition center, Nanjing Design: MINGGU DESIGN photograph : Xia Zhi White Square, G54 exhibition center White Square, located at No.99 Yunxi road, the central area of Nanjing airport city. With the construction development of new airport city, a vast comparative maturity residential area has been built.

Gongshu Intelligence Valley’s Eye, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Interior design: E+LAB photograph : Schran Images – Su shengliang Gongshu Intelligence Valley’s Eye Hangzhou The Eye of Intelligence Valley is the exhibition center in the intelligence valley town in Hangzhou. It is a multi-functional public building for culture display, investment attraction, office meeting, recreation and etc. The design philosophy starts with the geometric relation of ‘round sky and square earth’.

Sunac · Grand Milestone Modern Art Center, Xi’an City Interior design: Cheng Chung Design (HK) photo © Qilin Zhang Sunac · Grand Milestone Modern Art Center in Xi’an Erecting in the magnificent ancient capital Xi’an with a modern and stylish gesture, Sunac · Grand Milestone Modern Art Center appears like a large crystal “gift box”, which brings amazing fashionable touches to the land featuring a long history and profound culture. It aims to become a city landmark, and to lead the trend of the era.

Shou County Culture and Art Center, Anhui Architects: Studio Zhu-Pei photograph : Schran Images Shou County Culture and Art Center Shou County is located in the center of Anhui Province, on the south bank of Huai River. In ancient times, it was the home of the Chu culture and where Liu An, King of Huainan, edited a compendium of ancient Chinese philosophy and composed poetry.

National Maritime Museum, Tianjin, north east China Design: Cox Architecture photograph : Terrence Zhang National Maritime Museum of China in Tianjin Major new cultural landmark for China takes its place on the Global stage China’s first National Maritime Museum has now commenced formal operation, the culmination of a 6-year process which began with an international design competition, followed by an intensive design and construction process.

COSTA RICA

Santiago Hills Villa Santa Teresa, Costa Rica Architects: Studio Saxe photograph : Andres Garcia Lachner Santiago Hills Villa in Santa Teresa This stunning wing-like roofline houses a dramatic white villa in the Costa Rica jungle.

DUBAI

The Opus, Dubai, UAE Design: Zaha Hadid Architects photograph : Laurian Ghinitoiu The Opus Hotel in Dubai Home to the new ME Dubai hotel, The Opus is located in the Burj Khalifa district adjacent to Downtown Dubai and Business Bay on the Dubai Water Canal.

FRANCE

Belaroia Hotel and Apartments, Montpellier, France Design: Manuelle Gautrand Architecture photo © Luc Boegly Belaroia Hotel and Apartments in Montpellier Belaroia Hotel and Apartments is an important project for the City of Montpellier and its development agency, the SERM, as it holds a strategic position between the city’s hyper-centre, characterised by its escutcheon form in plan, and new surrounding districts that have appeared in succession.

MEETT Exhibition and Convention Centre, Toulouse, southern France Design: OMA photograph : Marco Cappelletti, Courtesy of OMA MEETT Exhibition and Convention Centre MEETT, Toulouse’s new Exhibition and Convention Centre designed by OMA / Chris van Duijn, has been completed, becoming the third largest parc des expositions in France outside of Paris.The 155,000 sqm project incorporates exhibition halls, a convention centre, a multi-function event hall, a car park silo for 3,000 cars and a transportation hub with a new tram station.

GREECE

Two Summer Houses in Andros, northern Greek Cyclades archipelago Design: Praxitelis Kondylis Architects image from architecture office Summer Houses in Andros Nestled among Andros’ wild mountains, fecund valleys and waterfalls, this complex consists of two detached houses covering around 600m2 in land of 9200m2. Modern and rigorous, the design bears clear lines and is organically linked to the natural landscape of Andros.

KOREA, REPUBLIC OF

Hankook Technoplex, Pangyo, outskirts of Seoul Design: Foster + Partners photo : TIME OF BLUE Hankook Technoplex in Pangyo The new building embraces several themes that are symbolic of Hankook’s desire to create a dynamic office environment that supports flexible working styles, as the company looks towards the future.

Galleria Department Store, Gwanggyo Design: OMA Photography by Hong Sung Jun, courtesy of OMA Galleria Department Store in Gwanggyo The Galleria is Korea’s first and largest upscale department store franchise founded in the 1970s, and has remained at the forefront of the premium retail market in the country since then.

MADRID

REE Campus, Madrid, Spain Architects: IDOM photo : Aitor Ortiz REE Campus Red Eléctrica de España has commissioned IDOM for the comprehensive rehabilitation of two buildings in the Tres Cantos Technology Park (Madrid). The action includes a comprehensive adaptation to the new training and technological needs of the company, modernizing the set of buildings through an envelope that enables compliance with energy efficiency requirements.

MANCHESTER

The Oglesby Centre, Manchester, England, UK Architects: Stephenson Studio photos : Daniel Hopkinson Architectural Photography Extension to Hallé St. Peter’s, Ancoats The new extension, The Oglesby Centre, is conceived as a classically proportioned modernist metaphor of the existing proportions of St Peter’s massing.

MEXICO

Solaz Los Cabos Hotel, San José del Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico Design: Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos photograph : Rafael Gamo Solaz Los Cabos Hotel in San José del Cabo The extraordinary natural surroundings of the peninsula of Baja California with its semi-desert landscape provides an ideal selected context for the construction of a new landmark hotel for the country.

MILAN

MEET Digital Arts Center, Milan, Italy Design: CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota photograph : Michele Nastasi MEET Digital Arts Center CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota unveil MEET – Milan’s center for digital culture and creative technology. Occupying a newly renovated historic palazzo, the building revolves around a 15-meter-high vertical plaza. The design investigates how physical space can foster serendipity and unexpected connections between people in a digital world. MEET will open to the public on October 31st, 2020.

MONTREAL

Caffettiera Caffé Bar, Montréal, Québec, Canada Design: Ménard Dworkind Architecture & Design – MRDK photo © David Dworkind Caffettiera Montréal Caffé Bar In Italy, going to the coffee bar is not just about the coffee. It’s about taking a break from the day, meeting up with friends or taking the time to contemplate life. Caffettiera Caffé Bar aims to bring that culture to North America at its 745-square-foot commercial space in the heart of downtown Montreal.

MOSCOW

n.n. – Residence, beside the River Moskva near Moscow, Russia Design: J. MAYER H. und Partner, Architekten mbB, with Alexander Erman architecture & design photo : Ilya Ivanov n.n. – Residence near Moscow n.n. represents a spatial exploration between concealment and exposure. This layered topography blurs the line separating landscape and construction. It is the private residence of a family in a rural area along the River Moskva.

NEW YORK

111 West 57th Street, Manhattan, NYC Design: ShoP Architects photograph courtesy of 111 West 57th Street A design tour de force embraces the classic New York skyscraper and artisan tradition and thoughtfully restores the cultural landmark Steinway Hall. A bold yet graceful residential tower that soars perfectly centered over Central Park in Midtown Manhattan.

PARIS

Public Condenser, Ile-de-France, France Design: Muoto Architects photograph : Maxime Delvaux Public Condenser in Gif-sur-Yvette, Paris-Saclay The project is a public facility, situated on the new campus of Paris-Saclay. The building hosts a mix of activities including indoor and outdoor sports facilities, a restaurant, cafeteria, and various public spaces: a pedestrian square, street terraces, park areas for deliveries, bikes and cars.

PERTH, AUSTRALIA

North Perth House, Perth, Western Australia Design: Architect Nic Brunsdon photo : Ben Hosking North Perth House The North Perth House is an urban-infill project in inner-city Perth. Located on a small block, the design responds by providing a variety of spaces, determined by a simple structural arrangement.

PRAGUE

Five, Smíchov, Prague, Czech Republic Design: QARTA ARCHITEKTURA photo : BoysPlayNice Five Smíchov “History meets future”, declares the fitting motto chosen for the project Five, located in Prague 5 – Smíchov. A tram depot building occupied the project site, but that could have been called a relic even when it was built. While forming an important endpoint in the city transport system, complicated access had been its disadvantage right from the beginning.

QATAR

Doha Metro Network, Doha, Qatar Architects: UNStudio Interior Msheireb (interchange) Station. photo © Hufton+Crow Doha Metro Network Stations With the Doha Metro, Qatar Railways has created one of the most advanced and fastest driverless metro systems in the world. Phase one of the project involved the construction of three metro lines (Red, Green and Gold), with 37 stations currently having been completed.

ROTTERDAM

Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Design: MVRDV, architects Aerial photograph of Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen © Ossip van Duivenbode Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, the first publicly accessible art depot in the world designed by MVRDV, has completed construction. Located in Rotterdam’s Museumpark, the depot features a new type of experience for museum visitors: a sturdy engine room where the complete collection of 151,000 objects is made accessible to the public.

SAUDI ARABIA

KAPSARC, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Design: Zaha Hadid Architects – ZHA photo : Hufton+Crow King Abdullah Petroleum Studies & Research Centre King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre is a non-profit institution for independent research into policies that contribute to the most effective use of energy to provide social wellbeing across the globe. The 70,000 sqm KAPSARC campus incorporates five buildings.

King Fahad National Library, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Design: Professor Eckhard Gerber – Gerber Architekten photograph : Christian Richter King Fahad National Library Riyadh The King Fahad National Library, one of the most important cultural buildings in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was completed and went into use for its intended purpose in 2015. This project sees Professor Eckhard Gerber and his Gerber Architekten team accomplishing one of the most important urban development and cultural projects in the capital, Riyadh.

SHANGHAI

Suzhou Financial Center Exhibition Hall, Shanghai, China Architects: Shanghai Riqing Architectural Design Co., Ltd. photograph : Schran Images Suzhou Financial Center Exhibition Hall This architectural project is located in the central section next to Suzhou Canal, where there is a grand canal view in the distance and urban trunk road in close proximity. The architects explore inherent logic of local cultural form and language and apply them to the design to stimulate the vitality of surrounding open space and make it the city parlor for residents.

Ports 1961, Shanghai, China Architects: UUfie photo : Shengliang Su Ports 1961 Flagship Store Located at a major high-end commercial district at the intersection of Changde Road and Nanjing West Road, a new façade is created for the flagship store of fashion house Ports 1961.

SINGAPORE

Apple Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Design: Foster + Partners photo : Finbarr Fallon Apple Marina Bay Sands A new distinctive 30-metre-diameter structure is a fully glazed dome with a black glass base, complementing the sister pavilions through its scale and materiality.

SPAIN

House Of The Sun, Marbella, Costa del Sol, Andalucia, Southern Spain Design: Fran Silvestre Arquitectos image from Fran Silvestre Arquitectos House Of The Sun in Marbella Fran Silvestre Arquitectos have always been fascinated by the work of Andreu Alfaro “The door of the Universe” made in 1983. A circle rotated and suspended over a square.

House Of The Silence, Valencia, eastern Spain Design: Fran Silvestre Arquitectos photo : Fernando Guerra, FG + SG House Of The Silence, Valencia The House Of The Silence project consists of making a musician’s studio coexist with his home. It is located in a residential area near Valencia, where neighboring houses are very close to each other.

SWITZERLAND

Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland Design: David Chipperfield Architects Berlin photograph : Noshe Kunsthaus Zürich Building After twelve years of planning and construction, the extension for the Kunsthaus Zürich is now complete. On 11 December 2020, the keys to the new building were handed over to its future user in an online ceremony. The house will open to the public in October 2021.

SYDNEY

The Waterfront Retreat, Newport, New South Wales, Australia Architecture: Koichi Takada Architects photo : Tom Ferguson Photography The Waterfront Retreat Newport, NSW The Waterfront Retreat is the epitome of an Australian dream home, adorned with a private beach, garden and open-plan living. Responding the clients’ brief – a house offering sanctuary and entertainment, the Waterfront Retreat is designed to allow nature to lead, offering maximum seclusion and connection to its surrounds and outlook.

THAILAND

Apple Central World, Bangkok, Thailand Design: Foster + Partners with Architects 49 Ltd. photograph © Apple Apple Central World Bangkok Apple Central World in Bangkok welcomed its first visitors. Located in one of the city’s iconic urban centers, the new store establishes a quiet sculptural presence at the heart of the bustling Central World Square on the intersection of Rama I and Ratchadamri roads.

TAIWAN

Lè Architecture, Taipei, Taiwan Architects: Aedas photo courtesy of architects Lè Architecture in Taipei Designed by Global Design Principal Dr Andy Wen, Lè Architecture in the Nangang district of Taipei redefines Taipei’s rapidly developing skyline. Its design drew inspiration from the shape of the river pebbles along the Keelung River, developing a unique aesthetic concept that conveys the idea of roundness and elegance, as well as strength and character.

VIETNAM

EcoKid Kindergarten, Vinh, near Hanoi, Vietnam Architects: LAVA with Module K and Viet Décor photo : Hiroyuki Oki EcoKid Kindergarten Vinh, Vietnam The design of a new eco-kindergarten by LAVA with Module K and Viet Décor features spaces encouraging curiosity, activity-based learning and interaction with nature for the next generation of Vietnamese children.

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A further selection of buildings around the world:

Buildings of 2020

Architecture Awards

Contemporary Architectural Awards – selection:

RIBA Awards

Stirling Prize

RIBA Royal Gold Medal

Key Architects Links

Zaha Hadid

Frank Gehry

Herzog de Meuron

Key Architectural Links

American Architecture

Contemporary Architecture

Modern Houses

Buildings of the Year Archive

Architecture of 2013: Buildings of the Year

Building Designs of 2013

Architecture of 2012: Buildings of the Year

Architecture of 2011

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