Sea Ranch Chapel

Last week I had the good fortune to spend a few days with friends in Sea Ranch, a Sonoma County planned community known for its dramatic coastline, secluded beaches, as well as its characteristic architecture. A design review process ensures that homes don't dominate the beautiful natural landscape. While the homes certainly aren't cookie-cutter replicas, they do share key characteristics including unpainted wood siding/shingles, and many large windows that bring the landscape and natural light into the home and often help form comfortable interior nooks which are ideal for reading or napping.

One of the most intriguing structures is the Sea Ranch Chapel. This small non-denominational sanctuary, which resembles a hat with a feather protruding from the top, was completed in 1985 and is open to the public. Local materials such as redwood, stones and seashells help ground the chapel in the surrounding environment. The small size creates a very intimate interior where magnificent stained glass windows admit light from different angles and cast exquisite light patterns on the stone floor and redwood seating. The Sea Ranch Chapel, which is also frequently empty and very quiet, is not only something to behold, but is also highly conducive to personal reflection.

 Redwood seats and floral mosaic

Local materials including redwood, stones and seashells (abalone shell pictured here) are utilized in both chapel interior and exterior

Prie-dieu (prayer desk) with embedded shells and wrought iron prayer screen

Ostrea lurida, how we miss thee!

Native West Coast oysters known as Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida) could once be found in great abundance from Alaska to Mexico and were a key food source for Native Americans and early settlers. While they may still appear today, the Olympia oyster is "functionally extinct" according to a recent San Francisco Chronicle article. The oysters we occasionally enjoy these days are actually farm-raised Japanese Pacific oysters. Personally, I love oysters and can only imagine, with envy, a day when they were a local staple found throughout SF Bay. However, personal taste and diet are trivial compared to the profound impact the demise of the native Olympia oyster has on the ecosystems of SF Bay and other areas. Olympia Oyster beds provide critical habitat for small fish, crabs, anemones, and other marine life. In addition, as a bivalve they are filter feeders who each clean gallons per day of pollutants. It's difficult to envision, but when Olympia oyster beds were found throughout SF Bay, residents regularly ate oysters and the Bay itself would have been significantly cleaner, more biodiverse, and literally teeming with marine life.

Sidebar: The Olympia oyster's taxonomy can be confusing. Ostrea lurida and Ostreola conchaphila are often considered to be synonymous. However, a 2009 study published in the Journal of Shellfish Research provides molecular evidence that they are indeed distinct species.

Why is it so difficult to get a tiny mortgage?

Obtaining a mortgage of less than US$50,000 for a tiny home or even a refinanced "traditional" home is a challenge. This interesting Business Insider article indicates that banks simply don't make enough profit compared to the the interest they reap over a couple of decades on mortgages of a couple hundred thousand dollars. Fortunately, there are alternatives such as local banks or credit unions where you have an established relationship, personal loans from friends or family, or the relatively new phenomenon of peer-to-peer (person-to-person) lending on sites such as Prosper.com and LendingClub.com.

Design Elements: Barn motif

I really like the barn motif on this Mission District garage. It may serve some industrial purpose, but more than likely it's more aesthetic than functional. Either way, it adds character to the neighborhood.

Model community land trust: Lake Claire

 

While I've visited the Lake Claire Community Land Trust in Atlanta, Georgia before, recently I had time for a more comprehensive tour of this amazing community landmark. LCCLT was created more than 25 years ago when community members purchased land from MARTA (Atlanta's public transit system) and cleared out garbage and kudzu. Since then it's been transformed into a vibrant community center for people living on the land itself, as well as neighbors and people throughout Atlanta. It includes a wide variety of structures, as well as fish ponds, gardens and orchards. Despite its central location in the heart of Atlanta, one can find plenty of resident and visiting wildlife at LCCLT (recognized as a wildlife sanctuary). This land trust is closely integrated with and actively utilized by the immediate community, and it's not always obvious where its land ends and neighbors' property begins. There are many different events for every member of the community including picnics, birthday parties, drum circles, yoga instruction, after-school programs, etc. My friends live one block away and frequently visit the land trust and attend events both with and without their two young children, as do other friends living outside the neighborhood.

Lake Claire Community Land Trust is a reflection and integral part of the immediate community as well as the surrounding communities and this is what makes it such a great model for other communities. It's an infinitely repeatable formula: active community involvement ensures the space remains a safe, friendly center for learning, interacting, celebrating, etc. and it eventually becomes a beloved point of pride for the neighborhood. Rather than depressing neighboring home values as abandoned land, effective community land trusts can help build strong communities making neighborhoods more appealing to potential home buyers. Not surprisingly Lake Claire has become one of Atlanta's most desirable neighborhoods.

Community gardens bordered by a primary thoroughfare (Dekalb Ave) and MARTA tracks

Stage, fire pit and amphitheater

 There are several tiny homes, as well as a variety of larger structures

 Community sweat lodge

 Longtime resident Big Lou the Emu

Art: Manifest Destiny!

It's not an optical illusion. It's a thought-provoking art piece entitled Manifest Destiny! by Jenny Chapman and Mark Reigelman II located at Bush and Grant in San Francisco. Their work, which will be installed until October, consists of a portion of a tiny wood cabin affixed to the Hotel des Arts. The small cabin is reminiscent of a different era when homes were simple and accessible, and people were optimistic about the many opportunities in the "New World", the West, California, etc. It's juxtaposed by its location in a city where today many people cannot afford to buy or rent, and in a very congested area (between Union Square and Chinatown). The piece's title also evokes a bygone era of optimism based on seeming unlimited opportunities just beyond the horizon, but the time was was also marked by naiveté, arrogance and political agendas (Manifest Destiny was cited as justification for American expansionism and eventually war with Mexico).

Of course, I myself covet a tiny home, and my own enthusiasm and optimism might even have some similarities to the emotions felt by someone setting out on a wagon train in the early 19th century. So, this art piece made me wonder if I also shared some of the naivete and arrogance, particularly around the sustainability of my future tiny home. By themselves tiny homes are far more sustainable than their larger brethren in terms of construction materials and waste, as well as ongoing energy use, but my dream also includes some land to expand and grow food and views dominated by the natural rather than built environment. The cold hard reality is there simply isn't enough undeveloped land to provide everyone with something similar. So, would I require some type of personal manifest destiny to prioritize my needs over everyone else's needs? Fortunately, no: I know from speaking with people and describing my tiny home dreams that many simply don't share the vision and instead prefer their larger, more centrally located home or apartment. In the end, it's the diversity of needs and tastes between us that not only allows us to live together without constant competition, but also keeps us from immediately depleting the same desired natural resource(s). We all need to reduce our impact on the planet and, fortunately, we can approach that objective from a range of perspectives from the high-density urban apartment building which reduces or eliminates need for a vehicle to the hand-built tiny home in the woods adjacent to an organic garden and beehives.

"I'm probably the most fortunate person in the world."

I wanted to share this inspirational article from yesterday's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle which depicts an artist named John McAbery who happily lives and works in his tiny hand-built beachfront cabin on the Lost Coast. He built the cabin solely with hand tools and materials salvaged from the beach, and he sustains himself by carving and selling beautiful nature-inspired sculptures out of naturally felled, native Bay Laurels.