Ages 0-3:
1st Place – Sebastian
2nd Place – Elsa
3rd Place – Adelaide

Ages 4-6:
1st Place – David
2nd Place – Soren
3rd Place – Miel
Honorable Mentions – Vivian, Leslie

Ages 7-10:
1st Place – Martin
2nd Place – Luc

Ages 11-105:
1st Place – Sophie
2nd Place – Todd

Big thanks to all who entered – Bernal Heights has never looked so colorful!

We’ve been living and working in Bernal for the better part of eight years years, and our firm has worked with many neighbors to enlarge, modify, or otherwise update their home-sweet-homes. Recently, we repurposed various drawings from neighborhood projects to create a snappy little kids coloring book. Here for your children’s coloring pleasure is a version that you are free to download, print-out, and color-up.

To raise the game over the Thanksgiving break, we are holding a Bernal Kids Coloring Contest. If you’d like to participate, here are the rules:

Official Bernal Heights Architectural Coloring Contest Rules:

Download the coloring book. (pdf file)
Print out the coloring book on a computer printer
Pick your favorite house(s), and color, inside or outside the lines.
On the back, write down the name and age of the person who did the coloring. Provide a way for us to reach you. (No carrier pigeons, please.)
Turn your kids’ masterpieces in at our office mail box (301 Bocana @ Cortland) no later than Monday, November 28th. We’ll hang them in our window.
Judging:
Drawings will be judged by a highly decorated and independent panel of judges based on age groups (0-3, 4-6, 7-10, 11-105) based on GENERAL LEVEL OF ARTISTIC MERIT.

Prizes:

Every entrant will receive a prize which will range from a piece of local chert all the way to a pony. Just kidding about the pony– its really all about participating right?

Questions? Need crayons?– call or visit us and we’ll hook you up.

We’re a bit late to the party on this one, but we’ve just come across an unlikely combination of durability and functionality in the novel repurposing of a tractor/trailer foot step turned flush mounted soap dish. This comes our way via Todd Lappin, a Bernal Heights industriophile who has more than his fair share of creative gems lurking beneath his “Telstar Logistics” brand. Read more about it here.

Architects Take On Museums in Doha and Abu Dhabi – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.

This interactive feature presents four architects describing recent museum commissions in the Middle East. The architect engage both the lack of physical context as well as the contemporary aspirations of their surrounding societies.

Its refreshing to hear architects in their own words. Much like the The Chicago Tapes or The Charlottesville Tapes, this excerpt helps to demystify the nature and intention of the design process that is otherwise left behind closed doors.

RTRE bay area commercial lending.

This just in from The Registry:  there’s more money out there than good investments and Commercial lenders are showing signs of activity in the Bay area–but only in areas that were not previously vaporized. Its a very short flight to safety–and all evidence suggests that investors are choosing asset quality over current returns that may or may not be there tomorrow.

Where, indeed, is the secured commercial implosion that we were all warned about?