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staff postcards
Every April, staff designer Charlie Caldwell (you may remember him from my blog post about architectural model building) joins his partner, Scott Finn, in Italy where Scott heads up Auburn University’s...
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house of a different color
Did you ever look at the color scheme on a house and say “What in hell were they thinking”? I’m currently working on a renovation of an older house and am considering an offbeat color scheme. This...
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a june prayer
School is out and I am about and free to be. If I were any happier there’d be two of me. Hence the seed Hence the notion Teenaged month. Why isn’t there one to share the wealth of feel? Gills open....
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balcony scenes
This week I’m traveling with a group of friends in Ravello and Venice and, while roaming about, my eyes have been romanced by the array of balconies in Italy. It’s as if the buildings are making a...
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italian morningside
Click to view slideshow. Italian Morningside May’s End Far from Alabama And close to home Here on Italian shore My heart envelopes me And uses its eyes to see Things strange and familiar Things it had...
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lake cabin fever
Summer has begun and many set their sails and steer to the nearest body of water. Our closest shoreline is Lake Martin, Alabama. Situated across three counties, Lake Martin is one of the largest...
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lake cabin fever – contagion
I wrote last week about a little lake cabin Bobby McAlpine built for himself which became his watery haven. After he sold it, the simple design continued to haunt his memory. This little wooden...
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all the shingle ladies
Like Mom’s apple pie, the shingle style house is a unique American invention. Created here in the good old USA, houses of this ilk populate our every coastline, their lineage traced from charming sea...
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the poet of place: a birthday honor
This weekend, we celebrated Bobby McAlpine’s 56th birthday as he would have it: a small group of friends gathered at a round table in his lake house. I was pondering all the words, both profound and...
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stool of thought
At it’s base, design is truly defined as taking an ordinary purposed object and, by creative rethinking, transforming and elevating it to a thing of beauty. That’s precisely why we architects and...
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NYC10
For the next month, I’ll be working out of McAlpine Booth & Ferrier’s Manhattan office. While I’m residing in the city that never sleeps, a few of my waking hours have been spent revisiting some...
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shutter at the thought
Shutters are the trimmings of the facade. If style warrants their use, a regalia of shutters are always welcome on the properly adorned house. What other element found on the common everyday building...
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house music
Music has always played a huge part in our office. Bobby has been making “mix tapes” as gifts for as long as I can remember. We even have an in-office festive musical tradition called “Show Tune...
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roof with a view
Dormers are the expression of windows in the roofline of a house and they can be found in variety of shapes, sizes and styles. Perched on roofs like sentinels, their watchful gaze offers witness to...
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curtain call
While I was spending my last month of the summer in Manhattan, I attended a good bit of theatre. I took in a few new shows and even revisited some offerings I had previously enjoyed for a second...
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book report
We are delighted to officially announce the upcoming release of our new book, Art of the House. Authored by Bobby and Susan Ferrier, this will be a follow-up to our best selling book, The Home Within...
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web sightseeing
Last week, we announced our upcoming new book and this week, we’re excited to reveal our newly designed website, found here at mcalpinetankersley.com. There’s a good bit of our handiwork to be seen...
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movie special affects
For inspiration, we drink from many different fonts but one that we seem to return to again and again is found in the movie theater. It often seems set designers know more about creating evocative...
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open house: low country encampment
This is the first of a series of posts, titled “open house”, that I’m beginning on our blog – these will be photographic tours spotlighting selected projects. My first offering is a second home we...
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lesson: the value of change
This weekend I received a text from Bobby asking what my blog topic du jour was to be. I asked him to throw out a subject and I’d write on it. Having written a post every week for almost two years,...
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