Uncategorized – Page 7

28 10, 2010

A time when I could slay dragons

By Steve McKee|2010-10-28T19:35:20+00:00October 28th, 2010|My favorite columns, Uncategorized|Comments Off on A time when I could slay dragons

I recently helped deliver my daughter to her new life at UCLA. While there I made a point to visit “Bruin Walk” to flashback to the best two months of my life when I learned that I could take on the world and win. That’s what if felt like. In 1983 I was an architecture student and I ended up saving one of the best parts of that beautiful campus from some really klutzy landscape design right before the university was all set to build it. They even had a builder all lined up when I happened to see an [...]

7 10, 2010

Remodeling your Southampton home

By Steve McKee|2010-10-07T18:19:44+00:00October 7th, 2010|Remodeling a Southampton home, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Remodeling your Southampton home

I like remodeling Southampton houses. Almost all of them are well built with consistent construction details and an extra strong slab foundation system that has advantages when we do additions. Thousands of these houses were built over the span of two decades and they dependably used these same construction techniques throughout and that lets us later-day designers and remodelers know what we’re in for. Beyond that, the basic roof shapes make it simple to design attractive additions. It’s easy to make such additions blend into the general look of the neighborhood but still add some distinction [...]

25 08, 2010

Sweet Sistine

By Steve McKee|2010-08-25T19:36:36+00:00August 25th, 2010|My favorite columns, Travel Tales, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Sweet Sistine

The three hour tour of the Vatican Museum in Rome was a doozy with much to see, like marble statues and elaborate tapestries and even wall sized maps of Europe and the New World that were state-of-the-art for the 1600’s. Near the end of this tour we received a special reward when we got to stand before the large wall fresco of Raphael’s “School of Athens,” in which the great men of ancient Greece are seen gathering to share ideas. It was much more colorful and vibrant compared to the nearby works completed by Raphael’s assistants. We learned [...]

28 07, 2010

Why we travel: Finding the Rome within

By Steve McKee|2010-07-28T19:38:16+00:00July 28th, 2010|Travel Tales, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Why we travel: Finding the Rome within

With the sun starting to set over Rome, there came a slight breeze that cut the warmth of the day down enough that all four of us McKees could start to get comfortable. No longer dripping sweat, we could be our usual selves with wisecracks and antics all around. When a siren went by repeating its two notes over and over, Wesley joined in and then Melody started to harmonize and then we all did. Whenever we passed a statue, one of us stood in front in the same pose as the statue no matter how pompous (with photo taken [...]

23 06, 2010

Confessions of a lighting junkie

By Steve McKee|2010-06-23T06:02:31+00:00June 23rd, 2010|At the School of Architecture, Thinking like an architect, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Confessions of a lighting junkie

It has happened that I’ll be at a party at someone’s home and notice that they’re not taking full advantage of their lighting scheme, so I’ll take the liberty of adjusting some of the light switches to bring up some accent lights on this wall or that. I should mention that I only do this every once in a while (so I don’t seem like too much of a weirdo) and usually only at the homes of former clients whose lighting scheme I helped design with them. Two seconds effort sliding a dimmer switch and suddenly artwork comes to life [...]

25 05, 2010

A day in the life of the architecture student

By Steve McKee|2010-05-25T06:03:51+00:00May 25th, 2010|At the School of Architecture, Uncategorized|Comments Off on A day in the life of the architecture student

It’s just before five o’clock, some weekend in March of 1981, and I haven’t been out of the apartment all day. Just me in my bathrobe, hunched over my mostly finished cardboard model of my Winery design, back aching right between the shoulder blades, and two day’s worth of cardboard debris scattered about the apartment living room. My two roomies are gone for the weekend, so I get to go nuts and do whatever I need to do to get my design ready for the final critique in a few days. I sustain myself with music of my choosing and [...]