I asked some friends recently for their favorite buildings in DC. Many are predictable, some are unique. Here's the list ~

· Lincoln Memorial

· Jefferson Memorial.

· The Islamic Center (2551 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington D.C.)

· Finnish Embassy

· National Church (Episcopalian) --- and don’t miss the nearby garden, the crypt and attic spaces)

· Russian Orthodox Cathedral (close to National Cathedral)

· Outdoor space of the Hirshorn Gallery

· Atrium of the Portrait Gallery

· The Library of Congress (main building, all its interior and specially the interior dome/reading room – you need to be a member to gain access)

· The National Gallery of Art West Wing by John Russell Pope (esp. the dome and the courtyards)

· Union Station

· Franciscan Monastery,

· Botanic Garden,

· Arboretum,

· Kennedy Center Rooftop Deck,

· Roosevelt Island

· Jack's Boathouse

· Fletcher's Boathouse

· Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

· St. Matthew's emphasizes the drama of noisy street transition to silence, Romanesque (I think) church design with all the gold trimmings:
http://www.stmatthewscathedral.org/

· Hotel Tabard Inn - the best experience of smallness, human-scale flow, quiet, cozy, and awesome martini and life, nearby the cathedral:
http://www.tabardinn.com/ (also across the street is the Iron Gate restaurant with portico seating)

· The building of the Organization of American States (OAS) in DC

· U-Line Arena. It’s just a parking lot inside now so access isn’t restricted. It’s amazing and while not exactly quiet, it has very unusual lighting and relatively good sound isolation from the CIP concrete structure.

· For more interesting, forgotten buildings Check: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/07/23/GA2010072302501.html

· Fort Washington. We don’t have many massive buildings here in Washington, but it has massive masonry and earth walls and the quality of silence within those massive walls is very different than other quiet places. There are some interesting lighting conditions there as well.

· The Third Church of Christ Scientist, a sanctuary of the Christian Science movement (http://www.thirdchurchdc.org/washingtondc/910 16th Street, NW, 20006)

· Holy Trinity Chapel on N Street between 35th and 36th in Georgetown (original 1740s chapel) is an interesting space tied to a quiet garden.

· Metropolitan Community Church (Suzane Reatig, architect, 1993) http://mccdc.com/ --- 474 Ridge Street NW, Washington DC 20001

· The New Tenley Town Library

· Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in Georgetown (specially, the oval pool and pleached linden trees)

· The Dahlgren Quadrangle and Chapel of the Sacred (Georgetown University)

· The Olmstead grotto on the Capital grounds.

· The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Temple by John Russell Pope at 16th and S streets NW DC (numerology and proportion are important in addition to light and silence; count each set of steps as you approach the front door)

· The Folger Shakespeare Library by Paul Cret (Luis Kahn's teacher); visit the Great Hall, Elizabethan Theater, and the Paster Reading Room.

· Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery (the one which is actually just north of the US Soldiers Home, i.e. close to cua); sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens; bench by McKim Mead; commissioned by Henry Adams for his wife Mirian Hooper Adams. It used to be surrounded by high bushes and hard to get past them and into this quiet contemplative space; they chopped the bushes down maybe 3 or 4 years ago, but maybe they've grown back. The hidden quality of this space made it quite powerful along with the mysterious figure seated in front of you.

· The Community Mausoleum at Fort Lincoln Cemetery behind the little church. Cemetery at east corner of Eastern Avenue and Bladensgurg Road just over the DC line in MD.

· First Congregational United Church of Christ by Williams and Tsien at 10th & G streets in NW DC.

· Lavinia Fici Pasquina's House (that light off the copper is quite magical!)

· Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on Constitution Ave across from the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

· The Corcoran Gallery of Art

· MacMillan Reservoir vaults.

If you made it this far, please add your favorites!!

New projects on our site!

Take a look at our site to check out two Vermont projects we've just included in "Our Work" and let us know what you think.

Kay & Brian's is completely off-the-grid and home to a family of four in rural Vermont (4th project on the first row).
















Beth's refuge, passed down through generations, has undergone a complete renovation (4th project on the third row).















We hope you enjoy looking at these!

Giving as a Way of Living

(this post is long, and isn't really a blog.......... it's a way to put an article on line..........)

Please consider this - life is centrally about relationship. We need to have our own clear, still center, which then primarily takes form via relationship with our companions, the earth and the spaces in which we dwell. That is, we are little else apart from our union with others, and our relationships are connected more deeply as each partner feeds, gives to, the other.

Giving can be considered as a path to making whole and enlivening our journey.

Another angle to explore giving: I offer that to be rich is not to want. We in the "west" have everything and keep wanting: are we over and over trying to fill our spiritual emptiness with stuff? Is the richest person he who has nothing, and wants nothing?

Much of the world and Nepal specifically - it ranks first to fourth poorest country, depending on indicators - is a "need" based society. Survival and sustenance, day to day and hand to hand, is a widespread concern. In Nepal - perhaps due to greeting all you encounter with "namaste," said with hands at heart in prayer form and a deep gaze into one another's eyes - there is pervasive quiet joy, if you will, or at least a gentle humble peace.

Before discarding their lovely demeanor due to fatalist Hinduism - and i understand life is mixed everywhere; i'm not romanticizing their condition - just hold the possibility and ask, "what can I learn from them?"

I'm learning to sit still on my small patch of earth, pay attention to the life swirling around me, do what is in front of me and offer a hand to my companions, hopefully with some of that quiet joy. Again, this is what I've extrapolated from being in Nepal - I'm not saying this is how most Nepali's live.

The heart of what i'm offering - giving as a way of living. To "give back" is to say we've only taken and are now making amends. Considering our stressful and competitive society, it's hard to avoid putting our work above all else and then one day wake up and realize we've left the other part of the dynamic out of the equation - we've worked hard and grabbed and and claimed and taken and forgotten we can also achieve our life's intentions through giving (perhaps even truer to who we are at heart). I'm seeing (finally) that in each action, I can look for how I can give to a companion - be in relationship - rather than grab and pull into my self, which only feeds my isolation.

What does a life of giving look like? I certainly don't know - I am learning this late in life - but here are other ways i'm pursuing. First, a small clarification - most friends consider me generous, but i know there are many ways I can invert my ways of interacting.

I consider time to be our greatest commodity, far beyond stufff and money. As such, i'm learning to give my self through showing up and offering any small hand I can (which usually means getting up from this computer). I'm not suggesting our valuable work or service isn't essential; everything is about balance. Left to my own unconscious motivations, my work becomes precious and I attach my self-worth both to the hard work and outcomes. As I awaken day by day, I learn to focus on how my work is primarily a way of giving or serving.

Another aspect of giving time: A vibrant Irish story teller once told me that there is no more important work for him than turn and engage with the person sitting next to him on the bus. It's so easy for me to be self-absorbed, day-dreaming out the window or in my book when there is a person with real stories sitting next to me. I'm as conditioned as anyone in our society to operate as a discrete entity floating through public spaces, with our headphones and smart phones and phones - by giving myself to any random person, I may open a door into a lifetime friendship, or at least feed (and/or receive) a morsel of human warmth and acknowledgment. Being seen and regarded is a basic human desire.

The most interesting nuance of giving i'm learning - ironically, asking for help is actually giving back. By making myself vulnerable and asking a friend to see who or where i am and to help me find my way, i'm giving them a part of myself, that expands themselves - I'm making their life bigger and richer. I'm giving them a real relationship, not afraid to enter uncomfortable places, and want them to join me there.

OK, that's enough background, onto the subject at hand - ways of helping Nepalis develop a program to create buildings which gives new life to waste and build community in the making. All I've written above begins to explore the deeper purpose of giving; all you're about to read illustrates how giving is life-giving. What follows is spoken through "we," as I'm one of many volunteers who help at the foundation i work with in Nepal, the Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation (KRMEF).

We are fortunate to have found an extraordinary budding Nepali NGO whose founder and director, Krishna Gurung, is working towards helping an existing village - Kharare, just south of Kathmandu - develop and live into a wide spectrum of sustainable practices. He is working with his fellow villagers, introducing ideas which find wide-spread approval by the village. Krishna's vision is both to create a model village for the Kathmandu Valley as well as take the show on the road through workshops and consultations.

KRMEF always has western volunteers there, between two and 16, who live and eat with him and his family while particpating in the work. The programs include bio-dynamic gardening, bio-fuels, health clinic, jewelry and crafts, day care, building and operating an "Ankuran" (orphanage), augmenting the local schools with Waldorf-inspired lessons, land/water systems, and natural building. All of these programs are developing organically and slowly, taking firm root, with no major funding. Krishna does attract numerous small individual donors, many of whom have spent time there and are a part of the community. What follows are ways we expand our lives as we give:

We give our time. We make the trip all the way there. halfway around the world. Just showing up there from so far away tells the Nepalis that we care about who they are their lives. Knowing we matter to others is another basic human desire.

We give back our status or power - as being a westerner, with all of our baggage, sets us apart from many Nepalis we work with, we ask for help and take on any task while working together. We don't claim to be experts, we only have ideas they haven't considered, to fold into their traditions to find effective ways of living (amidst increasingly westernized systems and methods in their society, such as building with concrete blocks, or eating processed foods in plastic bags and containers).

We give our wealth - not by handing out money, but by acknowledging their true wealth. Our wealth only isolates us as we think we don't need to regard anyone as we can get what we want at the expense of other's livlihood (I'm referring to corrupt aspects of capitalism). We spend little money when we're there, as we engage in their simpler village life.

We give back our preconceptions - we don't come there assuming we know what to do, we submit ourselves to their ways of living. We don't speak of them being backwards; rather, we appreciate their simpler ways in contrast to the rat race we run around in at home. We form relationship with them and the land and their traditions and work together to create the most effective way to build.

And so on. These ways of giving are, perhaps, the more long-lasting gift we offer while we create buildings together with Nepalis. The building process is all about forming and enriching community - it takes a village to build a village. Natural building is low in skill and in need of many helping hands, and it's fun! Workers smile and laugh and throw mud at each other and get their hands and feet muddy and their faces shine when they take a waste glass bottle and set in into mortar of clay and sand - who would think to build in such a way?!

I met Krishna when he was in the US on a fund-raising tour, in the fall of 2010. He had a vague idea of building with waste bottles from the embassies in Kathmandu, and I agreed that night to come there and help him and his village find a way to do that effectively. When we arrived in Nepal - Beth, my wife, joined this initial trip there - we found a team of Nepalis who gave their knowledge and energy. There is an experienced builder in Kharare - as all building methods follow the same basic principles, uniquely adapted to the materials at hand, he quickly saw ways to make this method work. There is also an older bamboo craftsman, who built the structural frame and roof. And there are many laborers who developed clever systems to produce many pounds of earthen plaster from clay, sand and chopped-up straw. First, the sand needs to be carried to a site, which comes from a nearby river. The clay comes from the immediate site. These are first mixed together dry, then water is added and and the mix is stomped on - danced in! - while slowly folding in the straw. This earthen plaster becomes mortar to hold the bottles in place. The bottle walls are only walls - the bamboo provides the structure, which is important as bamboo will give and sway when earthquakes occur.

Now, after going to Nepal four times in the past year and developing a project during each trip, we have a good system down. I spend two weeks at each location, where i work with the villagers and western volunteers as the first trip. We've built a model home for someone in need and an addition onto the community center in Kharare, and gone to other parts of the Kathmandu Valley to build an orphanage and then a women's educational center. In each case, it takes another two or three months to complete the projects, depending on size and energy of each crew.

Part of our long-term intention is to build homes for those in need with profits from other projects. We have developed a skilled building crew - the person in need whose home they build will also work on their home, joining the crew. The new home owner will then work on the next few homes at reduced pay, to partially pay back for their home (profits would also contribute). Slowly, as a few such homes are built, another building crew will be established; over time, a network of new homes and jobs will be created. Creating jobs is an enormous issue in Nepal, as is providing shelter.

There is endless need in Nepal, or said in a more useful way, there is tremendous possiblibity. We've established firm traction with this building method, which has generated tremendous excitement throughout the Kathmandu Valley. We could live there and help build 24/7. Each time we build we give skills and purpose to Nepalis, and ourselves. As we give to and feed one another, we form close relationships. This is all we can ask for.

More Natural Building in Nepal

I returned recently from my third trip to nepal this year,

this time building an orphanage for another Nepali NGO

across the Kathmandu Valley from Krishna's village

(see previous posts for projects with Krishna; taking this

work to other organizations is part of our vision).

Most exciting was the children helped build their home!

This is how far we got in two weeks, about as far as with the other two projects

i've gone there to help build. The man at the center is the

very smart Nepali builder who will complete this first of three buildings.

And then build the other buildings.

I also met w/ the next organization we'll build for - a women's

educational center in a village just down the road from Krishna.

Helping women create their lives is a huge issue in Nepal;

we're very excited to begin this project when we go back

at the end of September. This will involve three buildings,

forming an entry court. again, from waste glass bottles and paper,

natural plaster and bamboo structure with thatched roof.

I'll be there sept. 28 - oct. 14th............ so far, 4 friends

from the DC region will be joining me............ let me

know if you'd like to join us!

peace,

bill

Help Build an Orphanage in Nepal!

Making Place in Nepal

Forming relationship, both intimate and communal, is primary to my life. Within the ecosystem I live in, I seek deep and far reaching roots. My world is made of layers of intimacy, both inward and expansive - within myself, with my family, my neighborhood, DC, this region, the east coast, the US, Europe, South Africa, and now Nepal. I've been fortunate to have a door open into the Kathmandu Valley, through the astonishing smile and warmth of the founder and director of a Nepali NGO, Krishna Gurung. This opportunity both stretches me and further provides refuge; my foothold is expanded half way around the globe, the unfamiliar sights and smells and skin and flora and dirt and people and pollution are now part of me.

The Kathmandu Valley is both beautiful and a dump. As the eye takes in a landscape that has no rival, the nose begins to pick up the sewer of a river that runs through the valley. This dynamic plays out in many ways, in every way; the Kathmandu Nepalis are lovely, bright-spirited people who breathe in air which in a day equals a quite a few cigarettes. They are warm and family centered, walking hand in hand on Kathmandu city streets where there are no traffic lanes or sidewalks, with many types of vehicles barely missing them with no notice.

I can see it and smell it now, back in my American comfort of home. I miss it, as I miss the experience of changing my daughter's diapers (don't laugh, or cringe; my daughter usually laughed and smiled, bringing great joy amidst the unpleasant part). That is, life is mixed; the good and bad are inextricably woven together and our experience is given great depth by this dynamic (don't get me started on how we in the west do everything we can to eliminate the stink).

The Kathnamdu Valley is as such vibrant and real.

And people there live seeking their intrinsic needs, not their wants. Nepal is one of the poorest countries, or are they? Consider that to be rich is not to want. We in the west have everything, but we want more; we're spiritually poor. The Nepali have little yet live humbled by their nothingness and with gratitude for their life.

Yes, I'm generalizing, and romanticizing. Just go with it, as you do when listening to a love song. Be fed by the possibility.

For the second time during the past year, I recently went there to lead a team of western volunteers and many villagers in a natural building workshop, this time to build an addition onto a village community center. This work is in support of the Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation, which is located in a village with the intention of making the village sustainable. The hope then is to take practices and lessons learned to other villages in the Kathmandu Valley, where a great percentage of the Nepali live. There are many aspects to our efforts - more fruitful farming practices, health care, creating an orphanage(s), developing craft/jewelry products, advocating bio-fuels - always trying to provide meaningful work.

We're developing a natural building method from local materials - structure form bamboo, roof from thatch, and walls from waste bottles and paper set in earthen plaster (sand, clay and straw). This work is not complicated; what it's really about is forming relationship.

To build with your hands, and feet as you stomp on the sand and clay (aka, mud) to mix it, is to return to kindergarten. Your actions are integrating many aspects of your humanity; far removed from this computer screen I'm now writing on. While squeezing earthen plaster between your fingers and toes, the flow of voice to voice is easy and pleasant, and smiles and laughter abound (no harsh DC metro driver's looks to be found). It's a bit idyllic, even I admit.

But as we built this addition on the roof of the existing community center, being in the center of the village, all I had to do was look around and realize I was far from shangri-la and how much work we face. As un-pretty as the village is, the life is abundant and peaceful. Chickens are very free range there, so much so as they eat all day out of the polluted and trash filled central, ummm, creek-culvert-dump. Children bound everywhere, often all over our building site and sometimes putting plaster where it belongs. Villagers are all on the move, mostly living outside, interacting in a variety of ways, hopping on the bus to the city looking for any work (unemployment is 90% in the village!). And they watch our work, sometimes bleacher-style, often scratching their heads, wondering why the crazy gringos ("curlys" to them) are sticking waste bottles in the walls.

Creating jobs is a central aspect of our work; we've now trained a team of builders and there are villagers who want homes built with this method. The building team will take their profits and create a simple abode for one of the many thousands of homeless Nepali in the valley. After the Nepali in need receives their home, which they'll help build, they'll pay back by volunteering on the next few homes, which will train them to then be part of the next buiding team.

It's this type of sequential development that we're striving for. Of course, my obsolescence is part of the plan; fortunantely, there are many other parts of Nepal for me to take this work. I'll be returning in July to lead a similar group in the building of an orphanage in another part of the valley.

I am looking for volunteers to join me then, and in October when I return again. Please email me for more info - bill@heliconworks.com

Making Home and Heart in Nepal

A year ago I was introduced to Krishna Gurung, a Nepali on tour in the states to raise awareness and funds for his eco-foundation. Leela, his wife, was with him - their deeper reason for being here was to begin the slow healing after losing a child. Kevin, their seven year old son, had died the previous December 21st; they had named their foundation in his honor - The Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation (KRMEF - http://krmecofoundation.org/).

They were also grieving leaving a previous sustainable village Krishna had been central in creating - Shanti Sewa Griha Village, http://krmecovillage.com/shanti-sewa-griha/ - due to jealousy by the foreign funders over the recognition Krishna had received for his role in developing that village for lepers and otherwise marginalized Nepalis (Krishna was runner-up in the BBC's World Challenge, http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/ ).

Krishna and Leela's parents are lepers; they grew up in a leprosarium and were child-hood friends. Nepali society is centered on three-generational families - Krishna's parents live with them now, along with their two teenage daughters.

Last fall, my wife, Beth, and I held a house party for Krishna and Leela; by the time they went home that night I knew I was going to Nepal to help him build his foundation and Beth was especially close to them as she had lost a daughter 15 years ago. Such a loss gives one a profound understanding, which opens up a deep connection between parents.

At last fall's DC Greenfest, we supported Krishna to have a booth and created a brochure and banners. That event was the catalyst for the KRMEF to get some traction. We also introduced Krishna to an NPR reporter who was writing an article on parents who had lost a child and how they had continued to get up in the morning and what actions they had taken to slowly live into their grief while honoring their children (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121403275 ).

The KRMEF embodies Kevin's spirit and creating and developing the foundation is a way for Krishna and Leela to continue their relationship with their son.

This past summer, I developed natural building methods to build with trash - Nepal is flooded with litter and Kathmandu is extremely polluted (they still drive with leaded gas, and there are thousands of motorcycles, which pollute more than cars). The litter is mostly due to the lack of trash pickup and the shift in packaging from traditional, biodegradable banana leaves to plastic found on the junk food that the west now pumps into Nepal.

Krishna speaks fairly good English and Leela less, and while I had met with Krishna a half-dozen times while here last fall and we saw Leela twice, I can't say we fully understood each other. Yet, when we landed in Kathmandu October 20th, we instantly were old friends and felt at home. This struck me at the time and I now realize why.

Whereas the Shanti Sewa Griha Village was a discrete village, to provide safe haven for otherwise ostracized people, the KRMEF is a vibrant, abundant, life-giving cell in the body of an existing village - Kharare - about 7 miles south of Kathmandu. The basic intention of the KRMEF - to be a catalyst for ecologically minded development of an existing village - is what most excites me about their work. And they have a broad agenda, from running a health clinic, expanding the community center (our next project there), creating an orphanage, developing a local school with a Waldorf inspired curriculum (the education system there is very rigid and life-depleting), teach biodynamic gardening, local and sustainable fuel production (such as bio-gas and solar cookers), planting trees, natural architecture, raising and selling local honey, use of local resources for making and selling crafts - and creating jobs through all of the above.

Going into Nepal as a westerner, I wasn't interested in thinking I had answers for them. I had some principles of natural building that worked with trash, but I wanted to develop these with their local knowledge and wisdom. Actually, I went mostly because I had a tremendous heart for Krishna and Leela and wanted to be a part of their lives and work.

It turns out the village has a lovely (well, all Nepali we met were lovely) 62 year old man who knows many things and has a twinkle in his eye (so like my dad had, who passed four years ago). He is also a bamboo craftsman and he built the frame and roof of the model home we created, flying around spindly bamboo members like a spider. He is the last villager who knows this craft and we're going to foster his training others as we build more homes there.

They had collected hundreds of bottles and sand and clay and paper and strong bodies and we began building, not being clear as to what we'd make. This project is meant as a model and test home, and it all came together remarkably……I think due to the love that surrounded all of our efforts.

In our three weeks in Nepal, I only saw two faces with that angered, intense, crazed look you see constantly in the states. Perhaps it's due to Hinduism and Buddhism peacefully coexisting with thousands of temples and shrines with hundreds of years of imbued energy; or constantly greeting people with hands in prayer union at your heart, smiling and saying, "namaste (I see the divine in you)." I don't know, but I do know I've never lived surrounded by so much heart and joy. And they are, by our standards, poor. It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings - to be rich is not to want. We in the west have so much, but we keep wanting more. We're spiritually empty, which turns the wheels of capitalism.

So we built - Beth and I, a couple of western volunteers, and many villagers.

Most spoke little or no English, yet we communicated through the heart with charades and gesture and smiles and the Nepali head bob which means, depending, "yes" or "I understand" or "ok" or "you're a crazy gringo but I love you!" Sometimes they would speak Nepali to us or we'd speak English to them and somehow we knew what they meant.

Natural building is primal - taking what the earth offers and making shelter. Nepal now offers trash, which actually is very good to build with. Bottles set on side are very strong and limit the needed earthen plaster - clay and sand w/ chopped up straw for tensile strength, which is time-consuming to make. We also added shredded trashed paper to the earthen plaster, which gives further tensile strength and is a filler along with the sand (the clay is the binder).

Please go to my blog - http://heliconworks.blogspot.com/2010/11/building-model-eco-home-for-homeless-in.html - to see the process of making the chhapro, which is Nepali for a humble working person's home (not at all derogatory).

As always, the paradox with building is the finished home isn’t the point. What is really being made are relationships, and nurturing and responding to others - both a place and people - is what we're here to do. We are known through relationship, and each relationship further connects us to the world around us and within our hearts.

I told Beth when we got home that we were a great team - I primarily focused on the container for the love and she deeply connected with everyone there. What we helped build will endure longer than the clay and sand and bamboo, and hopefully the bottles!

Since returning home, I am developing a network and infrastructure to build more homes (and love) there, a few drops in the ocean of their need. Krishna has a broad vision and needs help with each part; there are endless possibilities, and please contact me if you'd like to be a part this work.