InBerkeley

Berkeley is built on hills, seismic hills, and our houses have been here a while. Every winter it rains, a lot. So houses slip down the hill on a slow-moving river of mud. When they change hands the new owners might have a big construction job waiting for them! The contractor jacks up the house, it rests on huge beams of wood while they anchor and then pour a new foundation. As long as everything is turned upside down, let’s do a remodel! Three years later…

Know of other weird or interesting construction projects in Berkeley? Send us a picture and tell us why it caught your eye.

General

One of my favorite spots in Berkeley is Greenwood Common, a grouping of perfectly preserved mid-century modern homes — one or two of which have killer Bay views — masterminded by architect William Wurster.

Waverly Lowell, curator of the Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley, has a newly published book about this idyllic place. It is Living Modern: A Biography of Greenwood Common.

Architecture, Books, UC Berkeley Architecture, North Berkeley, William Wurster

Overheard today on the Twitterstream:

Drakonskyr: I’m in Berkeley and I’m not wearing pants. Not how I anticipated my life going, really.

yagarilla: All the crazy people in Berkeley hang out at Mcdonald’s. Does the food make them crazy or are they crazy to be eating the food?

TwatDestroy666: is damn surprised that ill be able to ride my moto up University Ave in Berkeley due to the newly paved street finally..thank you stimulus.

bmpack: is shocked to learn that there’s no Berkeley ferry to SF yet. I thought there was.

MogeezyFoSheezy: Days like today are the reason I chose school in Berkeley. It’s beautiful, listening to 103.7 and feeling old school has never felt better.

Berkeley Tweets, General

Photo by Kava Massih Architects

John King approves. Read why the Chronicle’s architecture critic likes how Kava Massih Architects approached the task of designing Berkeley Bowl West here.

Architecture, Retail, West Berkeley Berkelely Bowl West

The first Hub in the United States opened in Berkeley today at the David Brower Center. The brand new building is one the Bay Area’s most advanced green buildings, exceeding LEED Platinum certification standards. The building also houses many local social and environmental change organizations.

As their web site says:

During the day, The Hub is a dynamic, collision-rich workspace designed by its Members and the wisdom gleaned from Hub communities throughout the world. Social innovators in the Bay Area are leaving their sterile offices, noisy cafes, and isolated living rooms to work alongside diverse peers in a professionally hosted environment. They choose The Hub because it’s where they find the access, tools, community, and inspiration they need to transform their ideas into action.

At night, The Hub transforms into an event platform for member driven collaborations, lectures, screenings, innovation labs, and some of the most compelling and imaginative minds from around the world.

See previous InBerkeley post: Social innovators converge at the Hub, 08.28.09.

General

The Berkeley Unified School District’s plan to maintain diversity could serve as a model for other public schools nationwide that are seeking constitutionally sound desegregation programs, according to a new report by researchers at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California.

The UC report, “Integration Defended: Berkeley Unified’s Strategy to Maintain School Diversity,” pointed out that Berkeley school officials have achieved substantial integration in a city where neighborhoods are polarized by racial-ethnic and socioeconomic status. Moreover, their integration plan was upheld earlier this year by the state appellate court, a decision that the California Supreme Court allowed to stand.

via UC Berkeley News.

Education, Issues, UC Berkeley

Here’s an interesting commentary today by Lainey Feingold in the BeyondChron blog, postulating that the actions of Ally Jacobs and Lisa Campbell that lead to the discovery of kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard support the controversial “wise Latina” statement made earlier this year (at UC Berkeley, no less) by then Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

But Jacobs’ hunch echos the one line of Justice Sotomayor’s stellar written and spoken record that was grist for the right-wing media mill: “I would hope,” Sotomayor said during a speech on the UC Berkeley campus in 2001, “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” After several others in law enforcement let Garrido slip through their fingers, the richness of Jacobs’ and Campbell’s experience saved the life of a young woman and her two young daughters.

via BeyondChron: San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily News.

Issues, People, UC Berkeley