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"Not Built in a Day," started in 2008, is my personal blog about architecture, urbanism, and the built environment.  I also enjoy reviewing books, films, and exhibitions, and write travel descriptions of my time abroad and in new cities around the US.  My personal design work can be viewed on my Tumblr.



Caroline S. Lebar, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is a licensed architect working in Silicon Valley, with a focus on historic preservation, higher education, and K-12 public schools.  Her work includes architectural design, construction administration, research, and teaching.  She has been working with CAW Architects since 2013, where she has led the design and construction of the major renovation of historic Frost Amphitheater at Stanford University.  Her other projects include renovated library, administration, student services, and arts buildings for East Side Union High School District in San Jose; award-winning historic preservation work for private clients in Palo Alto; and many other projects in the area.  Previously, she worked with C3D Architecture in New York City.

Caroline is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) with a Master of Architecture (M.Arch.) degree.  Her previous roles include Curator of the GSAPP Slide and Video Library, the school's teaching and research image collection; architecture instructor at Duke University's TIP Summer Studies Program at Rice University; and various other teaching and administrative positions.  She received a dual A.B. from Duke University in Art History, Concentration in Architecture, and in Philosophy, where her undergraduate thesis discussed the urbanism of medieval monastic architecture in the city of Rome.

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

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Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s.  Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion.  In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects.  Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali...
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Vertical Bike Rack

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The work of our hands! A little backstory:  We bought two bikes as soon as we could after moving here, so we could both bike to work.  After a few uneventful months of chaining up our bikes next to our car in the carport of our apartment building, Justin's bike was stolen.  (Mine was mysteriously left behind, together with Justin's pannier, which the thieves helpfully folded up and placed on top of my bike.  My only guess is that the chain holding my bike was harder to cut than the chain on Justin's.)  Since then, we've kept our bikes inside, hauling them up and down two flights of stairs to our third-floor apartment every time we take them out, which is usually a few times a week.  Ugh.  Better than buying a new bike every few months, though. We needed a rack that would keep the bikes off the floor, off the walls, and in as small a footprint as possible, without requiring us to drill into or otherwise damage the walls (or floor or ceiling). ...
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From the Architectural Archives: Decoy Houses

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Did you grow up with a "haunted house" in your neighborhood?  It turns out that some buildings that look like houses aren't really houses at all, but are instead the haunts of infrastructure.  I first learned about these decoy houses from BLDGBLOG (Geoff Manaugh's excellent and thought-provoking blog) and found the idea too fascinating to pass over.  Hidden among the ordinary houses in ordinary neighborhoods, buildings that look like houses to the casual observer are actually power substations, water pump stations, subway vents or exits, and more.  Some have been built this way from scratch in order to appease neighbors.  Others are ex-houses, converted from real houses into shells in order to conceal infrastructure or preserve the historic character of a neighborhood.  All of them are a bit spooky.  Here are few for your consideration. Image courtesy of Autopilot via Wikipedia 58 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY This is an ex-townhouse , built ...
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