Poirer's Diner circa 1974. Photo by Richard J.S. Gutman

The historic Poirier’s Diner (a 1947 Kullman, the second Diner in Rhode Island to be individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places) is on the move!

For more than 50 years, and under many different names, such as “Armand’s, Krystal’s, the Top Hat, Arnold’s and most recently, the El Faro, the Diner served the working men and women of Olneyville at its location on Atwells Avenue at Eagle Square. Saved from the wrecking ball when Eagle Square was mostly demolished, on this coming Tuesday the 13th, the Diner will be placed on a truck and rolled down the block to its new home at 1380 Westminster Street on Providence’s historic West Side.

Developer Jon Özbek has begun a full scale renovation of the diner with the help of General Contractor Stack Design Build of Providence, the RI Historic Preservation & Heritage Commission, the Providence Revolving Fund, and MODA, LLC. This project represents a significant investment in the City, while it will also create new jobs.  The Diner will be a welcome addition to the burgeoning West Side business community.

This restaurant will be the fourth collaboration between Jon Özbek and Michael Sears, who together have brought Loie Fuller’s, The Avery, and Ama’s to the West Side.  The Diner will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, 7 days a week. And it will feature  an updated version of classic American Diner fare, along with a full bar and outdoor patio seating.  It is expected to open in the Spring / Summer of 2012.

The Diner is scheduled to make it’s way down Westminster St. between 9 and 10 am tomorrow morning.  We are very excited to be a part of such an undertaken here at Stack and look forward to a successful project.  Come on down if you’re in the neighborhood – it’s sure to be a treat!

The charge for non-students is $20 and includes wine & beer. Not only will you be able to eat & drink & schmooze with the hip-happenin’ ABWxD crowd, but you can do it in style at the coolest pile of recycled steel in Providence.

The twisting concrete form connects the buildings elegantly

From Studio Bellecour, a green office building in Toulouse, France

Things being destroyed, very slowly. The sound effects are a bit much, but still, awesome.

Flickr user theclosedloop, via the Industrial Designers’ Society of America, reminds us that “there is no away”

Google Earth gets even more real

Google has added real-time weather monitoring to Google Earth. Representing environmental data is a complex design challenge–it often requires splitting up information between different views — but Google appears to be taking the comprehensive approach. This will be fun to follow in the next few years as it gets even more sophisticated. (Treehugger)

HVAC "Magic Box" for super-efficient spaces

At the Box Office, Stack installed efficient heat pumps and energy recovery ventilators, allowing for a tight envelope with excellent indoor air quality. These are two separate units. Equipment developed for the Passivhaus standard combines these two functions into one “Magic Box” that performs heating, cooling, and conditioned ventilation, all in one unit, saving energy and space.

Circulus at the disused Seeley G. Mudd Library at Pomona College

Art student Sam Starr built a small velodrome in a disused library at Pomona College. The project riffs off the idea of circulation — of bicycles, of books, of bloodflow in exercise — and simultaneously touches on the relationship between old and new media. Regardless, its a beautiful structure.

A boat!

Workers restoring the World Trade Center site found an 18th century ship buried in the muck.  BLDG Blog explores what it means to find ships and wharves suspended beneath the foundations of our cities.

Plastiki lands in Australia

A few months ago, a group of sailors departed from San Francisco on a trip to cross the Pacific Ocean, with a stop at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, to raise awareness about plastic and waste. Their vessel? A catamaran made entirely of recycled soda bottles. Last week, they arrived in Australia. A staggering feat of seamanship, resourcefulness, and commitment to the environment.

While good news from the Gulf appeared on the horizon this week with the successful capping of the Deepwater Horizon well, the above simulation underscores how serious the situation still is. The simulation follows the release of 8 million particles into the currents of the Gulf and Eastern Atlantic.

From Guatemala, news that a terrifyingly enormous sinkhole swallowed an entire factory, which was fortunately closed. The thing is reportedly 60 feet across and 300 feet deep — about as deep as the Statue of Liberty is tall.

The sinkholes — which occur regularly in Central America and Florida, among other places, are a result of the underlying Karst topography. Water (often from leaking infrastructure) dissolves the limestone bedrock, creating a cavity. Additional saturation — in this case provided by the destructive Tropical Storm Agatha — can cause the soil structure to collapse into the void. (Infrastructurist)

This guy got pretty lucky. And possibly didn’t even notice.

Some building scientists have done a study on the effectiveness of sticky rice as a mortar ingredient in traditional Chinese buildings. A pretty cool example of simple but secretly sophisticated technology, especially in earthquake-prone China. (Inhabitat)

And finally, because I can’t seem to leave this story alone, a visualization of what the BP oil spill would do to your region: If It Was My Home. Makes the magnitude of it a bit more real, notwithstanding their neglect of the subjunctive.

The mighty Blackstone in downtown Pawtucket on Wednesday (Greater City Providence)

Congratulations to SANAA, winners of the 2010 Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor.

With 3D printing technology emerging, it's only a matter of time before buildings get printed out. (via BLDBBLOG)

There’s more below the fold….

From the New York Times, a gallery of unlikely homes. This home in Missouri is built into a sandstone cave.

ElementSix Advertising creates a cool and ephemeral campaign in the snow.

At Stack, we’re all about construction, but every once in a while it’s nice to check out the other side of the coin: choreographed destruction, set to opera. (Virginia DOT)

Another “best architecture of the decade” list, with intriguing choices like the Large Hadron Collider and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (mammoth.us)

GOOD Magazine explores what makes a city bicycle friendly, with some accidental insights into the nature of all good design: “Each element should help us understand the system on a grand scale, give the user the right amount of appropriately timed information, and be very deliberate and unobtrusive.”

An Albany, NY, grocery store becomes one of the first in the nation to be powered by a fuel cell. Tax credits to UTC, the manufacturer, helped the new technology make sense. (Green Inc.)

Out of Denmark, the 2006 Samso Energy Academy by Arkitema. Samso’s commitment to renewable energy was profiled in a 2008 New Yorker piece by Elizabeth Kolbert, and demonstrates how sustainability is an integrated challenge: it demands infrastructure and architecture working together.

Finally, the blog of a small Providence furniture designer–it’s the presence of so many small and innovative providers that makes Providence an interesting place to work. (bilt furniture)

Check out these photos of the Containers to Clinics prototype canopy:

The completed canopy. Note the water drain in the center of the photo.

An alternate view of the canopy

The Stack DB install team - Jay Cox-Chapman, Andy Keating, and Will Lippitt.

Environmental Journal – Container-Turned-Clinic Set for Haiti

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Above: The Third & The Seventh, an astonishing, entirely computer-generated film by Alex Roman. The detail is incredible, and more so when you find out it was created by one person. Watch it fullscreen.

From the beautiful-architectural-drawings file: Original blueprints for the Eiffel Tower.

What does it mean to be a blind architect? The LA Times finds out.

A strange and atmospheric set of photos from an abandoned psychiatric hospital building.

The world’s strongest man, pound-for-pound, has died at 104.