Best martial arts studio 2013: Hiromi T’ai Chi

Hiromi T’ai Chi 609 E. Market St. (877) 880-2479 hiromitaichi.org Runner-up: Charlottesville Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu 601 Concord Ave. 825-6202 cvillebjj.com T’ai Chi Ch’uan is Chinese for “supreme ultimate fist.” We can’t help but think that sounds pretty intense. But the practice is actually quite pensive. Readers turn to Hiromi T’ai Chi for strength-building in both mind […]

June ABODE: The Scene

(Photo by John Robinson) ABODE NEWS I’m your density Plenty of people live on the Downtown Mall, but for the entire month of May, Stephen Balut took that notion to an extreme when he took up residence in the front window of Chroma Projects. A painter who’s been represented by the gallery since shortly after […]

Glass acts

It’s easy to forget they’re there—after all, you can see right through them. But make no mistake: There aren’t many parts of your house more important than the windows. They affect the way it feels to be inside and the way the place appears from outside—so keeping them looking sharp is a must. They’re a […]

Design, living and trends for home and garden

“As wood grew scarce in England and France, laws were decreed limiting its use among commoners…In the mid-1600s, the British authorities decreed that Virginians who owned a hundred acres or more must build in brick.”—James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-made Landscape Kansas City, come to meHow one […]

News and ideas for sustainable living

StreamWatch volunteer training Get in the flow of cleaning up local water If you join StreamWatch’s band of volunteers, you’ll collect samples of Sowbugs, fly larvae and other creepy crawlies to check the Rivanna’s livability. If you were leafing through this year’s picks for the C-VILLE 20 last month, you may have noticed John Murphy, […]

Design, Living and Trends for Home and Garden

The most interesting thing about faux simplicity is that it’s anything but simple, actually requiring more trouble and expense than most decorating styles. The aesthetic isn’t based on giving up possessions but on having lots of custom closets and cabinets that conceal them from view.—Winifred Gallagher, House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live […]

News and Ideas For Sustainable Living

Wage clean air with the peace lily and other houseplants. Places in a planned utopiaBelvedere development will sell a green vision Can you create a sustainable community nearly out of thin air? Local development company Stonehaus is betting it can. Its 675-unit Belvedere development broke ground on May 10, beginning a five- to six-year buildout […]

Style File: Design, living and trends for home and garden

But is it design?“Modernism” shows museumgoers how we lost our frills These days, we’re used to living with a mix of the modernist and the traditional. Just look at the Downtown Mall, where the blunt outlines of the fountain in Central Place sit within view of many century-old facades. It’s easy to forget that modernism […]