I don't need to tell you that Colorado's weather has been a scorcher and that, less metaphorically, parts of the state itself have been scorched, including my sister's neighborhood, Mountain Shadows. Her house was spared, luckily, but this once-handsome area of Colorado Springs will never be the same. The Waldo Canyon fire burned the nearby Flying W Ranch to the ground; a '50s-era dude ranch, it housed many irreplaceable items, including architectural and decorative elements from the long-gone Ute Theater. That fire also threatened the Air Force Academy, a masterpiece of modern design by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The AFA is the state's most significant example of mid-twentieth-century architecture, and Walter Netsch's Chapel is world-renowned. At the end of June, the danger from the approaching flames was so imminent that the campus was... More >>>