The private lives of surfaces
are innocent, not devious.
Take the one-dimensional
belief of enamel in itself,
the furious autonomy
of luster (crush a pearl—
it’s powder), the whole
curious seamlessness
of how we’re each surrounded
and what it doesn’t teach.

- Kay Ryan

The fact of the matter is that when I said I created this blog to gather research for my thesis I was full of crap. I the thesis was not the purpose. I am a hunter and a gatherer of ideas by nature and the research doesn’t stop when the research project does. So … here some research … for no purpose in particular.

“Suppose that Architecture draws a circle around itself and proclaims – imperious Architecture! – that everything inside the circle is Architecture and everything outside is not. From a great distance – from, say, a picnic bench set up in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility – this circle appears to be a sharp, unambiguous demarcation; an impenetrable line of continuous length and no width. There is no mistaking what lies inside the circle, be it the Pazzi Chapel or Fallingwater, for what lies outside – the realm of bookkeepers, bumblebees, and subatomic particles.
As we approach more closely the line swells and blurs. What we have taken for a wall, inert and opaque, is now more accurately described as a zone several miles across, possessing a breathable atmosphere, and teeming with life.

In A Hut of One’s Own we will take a stroll through these borderlands that surround Architecture – a region of structures and ideas, a wasteland of heterodoxy defined simultaneously by its proximity to Architecture and its proximity to everything else. On our way we will discover simple structures: shacks, tea houses, follies, casitas. Here and there, we will observe ritual practices dedicated to various “Gods,” “Goods,” or goods, and we will (over)hear the practitioners of construction, art and biology discuss beauty satisfaction, freedom, survival and ethics.

Whenever we wander very near to what Architecture most certainly is, we will catch glimpses of shadowy figures slipping out – as if to a secluded dacha, where they have arranged a clandestine rendezvous with other partisans and malcontents, and then slipping back in again. These figures are the protagonists of our story.

This book, then is about eccentrics and recluses, hut dwellers and ne’er-do-wells, a story about lives scribbled in the margins of architecture and history, of huts and follies that would be forgotten but for the curious way misanthropy occasionally turns beneficent.

More than only a story, this book is also an essay that attempts to overturn Architecture’s victory over Individual Experience. Here we will look at dwellings that were not well attuned to the architecture of there era and at their builders, whose lives may instead have been ahead of their time, as if their very inability to march in step raised exactly those cultural issues that later on became helpful.

While this collections limits will appear arbitrary, from my point of view all of the sights are encountered on our stroll – the follies and tea huts, their rituals and antirituals (together with the ideas people have held about them) – have this in common: all acquired their significance during times of cultural transition, when one picture of the world overlapped with its successor. And it is this, in turn, which gives purpose and prejudice to our journey. Right now, comparable transitions are at work; right now, shadowy figures are moving from the circle of Architecture to rendezvous with primitive huts and their avant-gardes, with their makers and denizens.

I know, for I am one of them.”

There. That may as well serve as a manifesto for my next period, be it a week, a month, a year or many. I’m struggling right now to figure out how to fit my three years of intense indoctrination (aka architecture school) in with the values and ideas I held before I found it and with the culture I feel most comfortable with now that I’m again outside of its limits. … Yeah. I don’t have an answer to that yet.

If you’d asked me six months ago what I was doing with myself after graduation I would have told you unblinkingly that I was heading back to the Gulf Coast to work in Biloxi for a year or two before writing my Fulbright application to study flood control issues and environmentalist architecture in the Netherlands. If you’d asked me three months ago I’d have said that I really hoped to get a job in Biloxi but … who knew. And now … I’m certainly no where near Biloxi. I have, in fact, returned to my native Wisconsin, to finally get some experience of living here, one might say. That’s not to say that the deep south isn’t still in my future but … I’m settled here for the moment. Here in La Crosse. I’m working in Hippy Dippy heaven for Whole Trees Architecture and Construction where the office is a green roofed straw bale shack with two tiny PV panels for power. Of course, there is still wireless internet for my laptop. Even the new back-to-the-land movement can’t survive without their Wi-Fi. But … its great. I’m doing everything from autoCAD (designing, not just redlines) to grant applications to answering emails.

Time’s been flying. I’ve worked three weekends out of six weeks of work now and there’s never a shortage of things to do. At home I’ve been actively nesting – getting things arranged and putting up pictures on the walls. Also I got out my violin again. That was one of the worst things I did in Grad School – stop playing. So I’m re acquainting myself with the Suzuki repertoire again. And, naturally I’m no stranger to the farmers market, grocery coop and library. As far as social life goes … I’m working on that. For the moment, that’s what cell phones are for. Anyway, despite the handicap of not affording internet for my apartment and feeling rather guilty about using work time for play I’m going to try to re-activate the blog. For anyone who was tapping their toes for it to return … hi there. I’m back.

Stephen Crane
1899

Medgar Evers once said “I love Mississippi. I choose not to live anywhere else. I don’t know if I’m going to heaven or hell, but I’m going from Jackson.”

Mississippi a state in 1817, the 20th in the union.

BlackPop:
of 82 counties, 22 are more than 50% black. In 1940 the whole state was more than 50% black but the “decline in black population since then is testimony to the out-migration that lasted until the 1970’s.”

“To comprehend Mississippi, the outlander and native alike must recognize that it is still an emphatically white/black society, and that its white people and black people are deeply bound together – and, together, to the land.”

So Much More. Including the cold hard facts on why Biloxi is such a gambling centre, and why my disapproval is going to do absolutely nothing in the world to change that. Its good for me to read, anyway.

Due to the prevalence of communication by train, mail, telephone and telegraph during the _________, not to mention the pervasive influence of plan books, house styles began to be universal across the country and less subject to regional variations. Even the Georgian influence had been most notable on the East Coast and common in other parts of the country only in homes of the upper class. Victorian styles, on the other hand, were relatively uniform throughout the US.

The second half of the nineteenth century had seen upper and middle class households engaging in, “a complex lifestyle that involved rooms for special uses, large flatware and china services with many specialized pieces, and numerous furnishings designed for special needs.” Although this had been de rigueur among the wealthy, in the early Victorian period a combination of affordable goods, produced with Industrial Revolution technology, and immigrant labor as domestic help made the formal lifestyle available to most of society from the lower middle class up.

It was not uncommon for a middle class home to boast any or all of the following specialty rooms: “music rooms, reception rooms, conservatories, sitting rooms and butler’s pantries”, as well as one or two small bedrooms for live in servants.

Oh, don't worry ... it continues. On, to find out more about the death of porch living and "earth closets" keep on keepin' on!

Download file

Here's the fun: Download file