Issue #3 – Home
ISSUE #3:
This week’s featured designs and art consider ideas that shape the meaning of home.
CONTENTS:
• Home for the Aged
• Before and After
• Attic
• Stanley’s Yard
• After Barragan
NEWS AND NOTES:
I sat in with Stephanie Spaulding and Laura Hurwitz again for an episode of Mightier Than The Sword. MTTS is one of several series of Laura’s podcast “The Easy Chair”. It’s hosted by Laura and Steph, and features lively discussions about all things writerly. In MTTS episode 112 we talk about blogs and how (and why) we made them. Tune in!
Recommended reading:
Barragán; The Complete Works, ed. Raúl Rispa, 1995.
Cover art:
Palazzo Porto Festa facade study model
Credits:
Riverbend featured site photo by D. Zervas
All other photographs courtesy of B. Wujcik
Palazzo Porto Festa by Andrea Palladio, Vicenza, Italy 1542
Home for the Aged
Where do you want to live when you are old?
The Eden Alternative is a philosophy of eldercare that emphasizes interaction among older people and the natural and human worlds in order to relieve the kind of suffering that especially afflicts them – loneliness, helplessness, and boredom.
Its guiding principles are illustrative (as is word choice – the aged are referred to with the honorific ‘Elders’,
Before and After
Before, we were itinerant, unattached to things or places or people, and so our habitats were makeshift, improvised, borrowed accommodations. We exchanged them rather easily as circumstances changed. Our place on Eld Street began that way. Although a single family home when built, it was a multifamily house (for a generation) or so when Bruce arrived in New Haven. He,
Attic
Stanley’s Yard
The design of our back yard is never done. There is always a new idea or an improvement to make, but still, many features are old. The Norway maples at the edges have likely been there sixty years or more, as has the neighbor’s garage that sits directly on the property line, and the climbing hydrangea that covers its eastern wall.
Not all have been loved equally.
After Barragán
“Without the desire for God, our planet would be a sorry wasteland of ugliness.”
LUIS BARRAGÁN
Architect of Light and Silence
Luís Barragán, 20th century Mexican architect, landscape architect, and urban designer was unknown internationally until featured in a 1976 exhibition at MOMA in New York. He remained unheralded in his own country for much of his life, even after winning the Pritzker Prize in 1980.
