Home as Place to Play

These days I find myself with a new model for my approach to learning. The old one was what I think of as "the youthful student approach," where I tried to expose myself as much as possible to the things people have deemed Good and Worthy and Important. It's quite possible the end of this period is marked by the completion, after a year of insistent presence on my nightstand, of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1 (of six—the other five now donated to the library's book sale). Even more than Joyce, Melville or Rabelais, this was the most difficult and unrewarding read of my life. Good, worthy and important, yes. But moving—to me? No.

The new model is about trusting my intuition and really delving into the things I love. Ironically, it's what I've always preached but seldom practiced. "Only the piece of art that touches you the second you see it is the piece worth analyzing." Quote, me. This is certainly not a good attitude for commencing Survey of Art 101, but it does seem like a reasonable approach for a 41-year old, when there doesn't seem to be an extra moment in a week to stop and look up at the stars and when the years start to. . .well, you know.

So these past few weeks, I've been thinking about my love of maps, architectural floor plans and aerial photographs, and have spent some time considering what this is about. I love abstraction, specifically images that are on the edge of or beyond the edge of representation, and for years I have thought that the abstract quality of maps and plans are what interest me. But, my new learning model encouraged me to dig deeper. I found that some of the most abstract images (e.g., an aerial photo of a dead-flat Dakota field where the absolutely regular alternating stripes of green and gold filled the frame) were not as intriguing as photos that included a road or a stream or an unexplainable clump of trees, or where the regularity of the field was severed when it arrived at a serrated cliff. One map of a piazza in Rome made me just want to turn the page of the book, while another of the same place made me. . .well, actually, it made me want to go play there. And although I include both physical play and intellectual play in my definition, I am not speaking metaphorically.

That map made me want to be there playing hide-and-seek, or pretending I was Cary Grant being pursued by the KGB through ancient narrow alleys. As I went through other images, first of plans and maps, and then of actual houses, I realized how a common thread of most architecture I love addresses a desire to play, to fantasize, to disconnect with reality, to live in a drama of my own creation.

As an architect who does almost exclusively houses, I realize that this is not a characteristic most people would identify as something they want in their houses. People require such diverse stuff from the places in which they live: Status, humbleness, comfort, serenity, cacophony, light, dark, and a million other things. And although the establishment of a home is arguably an expression of adulthood, I suggest that more than many of us realize, we also crave a place for our imagination to be nurtured: A place to play. (That doesn't preclude a tower or a room that is painted to look like the inside of a circus tent, but I' m generally talking about a more subtle, sophisticated, suggestive setting for play.)

A highlight of this long, snowy winter was an overnight stay with Philosophers on Holiday and Brian Johnson in southern Wisconsin at the Seth Peterson Cottage (pictured below) designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1958.

I've always been skeptical of the analysis of Wright's work (even by himself) as primarily a metaphor for domesticity. He was a failure at marriage and fatherhood, his client base included many single, gay, lesbian and childless couples, and he was working at a time when the family was being radically redefined. I think his architecture is an expression of more primal motifs, and many can be seen in this cottage. Within a tiny thousand square feet, the house is at once cave, tree house and tent. Its stone floors and base suggest permanence, its poorly detailed wood windows and furniture suggest (and exhibit) decay. Its accommodation of kitchen, bath and storage are done in an off-hand way, as if to say Wright had more important things to accomplish than all those silly accoutrements the Hold Everything catalog would have us believe are the foundation of our existence. The ceiling is alternately slightly too low or too high for what one would expect; the fireplace is startlingly large. In general, the house is raw and sexy—it's all breast and bicep and buttocks. I would guess Seth Peterson's ghost smiles more when his guests indulge in the bacchanal of a drunken game of charades than when they spend the weekend reviewing financial statements.

When I think of the Seth Peterson cottage, I realize I spend much of my energy accommodating complex programs and making sure there are no surprises for my clients; it's an assumption that the building must perform like a Swiss watch. We employ surveyors, civil, structural, mechanical and acoustical engineers, landscape architects, lighting designers, kitchen designers, interior designers, pool consultants, feng shui consultants. But right now I think of Seth Peterson's beautifully lacy, light, leaky windows. I would no more think of designing the windows of a house literally from scratch than I would propose to design a car for Mitsubishi. But that's what Wright did, because he wanted to make sure that looking through the windows of the Seth Peterson Cottage felt like looking through the branches of a tree house. And that, he accomplished beautifully. This house, certainly, is a place to play.

For the Curious

• Seth Peterson Cottage Conservancy
• Seth Peterson Cottage photographs