In 1852 the rustic cabin achieves immortality as a place to escape from one’s everyday life when Henry David Thoreau publishes an account of his self-imposed, semi-seclusion on the shore of Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847. There he lived, mostly self-sufficient, having removed himself from “civilized life” to a house he built for himself for […]
In 1753 a Jesuit priest named Marc-Antoine Laugier writes an essay in which he posits a primitive hut, une cabane rustique, as the origin of architecture. The trunks of four trees growing together in a forest form a rough structural framework; above, their branches grow into a perfect triangular pediment; atop this, their leaves provide an […]
After a gap of many years I recently returned to teaching the origins of architecture in an undergraduate history survey. I still call this course “caves to cathedral,” but I don’t actually begin with caves. In fact, my first lecture starts with the Seagram Building, but I’m still considering a new nickname: “hut to Bauhütte.” […]
An article in the New York Times about Derek Diedricken’s Gypsy Junker microshelter reminded me how much I like a hut myself. I didn’t really need reminding–I live with a large Scott Peterman photograph of an ice fishing hut in Maine (Sabbath Day Lake III, 1998)–but the article did get me thinking about how long […]