The December/January issue looks at houses, dreams and asks: what can a house be?
Many people dream of their perfect home. ‘The home, like dreams, is made from residue, familiar objects, bits and pieces, the detritus of life,’ Sam Johnson-Schlee writes in this issue’s keynote, ‘these are the things we assemble around us to create our fantasy environment.’ Homes are the imprints of the people who inhabit them – their pasts as much as their future aspirations.
We shape our homes, yet the symbols and images with which we build them are already set; it takes strength to break apart their solid foundations. Laurie Simmons, the subject of Reputations, isolates some of these ideals from the tangled mess of domesticity: a plush rug, a kitchen island overflowing with food, a perfectly colour-coordinated living room. The way we assemble a home says much about who we are, but more about how we want to be seen.
Few have the resources and ability to realise the house of their dreams, yet the results can be extraordinary. This issue revisits houses designed by architects for themselves, and sometimes their families. The London home of Charles Jencks and Maggie Keswick was an opportunity to manifest the couple’s postmodern fantasies, while in Auroville, Anupama Kundoo experimented with local materials and traditional construction techniques.
Among the shortlisted projects of this year’s AR House awards, some – such as Brillhart Architecture’s Brillhut – are designed for the architects themselves. Others realise the dream of a client, whether that be to create a space for living alongside non-human friends or to transform the interior of a modest row house into a bright and flexible space. Each of them asks a fundamental question: what can a house be?
Lead image: Frederick Kiesler’s Endless House. Credit: © 2022 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna / Photo: Percy Rainford
