Every
so often I find a book that is exceptionally good, to me at least. A couple
weeks ago while rummaging through a couple boxes of books at my favorite book
store, (City Books) I came across a book with a nice looking dust cover,
pebbled paper with a watercolor of a house on it. It was entitled The
Most Beautiful House in the World. It was written by Witold Rybczynski.
(1989) The paper was ivory colored and there were small pencil drawings that
accompanied the story. I added it to my pile, never realizing that it would be
the best book in the pile.
At
home, I started looking through the books reading a little bit of each of them.
When I picked up this book, I stuck with it until I had finished it. The others
were forgotten.
Witold had a
vision of building a boat, something a bit larger than a row boat or a canoe,
something seaworthy. He had spent years drawing up designs, changing them as
his desires changed. He decided that he would need a place to build this craft
and so, being an architect he started designing a boat house.
This
wonderful book takes from his early days of designing his boat through the
design and construction of a place to build it and eventually, the changing of
the shop into a home. As he tells this story, he also tells us about how
buildings are designed and how they are made to fit into the neighborhood He
also explains how some designers make buildings which don’t fit into the
neighboring structures. He tells to us how cathedrals are basically just large
barns. He explains about feng-shui and
how it is important to make a house that fits into the landscape, spending 5 or
6 pages describing it and giving examples. He tells us about famous architects
and how they put their ideas onto paper and eventually into the ground.
While
he builds his shop, he changes his ideas about how it should be built
frequently. This is all part of the process of designing a proper building.
Usually when he is working he is filling someone else’s desires and this can
become frustrating, not so much for him who needs only an eraser and a pencil
to change things, but for the builders who might have to remove something
already built. There are times while building his boathouse when he has to do
just that.
In
the end, once the shop has been built and he drags out the boat plans he had
drawn years ago, he realizes that he no longer wants to build a boat, he has
already built something with his hands, the shop. He and his wife decide to
change it into a house.
During
this process, he explains the things that make a house a home. It isn’t so much
the size, shape or design of the building as it is the way it is lived in. He
writes about how houses are personalized and eventually start to resemble their
owners. He takes us to a small house built by a man in Los Amusgos, Mexico. The
place was small and it started out just a concrete slab in a tight community.
The owner and builder slowly started with walls and a roof, some of the walls
just plastic. Over time the house became more solid and the outside was
decorated with plants, spices and flowers which helped give the house a lived
in look and also shielded it from the street that sat beside it. The inside was
decorated with pictures of the children and by the children. Over time, the
house was personalized. The house is still being built, it is a process in the
works but still, it is a beautiful house, it is a home!
In
this book Witold has taken us to Ludwig’s castle, Neuschwanstein, Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Fallingwater, a small house in a crowded city and to his own house,
not to mention many, many others. Cathedrals
through barns, he covered it all. In the process he explains quite elegantly
how a house becomes a home. Witold also has
a great way of tell a story, it was a book I didn’t want to end!
Not only that
but the copy I got really looks and feels nice also, I put those things high as
part of my appreciation of books!
1 comment:
Sounds very interesting
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