Friday 10 April 2009

NOTES FROM, "A Hut of One's Own: Outside the Circle of Architecture", by Ann Cline

I have found this book so so interesting with regards to our project.

The blurb on the back says "The ostensible subject of this inquiry is the primitive hut, a one room structure built of common or rustic materials.. What are the limits of architecture? What ghosts inhabit it's edges? What does it mean to dwell outside it?"

The first chapter is entitled, "Primitive Huts, Life in the Margins".

It talks largely about hermits and hermitage in China and in Ancient Greece, and two movements who called themselves Recluse Poets and Desert Fathers, who had different reasons and approaches to hut building and dwelling.

She quotes some guy called Lao Tzu (or Laozi) alot. He wrote about hermit time, and reasons to go and hide away in a hut.






(This tells you who Thomas Merton is)



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(This tells you who James Agee is incase you're interested)



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All this made me start to think about the homeless and how their appearance seems to have changed over the centuries. They seem to become more and more decorated and shrouded with belongings as Western society has become more and more consumer culture obsessed and more and more "stuff" is produced and disributed.
This might be horribly innacurate, but tramps used to be barefoot and dressed in rags, but now they seem to carry around an immense amount of stuff, mostly things other people have discarded, so they become synonymous with waste- waste people and waste packaging. They end up with the excess stuff.


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