From "He Built a House With No Doors and Windows You Can’t Close/Inspired by homes open to their natural settings, an architect designed a house on the Greek island of Corfu with minimal barriers from the 'wild landscape'" (NYT)(free-access link).
Makes me think of that Paul Mazursky movie "Tempest," with John Cassavetes as an architect who's fed up with New York City and relocates — with adolescent daughter Molly Ringwald in tow — to a Greek island....
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40 comments:
I imagine goats in the kitchen would be a dream scenario for a young Greek male. It might even entice him to finally leave his brothers behind.
"...being so connected to the land is worth it"
Then why build a house at all? If "being so connected" is so rewarding, have a seat in the sand and enjoy it.
A kitchen with goats in it would be perfect for someone with Althouse's sense of smell.
A house with no doors and windows you can’t close.
Isn’t that every house? In my house there is no door and/or window I can’t close. I don’t get it.
An important point glossed over: Being a voluble iconoclast has made Piers Taylor quite wealthy. He is not obliged by financial restraints to live year round anywhere. When the season inevitably changes or storms erupt, when conditions make that land-connected house uncomfortable or even dangerous, no dearth of funds will prevent Taylor and family relocating to more congenial quarters. Nor do the furnishings and fixtures within those permeable walls represent a man's life achievements -- everything is easily replaceable for the ruling class.
Oh, for fuck's sake, that title needs an actual editor to work on it. Does the NYTimes employ those any longer or do they get their degrees from Clown College?
"Oh, for fuck's sake, that title needs an actual editor to work on it...."
I know. Took me a while to let go of my first understanding, that the house had "No ... Windows You Can’t Close" — replete with double negative — and to see the "No" as limited to the doors and the windows as just "Windows You Can’t Close."
Poor Molly, she did not make the main character opening credits.
Gena Rowlands delivers my favorite line in Tempest: "I gotta pee."
Everything went to hell when doors and windows came along. Better to enter through a hole in the roof like in the good old days in dear old Çatalhöyük.
"Poor Molly, she did not make the main character opening credits."
That's her first movie. She was 13.
More like this picture painted of Medieval society:
"In the castle sits the baron, with his children on his lap, and his wife leaning on his shoulder; the troubadour sings, and the liege and the demoiselle exchange a glance of love. The castle is the home of music and chivalry and family affection ; the convent is the home of religion and of art. That the people cower in their wooden huts, half starved, half frozen, and wolves sniff at them through the c[rac]ks in the walls. The convent prays and the castle sings ; the cottage hungers and groans and dies."*
* " The Martyrdom of Man." By Winwood Reade. New York : Charles P. Somerby, 1876
I lived in a house for a few years with no front door and windows so drafty they might as well have been open. It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer, but I was on drugs and didn't mind too much. I vastly prefer a normal house now. My mental image of Corfu is that it is an absolute tourist trap filled with working class chavs from Ireland and the UK, like a Greek Lanzarote.
We are post-pandemic....again.
The "Fresh Air Movement" of the 1920s was a response to public health concerns, particularly following the 1918 influenza pandemic, which highlighted the dangers of poor indoor air quality and the importance of ventilation. This movement encouraged people to keep windows open to allow fresh air into homes and buildings, which influenced the design of heating systems, including the oversizing of radiators and boilers to compensate for heat loss due to open windows.
The movement was also linked to broader public health efforts, such as the open-air school movement, which aimed to improve children's health by exposing them to fresh air and sunlight.>
The headline is correct. He has chain link fence style doors and windows he can close and lock.
John Cassavetes will always be Franko from the Dirty Dozen.
Be gone
Test.
That is why I flunked out of Hogwarts.
Gerald Durell, in "My Family and Other Animals," wrote of growing up on Corfu.
unitalic
As far as outside kitchens, I’ve seen that in South America and in AZ trailers where the inhabitants move their cooking outdoors so their trailer doesn’t heat up. No goat shit on the floor (because how else would the guy know they had visited) but you can’t have all the amenities rich folks have.
That's great. Id love something like that. It must be nice to live in a climate where you don't have to worry about freezing to death or howling rain storms soaking everything, or clouds of mosquitos.
Recently, I was reading about planters in early 19th century jamacia and they had a house that was a wooden platform raised x feet off the ground, with open sides and roll down screens. The bed had mosiquito netting. The overhang kept out the rain.
Personally, I love having the windows open as much as possible, even when its cold. But my wife doesn't. And of course, she wins.
The design of the house reminds me of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese traditional architecture, a style that seeks to blur the boundaries of inside and outside.
BTW that goat shit seeps into the concrete. As climbers, those goats probably eventually shit on everything. Yum.
Summer kitchens used to be a common feature, especially on farmhouses and expecially in the South.
Love the “house with no doors” title right next to a picture of him closing the door.
If there are no insects, then fine. If the goats don’t poop, then fine. But I have no desire for the inside of my house to be totally accessible to nature as it exists.
When the climate cooperates, it's very common to have open-air architecture and lifestyles. If the man wants to live with goats coming in and out, I guess that's his business. It wouldn't be my choice, though, they have terrible manners.
You could never build a house like that here. It would be a total code violation.
My take on this story (for which I have zero proof) is this:
This guy is trying to unload this white elephant (probably because of Trump’s tariffs, since eveything ultimately is Trump’s fault). So he got a friend of a friend to entice a NYT naïf to write a glowing story about a truly ugly house. But hey, free trip to Corfu. So win win.
I've had goats in my kitchen in Ireland. You could tell where they had been because they tracked baking flour all around the house. Little cloven footprints on the beds and furniture.
Just make sure the police don't find out about the goats in the bedroom ...
Let me just add this. That kitchen has the same roof as a warehouse I used to work in many years ago. Open air - almost exactly like that kitchen. We didn’t have goat shit but we had pigeon shit everywhere. It was disgusting. But they loved sitting on those beams. And this roof is over an area where there’s food? OMG. You ever get invited to his place, Door Dash.
corfu seems a nice respite from the rest of the world, but science has shown us, we don't need to live that way,
no roof, thats crazy
They changed the headline: He Built a House With Doors and Windows That You Can’t Close
RCOCEAN @ 11:14am,
Our house in Maridi (South) Sudan had a screen windows but no glass, plastic, or shutters. A fairly large overhang of the eaves *mostly* worked to keep the rain out.
The headline now makes no sense. As someone else mentioned, there’s a photo of the guy closing the chain link door. What a mess.
Quote from the article:
“The 2,700-square-foot house is dug into a hillside and can be only partially enclosed with metal screens and plastic curtains.”
Plastic curtains? So environmentally friendly. I’m assuming those are repurposed shower curtains (to keep the rain out) or shower curtain type plastic.
I googled Corfu. Beautiful. Apparently there’s only one really ugly spot in the whole place and that’s where this guy chose to build his Corfu Alcatraz. To each his own.
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