A House and its Atmosphere

This book, as Ben Jacks points out, sits within the tradition of those reflective or biographical accounts of designers and other thinkers who use a building project as a vehicle for contemplation. Here, as found in Michael Pollan’s A Place of My Own, Jacks describes the process of siting, designing, constructing and inhabiting a house, pausing at times to introduce the thinkers that most architects or their students will be familiar with: Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter Zumthor, Norberg-Schultz, Christopher Alexander, Gaston Bachelard and others. The house as eventually built, a “pavilion in the forest”, emerges through Jacks’ meanderings and meditations on the site – sloping woodland which meets the sea on Deer Isle, Maine. Jacks describes driving there, camping there, drinking coffee there (he does seem to drink a lot of coffee), cutting trails through fallen trees, sitting, watching, listening, identifying key features such as HOME CULTURES VOLUME 17, ISSUE 3 PP 233–237 REPRINTS AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHERS PHOTOCOPYING PERMITTED BY LICENSE ONLY © 2021 INFORMA UK LIMITED, TRADING AS TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP.