Matthew’s Blog

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real.

It is by the real that we exist;

it is by the ideal that we live.

~ Victor Hugo
found scrolled around top of the
Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City

Last year, when I needed to go away to think I had gone up the Gunflint Trail to Gunflint Lodge where I would spend a delightful and often pensive weekend by myself in a cabin.  The 10 hours of driving however was a downside.  Then this spring I heard about this company who had built a small "portable" studio or hermitage on the plains in Minnesota.  Wee Houses by Alchemy 

This began the stirrings in my soul.  It brought forth a memory.

I remember some 10 or so years ago when my mother and I went to Chicago’s Science & Industry exhibit about Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian homes.   They had constructed on on the grounds.   These were homes based on simple materials that anyone could purchase and assemble, with the primary building material being concrete blocks.  The idea was to produce  a full home, well-designed, with full interior furniture for a family of 5 for $5,000. A cost that  anaverage American in 1936 could afford.  60 Usonian houses were built.  

I remember looking at that house in amazement: its simplicity; its elegance, its cost effectiveness and wondering why weren’t more of these made?   Well, for one it had no closets and was typical Wright design forcing philosophy, architecture and lifestyle all at once.  I left thinking there has got to be a way to bring these into play in our modern era.  I hadn’t reached the idea of simplicity yet, but admired its effect on me.  

Then last week, I spent two days on retreat at Clare’s Well, a spiritual retreat farm in Annondale MN.  At Clare’s Well there are three hermitages where visitors stays.  All three are designed for simplicity and 1 or 2 people (bed, hotplate, walls, windows, furnace, porch (on two)).   We ate our meals in the farmhouse, but returning to the solitude of a little, simple place of my own was very rewarding.  My view looked out onto the pond.  

This week  Thursday I was perusing the old Home Store at the LindenHills Coop and found this kewl new magazine Ready Made Magazine In it was this full page ad talking about designs for one room retreats.  Neeless to say I bought the magazine. Modular Dwellings MD100 was in www.readymademag.com/store

This has spawned a plethora of surfing the net today as I explored this realm of modular/prefab/modernist dwellings.   

Although no longer $5k to build a simple house, these house kits usually fall under $100k and the small sheds in the $15k range.  

fabprefab – modernist prefab dwellings ~ This is a fabulous resource site that led me to most of my discoveries.

Unit One Cabins and House from Shelter-Kit - basic shelter, no style

MetroShed ~ an innovative shed like structure to create a music room, a study, whatever

Christopher C. Deam Has designed Breckenridge Perfect Cottages™ and can be seen at www.Breckenridgeparkmodels.com