A Hut of One's Own: Life Outside the Circle of Architecture

by Ann Cline

Book Overview

An exploration of the smallest and simplest of dwellings offers answers to some of the largest and oldest questions about architecture.

This small book on small dwellings explores some of the largest questions that can be posed about architecture. What begins where architecture ends? What was before architecture? The ostensible subject of Ann Cline's inquiry is the primitive hut, a one-room structure built of common or rustic materials...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 026253150X
• ISBN13: 9780262531504
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

First read "The Book of Tea"

I read this book after I spent a quarter researching Traditional Japanese teahouses and their contemporary equivalents at Evergreen State College, and was well prepared for its message. Ann Cline's commentary on architecture and ethics is profound, outside of the times, and certainly out of the realm of America's manufactured-dependent, celebrity hyped culture. Nothing she tells you will make you money or make you famous. But if, like me, you are troubled by architecture that mocks us by flaunting its massive concrete cantilevers or shadows us with its creator's ostentatious erections, then read this book (slowly) and think about building a hut. In your mind.

A Little Treasure

Space is at a premium in my tiny apartment, but there will always be room on my bookshelf for "A Hut of One's Own." Ann Cline's meditation on architecture, art, and culture is fragmented in places, and doesn't deliver big glossy visuals or a knockout blow to the senses. Rather, it's a quiet book that unfolds with fresh opinions, and acute observations. It's thought-provoking reading for artists, architects, and intellectuals of all stripes. I've had the book for years, and still find myself returning to it.