Rooms to Live In: An Architect’s Recollections

ABSTRACT

Our homes are our unwritten autobiographies, the places to which we are most emotionally attached. As such, our houses should be as unique as we are, satisfying our deepest desires and enriching our lives in our specific time and place. The purpose of this essay was to determine what factors, both physical and emotional, make it possible to design such unique houses for ourselves. For an architect-designed home, what information must be discovered and revealed to the architect to achieve this goal? The author discusses the process he employed over 40 years of designing houses that their owners loved and cherished, beginning with having clients remember and analyze their favorite childhood places. He suggests that “only a detailed, intimate, and uniquely specific description will tender a unique house,” and that “the most valuable guide to what makes you comfortable” – more than photos, magazine clippings, or thousands of links to shelter websites – is the memory of that special childhood place. Determining what made that place so special, he concludes, is the beginning of our journey toward a new home that is as unique as we are.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychology of home
• custom homes
• designing unique homes
• architect-designed houses
• designing your own home

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Frank Harmon

Frank Harmon, FAIA, has designed sustainable modern buildings across the Southeast for 40 years. He discovered architecture as a child playing in the streams and woods of his native Greensboro, North Carolina. His work engages pressing contemporary issues such as placelessness, sustainability, and restoration of cities and nature.

The buildings he designs are specific to their sites and use materials such as hurricane-felled cypress and rock from local quarries to connect them to their landscapes. Airy breezeways, outdoor living spaces, deep overhangs, and wide lawns embody the vernacular legacy of the South while maintaining a distinguished modernism.

Frank is a graduate of the Architectural Association in London and a professor at the North Carolina State University College of Design. He has taught at the Architectural Association and has served as a visiting critic at Harvard, the University of Virginia, and Auburn University’s Rural Studio.

His buildings are frequently published and have garnered over 200 design awards. He recently received the AIANC Gold Medal for Architectural Design. ORO Editions published his new book Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See in October 2018.