Transition Culture

HomeWork - Lloyd Kahn (2004)

HomeWork - Lloyd Kahn. Shelter Press (2004)

‘Shelter’ was a book that changed many people’s lives. Arising from the Back to the Land movement of the late 1960’s, ‘Shelter’ was essentially a scrapbook of photos, drawings, stories and anecdotes focusing on how people around the world (but mostly the US) created their own shelter. From timber frame to strawbale (the first reference to strawbale building in print…), to people living in trucks and tipis, this is a book which deeply touched everyone who read it. I have had my copy for 12 years now and still open it and find stuff I hadn’t noticed before. It is a treasure trove of ideas, and of inspiration.

Thirty years later comes the sequel, ‘Home Work – handbuilt shelter’, and it was worth the wait. ‘Home Work’ takes the same format, it is large, has more pictures than text, and is again a celebration of the shelter-making gene we all carry. There are tree houses that will take your breath away, some amazing yurt structures, some gorgeous strawbale houses, cob revivalists Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley put in an appearance, there are domes, barns, gypsy wagons, and, as in ‘Shelter’, peoples’ stories.

One of the things that is so touching about this book is that after Shelter, Kahn travelled around the States looking for more handbuilt homes, and many of the ones he found had been directly inspired by ‘Shelter’. Indeed, in some of their stories you can see a photo of their copy of the book, all dog-eared and held together with string, but still a revered object.

One of my favourite stories is about a couple who set out to built a log house for $6,000. When the digger man turned up to build their foundations, he looked at these obviously totally inexperienced would-be-builders and said “you kids gonna build this house yourselves?� When they replied that that was indeed the plan, he thought for a while and then said “well, you know how a mouse eats an elephant don’t you?� “No�, they replied, how’s that?� “A little bit at a time�, he replied. That became their motto during their house building, which took them a long time but turned out beautifully, and they did it with no mortgage.

Being mortgage free is the aim of many of the people in this collection. As one of the builders puts it, “the world would be so much better if people would learn to do things for themselves instead of being intimidated by the “professionals�, government regulations and the prevailing mindset of our so-called culture into thinking that the only way to have a house is to be a wage slave until you can afford to buy one�. This book also beautifully presents the case that if people are allowed (or allow themselves) to create their own shelter, the beauty and the diversity of forms they create are breathtaking.

This book is as much about lifestyle as it is about building. These houses arise out of a do-it-yourself ethic, of self-reliance and simple living. Like ‘Shelter’, it is often the small details that just catch your eye as you skip past them and you have to go back and look at them in more detail, a beautiful staircase, a window detail, a particular arrangement of shingles on a roof. You could look at this book a hundred times and still find new ideas, such is its richness.

The author refers to Home Work as a “celebration of the human spirit�, and its 244 pages indeed live up to that billing. It is a reminder of how different the world could be if we once again took responsibility for creating our own shelter. If you want to build a house, a shed, a treehouse, a yurt, a house, this book will give you so many ideas that you will probably have to build 3 just to get them all out of your system.

‘Shelter’, often imitated, never equalled, now has a successor, every bit as wonderful. It was worth the long wait, like a good building these things can’t be rushed. Get yourself a copy, and luxuriate in it, as you would a long, warm, bubbly bath. Delicious.