310 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Most Beautiful House in the World. By Witold Rybczynski. New York: Viking Penguin, 1989. Pp. 211; bibliography. $18.95. When Witold Rybczynski was thirty-two years old, he was “struck with what seemed an irresistible urge” to build a wooden boat. A professor of architecture at McGill University, he was familiar with plans, blueprints, and modelmaking—and he was a passable carpen ter. But he needed a boatbuilding shed and decided to construct one himself. He bought a plot of land at the corner of an old orchard south of Montreal and with the help of a friend immediately poured the concrete foundation slab. He was then left with the task of designing and building the shed, a project that was gradually trans formed over the course of several years (and enough carpentry to satisfy him for a lifetime) into the design and construction of his own house. This book chronicles Rybczynski’s work and the transforma tion. Rybczynski’s last book was the provocative Home: A Short History of an Idea (New York, 1986), and I can think of no writer better suited to inform and entertain readers with a recounting of a boatbuilding shed-to-house project. As a detailed chronicle of design and construc tion, The Most Beautiful House in the World falls short of Tracy Kidder’s House (New York, 1985), but in other ways is much more satisfying. Kidder tells his story from several points of view—client, architect, and builder—and so does Rybczynski, insofar as he is all three. Since he is by vocation an architect, and a widely read one at that, the reader is provided with a deeper analysis of design intentions and decisions as well as of paths not taken. The shape of the shed and its framing, the slope of its roof, the placement of windows and doors, and the architectural design process permitted Rybczynski to reflect on a variety of topics in the history and theory of architecture: beginning with Nikolaus Pevsner’s famous distinction between “buildings” (a bicycle shed) and “architecture” (Lincoln Cathedral), he considers the invention of the lightweight wooden (or so-called balloon) frame; the history of North American and English barns; the “language” or semiotics of architectural elements and the relation of a building to its context; the relation between the representation of a building in plans, drawings, and models and the completed project; and the writings and work of architecture notables. These digressions—which at times seem rambling if not random— make up the most satisfying sections of the book. Especially interest ing are Rybczynski’s excursions into the anthropology of building, for instance: the Chinese practice offeng-sliui, the siting of a building in the natural landscape according to religious, astrological, and other notions so that the good fortune of its inhabitants and that of the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 311 surrounding community are maximized; the rituals of the Nabdam tribe of northern Ghana for determining the feasibility of a given building site (a chicken is killed on the site; if it dies face down, the site is abandoned); the Greek and Roman practice of hepatoscopy, examining the liver of an animal sacrificed to a particular deity for favorable signs and omens concerning the chosen site; and the Hindu “science of dwelling”—sipasastra—and the rituals associated with the commencement of construction—khal muhrat. These examples re mind us that, throughout history and currently in other cultures, technologically based practices are often associated with symbolic rituals based on beliefs important in these cultures, a theme historians of technology have left largely to anthropologists and scholars of comparative religion like Mircea Eliade. Another digression—the most delightful of the book—reminds us of another neglected theme, the importance of technology toys in shaping the interests and abilities of would-be inventors, engineers, and architects. Rybczynski makes a historical survey of construction toys, from playing cards that might be houses to Friedrich Froebel’s building blocks, Ole Chris tiansen’s Lego blocks, Richter’s tiny cast cement bricks, A. E. Lott’s Italian marble blocks, Meccano and Erector sets, and Lincoln Logs, which the reader learns...
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Jan 1, 2014
Parkash Mandhan + 3
Open Access
