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Architecture. Nonfiction. HTML:A captivating personal inquiry into the art of architecture, the craft of building, and the meaning of modern work "A room of one's own: Is there anybody who hasn't at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn't turned those soft words over until they'd assumed a habitable shape?" When Michael Pollan decided to plant a garden, the result was the acclaimed bestseller Second Nature. In A Place of My Own, he turns his sharp insight to the craft of building, as he recounts the process of designing and constructing a small one-room structure on his rural Connecticut property�a place in which he hoped to read, write, and daydream, built with his own two unhandy hands. Invoking the titans of architecture, literature, and philosophy, from Vitruvius to Thoreau, from the Chinese masters of feng shui to the revolutionary Frank Lloyd Wright, Pollan brilliantly chronicles a realm of blueprints, joints, and trusses as he peers into the ephemeral nature of "houseness" itself. From the spark of an idea to the search for a perfect site to the raising of a ridgepole, Pollan revels in the infinitely detailed, complex process of creating a finished structure. At once superbly written, informative, and enormously entertaining, A Place of My Own is for anyone who has ever wondered how the walls around us take shape�and how we might shape them ourselves. Praise for A Place of My Own "A glorious piece of prose . . . Pollan leads readers on his adventure with humor and grace."�Chicago Tribune "[Pollan] alternates between describing the building process and introducing informative asides on various aspects of construction. These explanations are deftly and economically supplied. Pollan's beginner status serves him well, for he asks the kind of obvious questions about building that most readers will want answered." �The New York Review of Books "By shrewdly combining just the right mix of personal reflection, architectural background, and nuts-and-bolts detail, Michael Pollan enables us to see, feel, and understand what goes into the building of a house. The result is a captivating and informative adventure."�John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil "An utterly terrific book . . . an inspired meditation on the complex relationship between space, the human body and the human spirit."�Francine du Plessix Gray "A tour de force . . . [Pollan] writes gracefully and humanely. He is a true carpenter-craftsman of prose."�Phillip Lopate.… (more)
User reviews
If there has ever been a person over-thinking everything, it must be Pollan. The mission to the moon cannot have been better analyzed and prepared than the construction of Pollan's garden shed. While reading this book, I felt profound sympathy for the poor architect who has to adapt and modify the plans countless times. In a limbo between friend and business partner, the architect works mostly pro bono Pollani. The intricacies of the Starbucks ordering system were developed for just such yuppie control freaks. At multiple times, I wanted to slap the author: It is only a shed. It isn't complicated and it doesn't require so much reflexion. Buying standard parts, Pollan could have saved himself a lot of trouble (but then he would have had more time to spend with his pregnant wife ...).
If you are a doer, a lets-go person, you will probably hate this book. If you enjoy planning and (over-)thinking about buildings, you will find a pleasant read, although at times the reading experience slows down to watching paint dry. Perhaps it is well that nobody watched Thoreau build his cabin in the woods.
I found it quite interesting, I come from a family of cabinetmakers and carpenters and this all seemed quite familiar, I've heard the diatribes about architects from them and quite understand the frustrations. It's an interesting read, even if he does overexamine things occasionally.
If you are considering building your own home or have the land to spare and don't want to just plop something down, take a few moments to consider Pollan's advisement on how and where to choose a spot for your dwelling.
There's certainly
Pollan is at his best in this book when describing people. He brings his carpenter and his architect to vivid life and imbues a real sense of humor into his work with, and challenge between, each of them. The segment about how all roads lead to gun control with carpenter Joe is without a doubt my favorite few pages in the book. The details of construction and his reverence for his materials are engaging and understandable, despite my lack of familiarity with the subject.
All told, this is a well-written book that happened to miss the mark for me personally.
While reading Tedd Benson’s “Timberframe” I kept coming across quotes from a mysterious Pollan text: “A Place of My Own.” “But isn’t Pollan a food writer?” I thought to myself. My second book I read from Pollan was his recent text on psychedelics, “How to Change Your Mind.” I think of him as the foodie Berkeley type (I happen to have run into him last time I was at the Berkeley farmer’s market); what was he doing writing about architecture?
It turns out that Pollan’s second book, published in 1997, reveals an entirely different man (or at least a man in an entirely different context) then we find him in today. Apparently Pollan, his wife, and son, spent quite some time (more than a decade) living in Northwestern Connecticut. Being a ruddy New Englander myself, this rather raises my regard of him (until I think remember that he, for some reason, still resides in Berkeley—even while supposedly teaching at Harvard).
For a couple of years now, I’ve been daydreaming about building a sauna. Two winters ago I read a book on sauna construction. I live on land that is “in the family,” so to say, so I have enough trust in my tenure to consider building something. The place also is an open timber frame spanning three generations; so Pollan’s concept of “a place of my own” sounds extremely appealing.
During this time of coronavirus, I feel both a strong sense of nostalgia, as well as a sense of somehow being outside of my life. Given this coincidence of sentiments, I’ve been gravitating towards books like this one, books that bring us into ourselves while bringing us in contact with the tangible, the commonplace.
This is a book about Pollan going through the two-and-a-half-year-long process of building himself a writer’s cabin.
From the beginning, Pollan goes about this in a very different way than I would. Pollan says the only thing his father ever built was a cedar closet, during the construction of which, he happened to nail his toolbox back behind the paneling. In contrast, my father timber-framed the house I grew up in, and I’ve spent much of my life in contact with one form or another of craft.
So to come around to the first surprise: Pollan hired an architect to come up with a plan for his cabin! Although I intended to become an architect for some stretch of time in childhood (I still retain the graph-paper blueprints I made of glass dome houses), I’ve had effectively zero contact with them in my adult life. We recently constructed a substantial porch on my current home, and our contractor drew up the blueprint, not an architect. I can appreciate the importance of design process (I would consider myself a permaculturist), and I can see the ways that working with an architect enabled Pollan to achieve something he wouldn’t have been able to on his own.
The next surprise: he hires a contractor to work with him! This also ends up being a wise decision for Pollan, as his contractor serves as a mentor.
In the new foreword, composed in 2010, Pollan describes his journalism as muddling through the relationship between nature and culture. This is an intersection close to my heart. In this book, Pollan has somehow been able to explore the exceedingly obtuse history of architecture and private space in a text that is both tactile and accessible. With writing this good, I feel as though I could almost read anything Pollan decides to write about. He is likely the best non-fiction writer of which I’m aware.
By no means is this book dated. In many ways, it speaks to more fundamental truths than his writing on food and psychedelics. If you’re looking for a meditative reflection on space, the built environment, and the way that this all relates to our humanity and sensory experience, this book will delight.
Also who spends 2 years building a hut? I built a workshop behind my house with zero prior experience in about a month. And he had a builder with him the whole time to help!