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JULY 24, 2003
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Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/garden/24DEAN.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/garden/24DEAN.html?pagewanted=2
Dreaming Between the Grooves in a Futuristic Bubble
By Saray Lyall
CROSSWAY GREEN, England -- It looked like the midsection of a giant
centipede, or a discreet little spaceship, or possibly the natural habitat
of Tinky Winky and his Teletubby pals. But the thought that consumed my
6-year-old daughter, Alice, and me as we prepared to spend the night in the
futuristic bubble of a house that loomed in front of us was practical
rather than aesthetic. Where would we go to the bathroom?
It turned out that there was indeed a bathroom, complete with tub and sink,
although it was for viewing purposes only. The house, designed by Roger
Dean, the multitasking painter, graphic designer and architect best known
for his exotically surreal album covers for the music groups Yes and Asia
in the 1970's and 1980's, is currently a one-of-a-kind nonworking
prototype. When it is not on the road, it sits in incongruous splendor in a
field on a nature preserve in this Worcestershire hamlet, functioning as a
kind of walk-through minimuseum.
Our mission was to find out what it would be like to sleep there. Forget
its underlying philosophy, its cunningly-designed environmental
friendliness, its development potential (Mr. Dean hopes to create
communities of these houses across Britain).
Would we feel weird and claustrophobic or find ourselves inadvertently
humming the Yes anthem "Roundabout"? Would we be able to lie in bed and
look out the window, and would Alice get to see any rabbits in the field?
Although Mr. Dean's houses are meant to be built into the landscape, this
one sits on a raised platform so that it can easily be transported, as it
often is, to housing and environmental exhibitions. We walked up the curved
entrance ramp, looking out for birds' nests (birds love to build in the
tucked-away crannies), and made our way, like hobbits, into a hobbit house.
The front "hall" was a curvilinear pod connected by a small spiral of
stairs to the equally curved bedroom. The windows were large and ovalate,
suggesting bigger versions of portholes. The focal point was the bed,
enormous and oval, taking up the bulk of the bedroom floor space.
Everything was gently curved, without right angles.
None of these details were left to chance, Mr. Dean, 58, explained by
telephone a few days later. The house, just a bedroom and anteroom, along
with the showpiece bathroom, will be bigger and more complete for real
living purposes. It is meant, very basically, to appeal to children and to
adults' childlike need for safety and security.
It has its genesis in work Mr. Dean did 40 years ago, while a student at
the Royal College of Art in London.
Back then, he explained, "I asked a bunch of kids, 'What don't you like
about where you sleep?' and they were all consistent. They said, `I don't
like full-length curtains, hidden spaces under the beds, cupboard doors
that are half open so you can't see inside, clothes hanging on the back of
doors or chairs that look like something else in the dark.'
"Every child had something along those lines," he continued. "They didn't
like any space that was ambiguous or in their imagination could contain a
threat."
When he asked them what they did like, they described things like castle
turrets, caves and tree houses. Mr. Dean did a full-size mockup of one of
the descriptions, from a child who said he wanted his bed "to be up in the
air so that no one loomed over him, and if he was in bed he would be
eye-level with anyone else." The child windmilled arms, and the space he
was describing gave rise to Mr. Dean's notion of curved pods.
I wasn't sure if I would like the pod concept. Like a lot of people, I have
come to equate comfort with space. After spending my formative years in
what had once been a maid's room in Manhattan, I had developed an unhappy
attitude toward rooms that seem too constricting. Mr. Dean's business
partner, John Talbot, who was showing us around, stressed that in the real
version of the house, the bedrooms would be bigger. Still I worried.
I needn't have. Oddly enough, the bedroom seemed larger than it actually
was, in part because the ceiling is built to be wider than the floor, so
that the room slightly curves down into itself. Although I had expected it
to have the cramped, stuffy feel of a ship's cabin (albeit with none of the
sickening motion), it was nothing of the sort. It felt generous rather than
miserly.
Although there was not much in the way of floor space, the bed was set back
into the wall with a shelf all around its head, so Alice had plenty of room
to lay out the objects she had lovingly brought from home. The house, made
of fibrous plaster, with pumice stone bead insulation and several layers of
gunite, an especially strong kind of concrete, was snugly insulated and
neither too hot nor too cold. Goldilocks herself would have found nothing
wrong with the bed.
We ate our picnic dinner, put on our nightgowns and ran around outside in
our bare feet. We lay in bed, watching the sun go down as I read aloud to
Alice. When she fell asleep I did not worry about freak summer storms or
marauding rabid beasts. Darkness descended. I fell asleep, too.
Mr. Dean hopes to replicate the prototype, or different forms of it. The
components can be mass-produced in factories and customized to fit
individual tastes in size and configuration. In a country where housing
prices have soared in recent years, Mr. Dean's houses (Homes for Life, he
calls them) would be relatively affordable, costing $72,000 to $80,000 to
build, Mr. Talbot said.
In keeping with Mr. Dean's philosophy and with the mood of the times, they
would be environmentally friendly, fitting gently into the surrounding area
and "earth-sheltered"; that is, built into tufts of land and covered with
grass.
"The idea is that the outside of the house is as close to the countryside
as possible, so that you are living in the environment as much as
possible," Mr. Talbot said. "They could be built in clusters, without the
impact of typical big boxy houses, and without harming the habitat for
birds and animals."
Mr. Dean is a man of extraordinarily varied passions. Some of his paintings
were recently exhibited at the Grant Gallery in Manhattan; books of his
designs and posters of his work have sold in the tens of millions around
the world. "The Sea Urchin Chair," which he designed while a 20-year-old
student and which can be sat in from all sides, is in the permanent
collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He designed the
iconic logos for Yes and Asia, and his souped-up, psychedelic graphics
helped set the mood for the generation of teenagers in the 70's, which in
periods of lucidity lined basement rec rooms with his album covers.
Mr. Dean designs computer software, corporate logos and sets for rock
concerts. In 1982, the cover he designed for Asia's "Asia Dragon" album was
voted the second favorite album cover of all time by the readers of Rolling
Stone magazine (behind "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"); 20
years later, the readers selected his design for the Yes album "Tales From
Topographic Oceans" as the best cover art of all time.
His album covers, with their futuristic landscapes, have always reflected
his architectural vision, even if they seemed otherworldly and before their
time (or possibly out of time altogether). "It was a way to put out my
ideas, to address the public directly," he explained. Many of his actual
architectural projects, including plans for a vast marina in Brighton,
England, and various theme parks and resorts have come tantalizingly close
to fruition before, but have never been built. However, several local
governments in Britain have expressed interest in developing his Homes for
Life plans, and he is cautiously optimistic. In fact, Mr. Talbot said,
plans are under way to build a development of 264 Dean-designed villas,
chalets and apartments on a 65-acre site near the town of Stourport on Severn.
"Twenty years ago, if you'd said, `You're not going to build anything for
20 years, I would have felt desperate, suicidal," Mr. Dean said. "But now
it feels very much like the time has come. I've been talking to bankers and
local authorities who say, `When I was at university, I had your posters on
my wall.' I'm talking to people who've grown up with my ideas."
Mr. Dean was nonplused to discover, in the mid-1980's, that the Teletubbies
lived in a house very similar to the ones he had been designing. "The real
bad news wasn't that they copied me," he said, "but that because they were
so successful people think I copied them."
As we prepared to leave his house the next morning, having been woken by
the sun and then treated by Mr. Talbot and his wife, Grace, and their two
children to an alfresco breakfast of yogurt, strawberries and cereal, Alice
and I felt we had both found what we were looking for. Alice had seen some
rabbits playing in the field. And I had gotten that rare thing when you are
the parent of small children: a good night's sleep, unencumbered by anxiety.
Mr. Dean was pleased, because the main goal of a house, in his view, is "to
provide a space of security." Which is why he still talks about the housing
show some years back, when an earlier version of the prototype first went
on display.
"We had a huge number of people come through it, including pensioners and
mums with kids," he said. "An old lady said, `This feels great; this feels
like home.'
"That meant a great deal to me, because clearly it didn't look like home at
all, but it felt like home."
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