comments

1. Sheila Ryan on February 5th, 2010 at 1:27 pm

   The crepuscular photo to which you link is stunning, but I have a serious question. How do you feel when you are inside such dwellings, especially when there is no hiding from the pitiless desert sun? I recall staying in a southern California desert hotel that dated from the late 1940s, all transparency and exposure, and it was really unpleasant — which is odd, as the vastness of the desert calms me when I am quite literally in it. But in that hotel room, I felt as though I were in the core of a nuclear reactor and I had been turned inside out.

   It was an extreme experience, but it was pretty much an amplification of what I feel when I am inside such structures as the White O house.

2. Deron Bauman on February 5th, 2010 at 1:29 pm

   being inside such structures fills me with calm. much like the feeling I get in the shark tunnel.

3. Sheila Ryan on February 5th, 2010 at 1:36 pm

   It will be interesting to visit the shark tunnel together.

   It is strange that the vastness of the desert, even at mid-day, calms me. I feel my own insignificance, and it feels good.

   But I’ve experienced bouts of panic akin to madness inside these structures.

   I think I will like the shark tunnel, though — and I say that in spite of having once (briefly) panicked while snorkeling over a reef far enough from the Yucatan/Belize coast to be out of sight of land.

   I am not especially prone to attacks of panic, and so it interests me to ponder when and where they occur.

4. Deron Bauman on February 5th, 2010 at 1:38 pm

   I’ll be interested then in your reaction to the shark tunnel. to me is is both cozy and vast. an extension of my imagination and a dream. I love it.

5. Sheila Ryan on February 5th, 2010 at 1:42 pm

   I’m pretty sure I will feel as though I am in a hypnagogic state when I am in the shark tunnel and that it will be good. Such experiences are generally intensely pleasurable.

   I don’t know what it is with large expanses of glass and brilliant sun, except that I feel exposed in the sense of being flayed alive.

6. Lucy Foley on February 5th, 2010 at 4:34 pm

   I also have a very extreme response to this house. There are some clearly interesting formal ideas, though they do remind me of Kingsley Amis’ (awful put down) description of his son’s prose as having a “terrible compulsive vividness in his style, that constant demonstrating of his command of English”.

   I find this building ugly, insular and depressing with all its hard, bland textures and shouty interesting shapes. It gives no concessions to any other mind: those horrible bloody concrete chairs outside will not fit or suit everybody who sits on them, but there is no space for grabbing another chair. It’s a horribly dominating kind of vision.

7. Sheila Ryan on February 5th, 2010 at 5:31 pm

   I feel it, Lucy. I’m searching for a vocabulary that does not make me out a snuffling pug of a reactionary — not that I am one, nor would I care to be branded such if I were.

8. Marco on February 7th, 2010 at 10:24 am

   More nice images…

   http://www.nicosaieh.cl/index.php?/white-o–toyo-ito/

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