Wes Jones’ Primitive Huts were based on the original ideas found in Joseph Rykwert’s On Adam’s House in Paradise, which was first published in 1971. On Adam’s House in Paradise presents the conventional ideas about architecture during the 20th century and throughout history that Jones rebelled against.
Rywert’s is an established authority on architectural ideas and studies ideas froms the past 500 years about the first hut. He believes that the primitive hut provides a “point of reference for all speculation on the essentials of a building” and that the “speculations intensify when the need is felt for a renewal of architecture”.
Rywert proposes that the first traces of a house in the creation account found in the bible. In Genesis, God had made Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, and placed them in the Garden of Eden, which is full of trees and plants that are “pleasant to the sight and good for food”. They are intended to keep and sustain their paradise while living “in the cool of the day”. Rykwert believes that the account infers that Adam had built a house in the Garden.
He also studies ideas from architectural theorists throughout history and looks how the hut relates to culture. He studies theorists and practitioners who are concerned with the future of architecture and the search for authority in the origins of architecture. The people Rywert studies in his book include: Vitruvius, Alberti, Laugier, Perrault, Vollet-le-Duc, Ruskin, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, who have all studied the primitive hut by either finding its site, reconstructing it or studying its form.
On Adam’s House in Paradise was written at the end of the 20th century when architecture was in a state of transition and confusion. Virtual technology was challenging the conventional concepts about architecture; televisions and computers were changing life at home and altered spatial perceptions in the house. Modernists believed that the idea of the home was “a machine for living in” while postmodernists considered the home to be an “extension of the body”. Jones had tackled the problem of changing culture through designing his primitive huts.
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Bibliography
Hermitary, "Rykwert, Joseph, On Adam's House in Paradise: the Idea of the primitive Hut in Architectural History." Last modified 2007. Accessed November 19, 2011. http://www.hermitary.com/bookreviews/rykwert.html.
Ostwald, Michael, and John Moore. Architecture Australia, "Adam's House in Cyberia." Last modified 2011. Accessed November 12, 2011. http://www.architecturemedia.com/aa/aaissue.php?issueid=199703&article=13&typeon=3.
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11/19/11
Posted by Joanne Yau
Please left justify all of your text.
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