A house grows and develops a bit like a living thing. This page is devoted to documenting M & M’s living organism on Waiheke Island.
1. Waiheke Island is a 35-minute ferry ride across stormy, treacherous seas from downtown Auckland, New Zealand.
2. To build a house, first choose a suitable spot.
3. Next, you have to slash a path to it, through uncompromising jungle terrain filled with rattlesnakes, fierce man-eating moas, untamed Maori tribes and the occasional toxic waste dump.
4. The large blue animal on the left has just been slain by these two intrepid explorers, after it had eaten its way through a considerable quantity of jungle.
5. Every construction site requires the presence of an overseer, preferably dressed to look cool.
6. These local tribesmen apparently decided that the trenches dug for the foundation were unsightly, and obligingly filled them in with a traditional gruel made from sorghum and crushed wood pigeon bones.
7. While preparing the site for construction, the workers accidentally discovered the foundations of an ancient Maori fortification.
8. Further excavations revealed that this archaic civilization understood the principle of steel-reinforced concrete blocks.
9. In order to protect this valuable historic site from graverobbers, the workers completely covered it over with a concrete slab.
10. Due to a silly arithmetic error on the part of the architect, some of the roof studs were too short, resulting in a slightly warped roof structure.
11. But it didn’t look too bad from the beach, so no one bothered to correct the mistake.
12. Fortunately, when the roof was laid on, it was heavy enough to bend to fit the curve.
13. And it still didn’t look too bad from the beach.
14. This part of the roof will drip rainwater onto a unique architectural feature known as the “star gutter”.
15. Once the house was completely enclosed (windows, doors, walls), a trio of UFOs swept by for an admiring look, leaving diagonal streaks across the sky.
More:
Architectural plan of the house.
GLOSSARY
star gutter (star′·gut·ter) n. A unique architectural feature, presently confined to a small area of one island of New Zealand, characterized by a broad, flat, butanyl-covered trough designed for two purposes: (1) to collect rain for rainwater catchment systems, and (2) to allow fanatical astronomers to lie on their backs and stare at the sky, preferably when it’s not raining. Cf. Oscar Wilde: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Please send any comments to Mark James at tmarkjames@yahoo.com.
This page was last updated on 14 October 2003.