to build a house | Tim Seggerman

As it were

As it weren't

Materials:

cypress, beech, red birch, ash, cherry, bamboo, douglas fir, pine, maple, papyrus, mulberry (washi), green slate, aluminum, cast iron and glass.

With a few exceptions (Aalto, Risom, Noguchi) all furniture, cabinetry and doors were built on site.

From any vantage point in the house, all four points of the compass are in clear view.

The floors are 1 X 12 cypress face nailed with 2" wrought iron cut nails.

Old school.

Though certainly not as poetic as DuChamp's corner door that is open and closed at the same time, the sliders operate on a similar principal.

The cypress exterior was left untreated. In autumn and winter the house is indistinguishable from the surrounding woods

Photography Paul Warschol (the nice ones), Carol Kirkland (of me), TS (the rest)

Antonin Raymond, the great Czech modernist architect and compatriot of Junzo Yoshimura and George Nakashima, designed, in 1940, the house I later grew up in, from the age of 11. It was built primarily of reclaimed lumber from an old barn and stone from a nearby stream. Being a New York City kid, I was not "of the farm", but this simply crafted modernist gem still represents what I treasure in the workings of materials

and space.

An Occurrence at Lower Creek Bridge

In the course of building, three 75'+ oak trees

fell within a hair's breadth of the house, breaking with thunderous cracks and oceanic shaking of the ground... barely missing the house.

In 2014, I received a notice from the Penn East Pipeline Co. stating they were getting the final approvals to build a 24" X 116 mile fracked gas pipeline that would run 25' from my door (with a 1/2 mile blast zone). They would take land by eminent domain, approved by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision.The chances of local activists and landowners defeating this monstrosity appeared close to hopeless... one in a thousand at best. For 7 dogged years, we (meaning everyone, not just folk directly in the pipeline's path...lawyers, farmers, business folk, teachers, children, detectives (my neighbor), showed up tirelessly, tenaciously, with unflagging spirit and somehow sent the marauders back to Texas. In 2021 I was able to resume working toward the c/o, knowing that a project such as this is never, ever, completed.

Extra special thanks to my baby sister Carol, who always kept the lamp trimmed and burning,

to TC and Joe, my dream neighbors, who kept watch from across the road and another time,

and never to be forgotten... Ellie, Pancho and Archie.