Buildings / bodies
A Little House | 1981-1982
Southampton, Long Island, New York
Within each home is a place, an imaginary “little house,” where food is prepared — the hearth or “heart” of family life. Traditionally the realm of women, as depicted by Louise Bourgeois in her series “WomanHouse”, it had been transformed into a laboratory purged of signs of domesticity by modern architecture; but it could become the school for all family members to learn to share responsibility for their nourishment. In this 19th Century carriage house, transported to a new site and turned into a modern building, the “little house” is made explicit, freeing the interior to become an “exterior” or a tree house, a refuge from life’s cares. The carriage house’s voyage is recorded in the trail of yellow mustard flowers on the house’s path through the site – like the “yellow brick road” of The Wizard of Oz.