“Time is a game played beautifully by children.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
― Plato

“The way things work” is an umbrella. Entries with that title are peppered throughout the blog, my attempt at explanation—sometimes current; sometimes long after the fact. In most cases, they’re written for my own ends. But today I’m writing for the students of ARCH 371, part of an invitation to play.

I wonder tonight if “Domestic Arrangements” might offer a convenient way into the project. Each of the links below will take you to the complete blog entry and the chronology of an evolving train of thought.

DA 1.0 began as a meditation on Lawrence Buck, one of the also-rans of architectural history. My choice of Buck as a subject says as much about me as it does about Buck himself. In fact, I’d be surprised if you recognize his name or his work. The rendering above is an example of both his architecture and his presentation style. He was good.

DA 1.1 included a better scaled ground floor plan of the Archer’s house, but it was also a rumination on how to interpret such an artifact: Sure, the Archer family lived there, but I wondered if a small room at the northeast corner of the house—the sort that would have been set aside for a live-in domestic—offers another view of domestic arrangements a century ago.

DA 1.2 developed the history of the Archer family a bit farther and explained their move from Rockford, Illinois to Agincourt in 1909.

DA 1.3 integrated the Archers, Aidan and Cordelia, with their community: each of us is multi-faceted and linked with our communities in various ways, perhaps in proportion to their financial resources. [If this labels me a Liberal, guilty as charged.]

DA 1.4 is underlain with doubt. I’ve never been a servant; I’ve never had a servant. I’m not a woman. But do those truths disqualify me from exploring such a character? [Let’s hope not.]

DA 1.5 not only identified Miss Nina Köpman as the occupant of that ground floor bedroom, it also tried to make her migration from Sweden to the U.S. both logical and interesting.

As with most stories, many questions are raised while few are answered. Each character deserves more attention and the house itself is “incomplete.” For the time being. Could its interior be a project for someone in Interior Design; its gardens be worthy of Landscape Architecture appropriate for the period?