Cinco Camp, Roger Black’s West Texas retreat, is made of five shipping containers on his 3,000-acre ranch. “I wanted something that blends into the landscape and could be installed and eventually removed with minimal disturbance to the environment,” he said. Here's the NYT slideshow of Black's retreat.
Here's the NYT article relating the details of the project.
Friday, August 14, 2009
5 Shipping Containers + 3,0000 acres = Retreat
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Beautiful country! The photos of landscape there evoke sympathy with this idea, this ethic, of non-disturbance, immediately. Can't help feeling, at the same time, that this architecture takes the value of signaling that ethic to a questionable extreme. Human presence is going to mean disturbance, after all, no matter how you camouflage it or try to convey your reticence to do it. There may be something to be said for being more frank about architectural presence meaning human intrusion and a degree of conflict.
Don't mean to resolve that question, to be sure. Just thinking.
And what to think of this? — “Out here, I get back to reality ... whatever reality is."
: )
Yes, the "...whatever reality is" statement kind of threw me, too. He could mean, whatever reality exists at the moment he is experiencing it. Maybe. It could have the embarrassed quality of realizing that he said some tree-hugger / spiritualist kind a thing, and he wants to gently show his sophisticated skepticism. Or it could reveal that he is just a phony and none of his thoughts about why he chose to retreat 9 hrs from NYC are honest ("so tired of the Hampton's gossip"). In this case it is a subliminal revelation that the whole thing is just a stunt and an architectural vanity. I would venture to guess that it is a combination of all these things.
As to the intrusion vs. disturbance, I would much rather this man do what he is doing, thereby preserving 3,000 acres from some developer (a la Rio Rancho developer in Albuquerque , NM who took 55,000 acres and put 79,655 people in New England style homes with lawns on pristine land along the Rio Grande River.) This is a non-nonsensical comparison on one level, but representative of the reality of avaricious development on another.
And good morning to you, too.
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