You may find yourself living in a beautiful house
“Tell us you love it!” laughed Andy Patrick, a neighbor of Charley’s. Andy, a 30-year-old marketing consultant who lives in a large loft, met Charley a month ago while walking his dog Bodie, an Australian shepherd, along some abandoned railroad tracks; other loft-living young professionals regularly jog there. A resident of Charley’s locale since April, Andy lives near a community of homeless people living in tents, shacks, cars, and empty warehouses.
When Andy and the others were through building the shelter for Charley, who used to design and repair mainframe computers, they returned to Randolph Street Gallery for some beers. Charley told Andy, “You know, this is like Christmas to me.”
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Randolph Street Gallery’s exhibit and installation was billed as “Counter Proposals: Adaptive Approaches to a Built Environment.” One wall addressed the transplanting of folk architecture from Puerto Rico to vacant lots in New York City. Called casitas, these fancy shacks are meant to stir community instincts by evoking cultural roots. South Carolina architect Christopher Rose displayed plans for the Charleston Cottage, which he “patterned after the local freedmen cottages” from the last century. His design is meant to “debunk the myth that it is uneconomical to build single-occupant homes.” Meanwhile, architect Dan Hoffman contributed “Erasing Detroit,” his “cartographic montage of aerial photographs” documenting the disappearance of Detroit’s inner city.
“In recognition of the inability of the existing social order to meet the requirements of those citizens who are unable to compete effectively, we are sponsoring an alternative social order in which competition on economic grounds is irrelevant,” reads the handbook put together by Frinkel, Pope, and crew. “We call that order the Mad Housers.”
Throughout the handbook a pragmatic touch prevails: “Make burglar bars with short 2×4’s.” “If your palms are tender, as most of us office workers’ are, you will probably want to bring a pair of work gloves.” “Volunteers are not covered by workmen’s compensation.” In a more affected passage, the Mad Housers valorize the roof, the wall, and the door. “As a combination of these three elemental gestures, the hut becomes the occurrence of individual dwelling. It creates a human place, a human’s place.”
He brought things down to a personal level: “I have a friend. I want him to have a home.” Following the Atlanta model, he explained that the one requirement on the part of the person accepting the house is that he must help build it. Then Charley introduced himself and explained, “We’re not trying to break any laws, but we are trying to stop some deaths.” And by the way, “Don’t compare my house to a cardboard box. I call it a house. I don’t call it a hut.”
