This is a fascinating and sensitive novel about learning how to design, and then build, your own shelter. The unique approach visited by Michael Pollan includes in depth consultation with an architect, and the process he uses to create the design of the building. Also, Pollan, being the writer that he is, refers to and reviews in context a long list of time honoured books on design and architecture. Included in this list is Vitruvius' 10 Books on Architecture, Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, as well as books on landscape painting and feng shui for how to perfectly site and situate your structure.
"To trade a chain saw for a chisel is to trade one way of knowing a piece of wood for another. Though the chain saw acquaints you with certain general properties--a wood's hardness and uniformity, its aroma--the chisel discloses much finer information. Something as subtle as the variation in the relative density of two growth rings--the sort of data any machine would overwhelm--the beveled tip of the chisel's steel blade will accurately transmit to its ash handle and through that to your hand."
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