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09/21/2005: "Playhouse inspired by Gaudi..." by Asbjorn Lonvig

In my family you do not buy a playhouse.
You design it and you build it yourself.
This one is for Morten's daughters, Lucca and Laura.
Originally our plans were a playhouse with 6 walls - a hexagon.
And a tower, from which you have a wide view.
A gazebo.
Morten and I were a little relieved when some strong female influence made the plans less ambitious:

A four sided house with a chimney.

Morten and I decided, that the playhouse design should be based on the fantastic Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi's characteristically warped form - see about Gaudi below.
We have seen his work in Barcelona.
And.
Newly we had seen playhouses in Legoland,
see the article "Hi sculptor...I mean you!!!" for more about Legoland.

Lucca has decided the color scheme.
Yellow walls.
Red windows and door.
Green roof.
Her mother has decided the overall design criteria: No spiders.



Action
I collected all the plates I had in stock in and around Lille Fejringhus and went to Hinnerup in Denmark, where Morten and his family live.

Hello, granddad.
Would you like some coffee?
Yes.
And we started drawing.
Four pressure-creosoted posts in the corners.
Tilting walls.

A floor that is elevated from the ground. Remember, no spiders.
Spade.
2 hammers
4 kinds of saws.
And many more tools.

Blood.
Sweat.
And very few tears.
Some days later the house was ready to paint.




The shape of the windows are organic.
The windows are red.




There is a shop in the playhouse.
There is a counter in one window.
You can buy a cup of excellent coffee,
candy and much more.
And take a look at the small house
on a post to the left of
the playhouse.




It's a birdhouse.
Built by Morten's baby brother Jakob.
There is a triangular hole in the birdhouse.
A circular hole would have been
a non-Gaudi hole.
There is a perch with a bulb at the end.
That's sure a Gaudi-bulp and a Gaudi-perch.




And a chimney.
Not a tall slim one.
I was drawing a draft of
a tall slim chimney.
Morten saw my draft and said,
No, no, no, no,
a small fat chimney.
A Gaudi-chimney.
Morten knows Gaudi better
than I do.
There is a huge metallic sculpture by the
motoway, just at the entrance to the city,
where I live.
Lucca calls this sculpture grandad's chimney.
After having struggled with building the
Gaudi-chimny, grandad's chimney has got a new meaning.

The roof has the characteristically warped shape.




And the window in the gable
has a an exact Gaudi shape.
A shape Morten found in a book on
some of Gaudi's architecture.




The house is number "5".
Lucca has painted this number herself.
Morten had a long discussion with Lucca
about where the number should be placed.
I agreed with Morten that it ought to be
placed on a post at the entrance to the
playhouse.
But Lucca insisted: On the gable
to the left of the door.




The door is a red ghost
with two eyes.
When your walls are tilted
and the door must be a Gaudi-door........

Many have asked Morten and I if we consider
to enter the business of designing, building and selling playhouses?
Of course not.
And.
Of course.....




Thoughts
How could Barcelona accept Gaudi's architecture and his characteristically warped form?
How could anyone?
Was his style les controversial in those days - Gothic Revival?

If Morten and I entered the "playhouse business" - it might be fun to let one particular great master's style be the point of departure, be the inspiration.
Why not build a Picasso-playhouse?
A Miro-playhouse?
A Matisse-playhouse?

Do you know the Austrian painter Hunderdwasser?
A Hundredwasser-playhous would be great fun.

And a Salvador Dali-playhouse?




__

*) Antoni Gaudi
Was born in Reus in Spain 1852.
The son of a coppersmith.
Antoni Gaudi was born in Reus, Spain in 1852.
Reus is not very far from Barcelona. In Barcelona you find his major art works.
He studied at the "Escola Superior d'Arquitectura" in Barcelona and designed his first major work for the Casa Vincens in Barcelona using a Gothic Revival style that he never left. Over the course of his career, Gaudi developed a sensuous, curving, almost surreal design style which established him as the innovative leader of the Spanish Art Nouveau movement. With little regard for formal order, he juxtaposed unrelated systems and altered established visual order. Gaudi's characteristically warped form of Gothic architecture drew admiration from other avant-garde artists.
Although categorized with the Art Nouveau, Gaudi created an entirely original style.
He died in Barcelona in 1926.


Photos: By Asbjorn Lonvig

Replies: 9 Comments

on Monday, September 26th, Asbjorn Lonvig said

Here is what I wrote to Ed Baron yesterday:
Dear Ed Baron,
You wrote as a comment to my blog in WWAR Art News:
"Can't you just see a whole playground of Playhouses? What a wonderful art project. It would certainly tie in with our purpose of preserving Art and Human Nature. Perhaps volunteers will agree to come erect them at the Baron Conservancy?"

Sure, sure, sure!
Sure, I can see a whole playground of playhouses. Inspired by different great masters? In Wonder Valley? Near desert oasis City of Twenty Nine Palms? A few miles East of Los Angeles?
If you are serious, I think I know where to find the funds.

Sincerely,
Asbjorn Lonvig

on Monday, September 26th, Asbjorn Lonvig said

Ed Baron e-mailed me yesterday:
Hi Asbjorn:
OF COURSE I AM SERIOUS.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Ed Baron

on Sunday, September 25th, Hyacinthe Baron said

Thank you for sharing that experience. There is however no way to link to you Paul. We all have similar tales to tell. Something lingers in the structures we build. For children playhouses in particular are temporary places, like a blanket thrown over a table or a tent set up in the living room or backyard. By no means are these childhood places meant to be permanent in the physical, but rather opportunities for incidents to occur that will linger in memory in a bank, to be withdrawn when the artist wishes to use them to recreate in a new form the structural content of childhood spaces, or like Gaudi, recreate the shapes and shadows and memory into amoeba like new structures that are meant to last. So what is the significance of a "permanent" playhouse? Who is that will live in that house for as long as it stands? The child? The adult who refuses to grow up? The adults who cannot leave and take the memories with them? Is the artist's studio in some way a "Playhouse" where the child continues the games? When does an individual distinguish between "CRAFT" and art? Craft it seems to me is art applied to something useful, meant to be used. But Duchamp showed that something useful can be transformed into something that is only for show and cannot be used and that is to be called art. Some things to think about.

on Saturday, September 24th, Paul said

Eds point about artists and where or how they live is worth exploring on its own,and the influences that can affect ones work and state of mind,coming from the rooms,or the building,even the streets or feilds around one.I once lived in an old victorian building in Holborn London,an apartment I shared with a musician freind,the room I moved into was nothing special apart from the veow of the city out the window,but what I found as I began to work in that room,was a strong south american feeling in my imagery,my paintings and drawings,and this wasnt quite apparent to me logically,until a stranger saw my work,actually an art tutor from a well known institute that I was attempting to study at during that time,there was such a discrepency between what she took me for,and my work,that she asked 'did you do this work'and seemed to doubt me,and then another colleague of hers asked me if I had ever been to south america,I hadnt,but then I thought back to the room and I began to recognize the feeling more clearly,yet without knowing what it was about,until at a later date,someone informed me that there had been a couple of south american guys living in the apartment before,I guessed that the one who had my room was probably homesick and somehow his feelings had sort of permeated the room.

on Saturday, September 24th, Ed Baron said

Many years ago the Museum of Modern Art in New York City exhbited a real Japanese house and a model of something called "The Endless House." The Playhouse idea, the effort in creating such a thing is to be commended. What fun it would be to have a playhouse turn into a real house! The whole point as I see it is that there is such a need, especially for artists, to break away from the norm in living as they do in their art.
Is there something "square" and limiting caused by living in a square house? Has anyone ever done a study to discover just how a Geodisic Dome has affected the tenants?
Doesn't a Guadi house with it's amorphous natural Art Deco forms inspire us to want to touch and feel form more deeply?
In the end isn't a child's playhouse a statemnt to the child affirming and encouraging the child to play and to imagine and to value his artistic nature. Can't you just see a whole playground of Playhouses? What a wonderful art project. It would certainly tie in with our purpose of preserving Art and Human Nature. Perhaps volunteers will agree to come erect them at the Baron Conservancy? Would love to hear from any one who has ideas about this. What a wonderful art work we could create.

on Saturday, September 24th, Ellen Fisch said

Asbjorn, you are the ultimate artist! Making the world more beautiful and fun by creating our inner most expressions into reality! The child's wonderfully basic yet sophisticated view of life translates into the most amazing house!

on Thursday, September 22nd, jose said

it really isn't important to know who the percursor of this sort of thing is, the imporant thing is that Asbjorn is keeping Art alive and transmitting his passion to those who are closest to him who in turn may transmit it further. thank you Asbjorn for a refreshing reminder of what our life as artists can be about.

on Wednesday, September 21st, Hyacinthe Baron said

And of course there is the precursor of this sort of thing, NIKKI de St. PHALLE whose colorful papier mache NANAS, the sculptures invited everyone to enter as if in doing so the participant was returning to the womb. Her most famous piece was a playhouse built for children which incorporated a tongue sliding pond and other imaginative features. Currently we are designing and have a call out for architects and designers to create plans for potential buildings for the Baron Conservancy in Wonder Valley, California. We have the greatest interest in new methods of building earth structures such as coils and hay and adobe and such, having been neighbors of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen West iin Scottsdale and seeing the structures his students were required to make for their own habitats using natural materials found on the original 1400 acres.

on Wednesday, September 21st, gabriella said

Asbjorn- what lucky grandchildren, to have this wonderfully loopy house to play in and make worm pizza, play store and conjure up a play-life full of surprises and wonder! The intense colours of the house really works well. Also the addition of the number 5 where it was decided by the young child to go is the correct placement, in my opinion. The addition of a large spider made out of metal somewhere on the roof would put all living spiders on notice that the building was off limits for them.
Where I live, there is a problem with starlings, which are imported, non-indigenous birds. They flock together. make noise and many messes and force their way into roofs to make nests. So, people here put a large, realistic looking plastic owl on the eaves to frighten the starlings away. The addition of a fantastic Gaudi spider would do the same function for your grandchildren's playhouse.
I wish my house looked this way!