Adam's Hut

In On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History, Joseph Rykwert investigates the notion, shared by many architectural theorists, that the biblical character Adam was presumably the first inhabitant of some sort of shelter structure in the Garden of Eden. While its specific illustration is never given in the Bible, Adam’s house is often times alluded to. Only our imaginations could raise the walls and roof of what this structure looked like, but presumably if God’s hands were involved in its construction, its form would be divine in nature. In this piece, I investigate the form of Adam’s house, or hut, and how we relate to architecture through multiple ages. As children, we frequently play by mimicking our surroundings or by pulling out some primal form of structure that is engrained in us, as if we were masters of our own, be it imagined and crudely built, shelter structure. As we grow older, the reality of survival sets in with the requirements of acquiring and maintaining our own food supply and shelter. To me, this daunting juxtaposition between child and adulthood represents an ageless cycle, that when viewed with Rykert’s theory in mind, builds a very poetically complex relationship that we may have with our own form of house. All this is played out in a small wooded island straddling an abandoned hospital that has changed occupancy in a similar exchange between the innocence of childhood play and the stained spirit of a prostitute’s use of the space as a campsite. The site has in recent months seen a new rebirth of sorts through the renovation of the abandoned hospital building and the clearing of the parcel surrounding it in preparation for its repurposing as a wedding reception hall.