Author(s): Michael Pollan

Biography/Memoir

At a turning point in his life Michael Pollan found himself dreaming of a small wood-frame hut in the woods near his house a place to work, but also a 'shelter for daydreams'. The author was then seized by the idea of building the place himself, with his own unhandy hands. Thus began a two-and-a-half year journey of discovery, recounted in an absorbing and comic narrative that deftly intertwines the day-to-day work of design and building from siting to blueprint, the pouring of foundations to finish carpentry with reflections on everything from the way we invest a space with meaning to the question of what constitutes 'real work' in a technological society. With one eye on Thoreau and the other on Mr Blandings, Pollan dramatises the satisfactions of transforming a tree into a house, the power of a place to shape our lives, the warring perspectives of leaky roofs for contemporary architecture.