Architecture

Clothes may make the man, but architecture secures his place in society.

While we are closeted away at the office or in the home theater, our homes serves as a lasting monument to who we are, or who we wish others see us as.

Some of this is gilt by association.

Suburban tract neighborhoods are designed to clump people with similar status and aspirations. We would be shocked and dismayed to find a little cracker box starter home going up next to our McMansion. Anyone who paid $1,000,000 for a 5000 square foot colossus in 2007 would fall into apoplexy if a double-wide suddenly showed up on the slab next door.

That is why suburban America is dotted with gated, planned communities. It is why there are protective covenants in many subdivisions. Near where I live, in Birmingham, MI (I don’t live all that nearby) residents are up in arms over an ultra-modern concrete box that is going up on their street. Most of the existing houses are Tudors or neo-colonials. The snobbery works both ways. Another snit went up a few years ago while builders where knocking down little post-war ranches and replacing them with 5000 square foot McMansions on postage stamp city lots. They called them “Bigfoot” houses.

What does this have to do with writing?

An author can say a lot about a character by describing the house where he or she lives. My love interest, Lucy Firenze comes from a family that lives in a palazzo like you might find in Florence, Italy. The massive stone house, with its porte cochere and formal gardens, expresses not only the substantial wealth of its occupants, but also their ethnic roots and continuing ties to the old country. As a reader, you ought not be surprised when the Firenze family insists that Lucy marry a Catholic in good standing and that the man have excellent prospects. Frank, the divorced son of blue collar Irish immigrants, will never measure up.

The story I am working on now includes a wealthy, highly educated black character who lives in a replica of an antebellum mansion that might’ve been ripped from the set of Gone with the Wind. Why would he do that? Because he is placing himself far above his African slave roots, superior to underlings and co-workers alike. He is the MAN.

A place that figures large in at least three of the books is called Blackstone. The edifice, faced in polished black granite is described as the second largest private home in America, scaled at 150,000 square feet on a square mile of private grounds. Like the Black Knight in Le Morte d’Arthur, the house symbolizes the evil in the hearts of its residents. It is scaled to overwhelm everyone who sets foot there.

Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pennsylvania masterpiece, also figures in the story, at least as an acknowledged replica. The original was scaled to the diminutive size of its original owner, Edgar Kaufmann, so I thought it fitting to use it as the home for diminutive Lucy Firenze. The history of Fallingwater lends itself to my story, as well. Wright, the construction engineers and Kaufmann disagreed about the design of the cantilevered decks. In the end, Wright was wrong. The decks required extensive repairs around 1990 because they were structurally inadequate.

In my story, the decks’ collapse symbolizes the collapse of Frank’s and Lucy’s relationship, after their brief tumultuous affair in Grand Designs.

In contrast to all this grandeur, Frank lives in a modest Pulte tract house which reflects his blue collar roots and modest personal expectations. Despite his rapid rise in the company, he clings to his first house until book four, when he reluctantly moves to a nicer neighborhood after his house is firebombed.

I like to include lots of architectural details—materials, furnishings, landscaping—because a house is more than an edifice in a field. It represents someone’s lifestyle choices, and all those other things distinguish a pretender from someone “to the manor born.”

You be the judge.