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Reflections on the Nature of a House

There are certain houses that you live in all your life: Your childhood
home, with its quirks and mysteries. The first apartment that you
rented yourself with the money that you accumulated from your first
real job. The place that you selected as your family's home, to settle
into and deem your own. However, you never truly moved away
from the house you have lived in and loved; like a snail, you carry it
with you throughout the rest of your life, not on your back but in
your very heart.

Every house, now matter how expensive or how modest, deserves to
be occupied. Every house begs to be admired by passers-by from the
outside and filled with the precious life experiences of its own occu-
pants. Every house desires the opportunity to expand, to grow, to
change, to be enhanced, to become a unique, discernible product that
is an integral part of history. A house yearns to share in the personal
emotions of its occupants, while still allowing its occupants to examine
the manner in which they incorporate themselves into the world that
lies on the other side of the window glass.

A house is more than edifice fabricated from brick, wood, cement and
steel. A house is the sole place where we seek respite after a day of
strenuous activities, the place where we speak of in conversation with
an authentic sense of pride and conviction. The house is the arche-
typal symbol of independence and nurturing, of protection and invita-
tion. A house is truly an essential component of our lifestyles and an
authentic reflection of our tastes, values and personal convictions.

-Michael Vyskocil

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