06 03 11 Marrying Functionality and Beauty

Our bioshelter home is very much a reflection of the couple who originally built it. Bob and LuAnn Crosby were the first builders of the house. Bob is an engineer and a co-founder of Biorealis Systems, Inc., an engineering company trying to change the paradigm for how we build and live in homes (http://www.biorealis.com/phpBB3/index.php). LuAnn is an artist and interior decorator. The bioshelter home they built and lived in for twenty years reflects these two very interesting personalities, providing a wonderful marriage of functionality and beauty.

The exterior of the house is more function than beauty. Although the house is built back into the mountain for efficient heating, the facade is fully exposed, appearing like nothing so much as a stark cube. The cube shape is very functional, though, because the front wall of the house is made up of windows pointing south. South is the direction for catching sunlight in Alaska, and that wall of windows provides an amazing amount of passive-solar heat. The cube is also a great shape for catching rain and snow melt. The roof is actually sloped slightly toward the center, where a series of drains catches the runoff and funnels it into the indoor wetlands for purification before storage.

On the other hand, the cube allows a certain beauty on the inside, because the floorplan allows nearly all rooms to be lit by the south-facing wall of windows. The whole house is wonderfully bright and nearly every room has an in-your-face view of the rugged Chugach Mountains. Beautiful.

There are only two small windows on the back side of the house. One is fully functional, providing a fire exit from the only room (a bedroom) not lit by the front. The other is a round, porthole-shaped window. But forgive me if I wait to describe that later.

LuAnn’s artistic design shows up a couple of different ways. I have already described the amazing sense of light and space in the layout of the walls. Another is the wonderful blending of cubistic shape and corners somehow fitting perfectly with several curves. There is a curved wall shared by the bathroom and master bedroom, a curved sink and counter in the bathroom and a small, circular portal leading into…a very interesting space. We call it the meditation room.

The meditation room flows out of the north wall of our bedroom. One enters through a the portal door, situated about three feet above the floor, with a small, oak ladder providing easy access. The room is about four feet high, four feet wide and eight feet long. And another porthole, this one a window, looks west, overlooking the Eagle River as it flows past our house to the sea.

I like to start my day with thirty minutes in the meditation room. The view is lovely there, and the space is small enough to provide a sense of privacy. For me it is a sacred space that helps me find myself centered in God and all that is of God—all that is good and lovely. After thirty minutes in the meditation room I emerge, almost as if from a womb, into the new day and its task-orientedness functionality that life demands. Connecting beauty with functionality is surely the proper way to live.

Sometimes life has stresses and struggles that can seem bigger than the mountain on which I live. Taking time to be connected to all that is lovely is essential to keeping proper perspective in life. I am grateful to Bob and LuAnn for creating this house, which has served as a reminder of such basic, but important things. And I am grateful for their inclusion of a meditation room. Who would think of such a thing as they built their house? I guess from now on, I will.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Philippians 4:8