Designing a house for your parents used to be a going-solo architect's rite of passage. Now post-architects build playhouses at their parents for their kids. At least that's my theory about young alt-architect Australian Rory Hyde, whose new book Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture, explores alternative modes of beyond the old school set-up-a-firm, design-buildings, get-paid-regularly, etc.
Susie's Pavilion was commissioned by a "generous grandmother" to be placed in her backyard for visiting granddaughters. The prominence of the "clients" in Hyde's photos, and the boldness with which they stare down his camera, lead me to suspect they're his kids.
Anyway, the Pavilion has an amphitheater stair and slide facing the house, and a playroom/getaway/shenanigans lair on the backside, where no one can see. In a talk at Fabrica in Italy last Spring, he joked at all the trouble the girls will be able to get in out there when they're teenagers. Hmm, sounds more like a ne'er-do-well uncle than a dad; but half dozen of one.
Susie's Pavilion [roryhyde]
