In 2014, I left the architecture firm I had worked at for 11 years, my family sold our home and we moved an hour out of Minneapolis to an undeveloped 23 acre parcel of land. This was an opportunity to test architecture in a less hindered and rural place, where it might be more than a preconceived idea. This experience became an exploration into the role of architecture to shape and support our lives, our work and our relationship to the land. This concurrent move, designing and building of our home, and starting of the architectural practice has greatly influenced and developed the intentional, hardworking and patient characteristics of my work.

As we began work on our land, and the building of our home, we spent our time there in a camping state. When we arrived at the land that first summer we stayed in a borrowed RV, then a couple of tents when weather allowed, and then for much of 2015 and 2016, during the construction of our home, in what we lovingly call the tent shack. Basically, an in-process platform tent. There are some permanent aspects to it such as concrete deck footings and a wood floor, but then there is the tent, flexible and thin, barely covering us from the elements. It was a great way to begin getting to know our land. While camping, the seasons are more real, the sun more important, and simple elements like cooked food and clean water more valuable. We treasured this time, even in the midst of the trials a temporary and unsettled life brings. But there comes a real desire for something more permanent. We all desire our tents to be turned into stone, whether they are a house, a business or more importantly our lives.

Architecture is a movement from tent to stone. The tent represents the limitless open, the wandering, the rough ideas, the hopes and inspiration. The stone is fixed, complete, permanent and grounded. When we make that move through architecture away from the tent toward the stone it is an amazing accomplishment, bringing formation and solidity to our aspirations, but we must also retain something of the tent, the ideas and hopes that originally moved us, and the fleeting things that first called to us must remain present.

The name Stone Tent comes from a belief that good architecture must engage and make present both the fleeting and meaningful experiences of life, that are sometimes nearly invisible, as well as the solid necessities of concrete footings, a roof and plumbing. Architecture carries with it the paradox of these light, momentary things joined with heavy, permanent things. The events of our lives that take place within the spaces we build are the real stuff of architecture, and architecture must frame these events with care and purpose or risk being dead spaces.

Finally, since most of us, for the greater part of our lives, find ourselves in some sort of “tent” phase, unsettled and waiting, Stone Tent is also a challenge to see the “stone” present, or its hope materialized, in the place of the tent. Architecture is not just a question of taste and style, it is that which shapes and supports our lives on a daily basis. It lends an image to the unseen aspects of our lives, our deeper ideas and beliefs. My hope is that Stone Tent will be about work that stands at this edge between the tent and the stone, helping owners move their projects toward greater stability and grounding, solidifying ideas that were previously unrealized, while still remaining deeply connected with those initial intentions and purposes.

he went to live in the land of promise … living in tents… For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Hebrews 11:9-10

News posts on the construction of our home.