Michigan Family Farms and Farm Buildings: Landscapes of the Heart and Mind

Preface

preface The compelling draw of a traditional farm landscape began for me as a teenager in Michigan where I first encountered great red barns floating over a sea of late summer crops. A high school exchange student in fourth year architecture in my native India, I was living with a family in their Frank Lloyd Wright–designed prairie house. Enchanted by Wright’s work, which I had eagerly explored in architectural books, I was exhilarated at touching, seeing, and experiencing a Wright building. The house, an aesthetically stimulating, tactile environment , changed as the light traveled through it and creatively framed the rolling Michigan countryside with which it blended. It was an architect’s dream. I attended high school, learned about the United States, and made American friends—the intent of the exchange . But, in peripheral vision the barns which dotted the landscape between my Wright-designed home and the modern, lowslung high school made a powerful imprint. Painted oxide red, tall against the expansive fields of summer crops or winter snow, silhouetted against colored skies of a setting sun, the barns were a dramatic, strong architectural presence, primordial in intent yet graceful in presentation. The fact that the barns made any impression on a young architectural student steeped in modernism and living in a house designed by an iconic American architect was remarkable, a testament to their inherent power. I studied them many years later as a faculty member at the University of Michigan’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning. But the impetus and curiosity to do so were born in these early encounters. These are stories of some Michigan barns, farms, and farm families that have taken far too long to write. The fault is mine. I have hesitated, fearing that I would fail to capture the indomitable sense of place, person, and values that became apparent as I talked to farm people while examining their barns and buildings. In terse, sparse prose, they articulate a way of life, of connection to family, community , and the built and natural environments, that provides meaning, satisfaction, and strength. It is a sustainable, frugal, integral way of life that accepts constraints. As such, beyond nostalgic allure and archetypal , even genetic memory, for many it presents lessons for the way we might address the challenges of our evolving future. ...