Chimera House by Rick Dakan

Author:Rick Dakan [Dakan, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5:

Private Tour

Chimera House stood tall and strange in the bright afternoon sun, less than a hundred yards from where we emerged from the forest. What was unclear from the Google Earth images was that the front lawn sloped down to where we had to park. It was a slight incline, the front door was maybe fifty or sixty feet from us, but the foundation was about five or six feet higher than the ground I stepped out onto.

I stared at the Zocchi wing. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. He had taken down the entire east wing to the foundation and then built a steel frame for his organically curved, sculptural masterpiece. He re-purposed the deconstructed old house elements for the facade, mixing them with huge chunks of colored glass that looked like rough crystals or oversized raw gemstones, and which let light into the space inside. He called the technique “Domicile Devolution” or sometimes, when he was sounding more playful, “an architectural tornado to Oz.” It did look as though the pieces of the old house were being washed or blown down from the wall of the old church and then swept back up into the spiral tower at the far east end, which mirrored the staid, lighthouse-like tower at the west end. Adelaide Norris wanted to remove the purely decorative elements and replace them with a Roy Lichtenstein brush-stroke treatment, which would’ve been a real shame.

I’d read everything in print about the Zocchi wing, and knew a lot more than was described in Shan’s journals. In her account, she just made a chaotic run through what Zocchi called the “Domestic Slope,” the main, open chamber that contained the living and entertaining platforms, which is where both he and Adelaide Norris had mainly lived. The “Summer Tower” was built as a counterpoint to the Winter Garden greenhouse. Zocchi used it as a library, office, and display area for his architectural models. Adelaide used it as a gallery for her collection. It was a single, spiral hallway that wound up around a central steel column, which was in turn studded with more slabs of crystal-looking colored glass. At the top was Zocchi’s office, a round room with panoramic windows. In the center of its roof and floor, circular windows let light down into the steel and glass column, illuminating the tower’s spine at noon. It was almost noon as we parked, and I wanted to get inside the tower as soon as we could.

Jermaine was smiling and Gary was chuckling as they stepped out of the SUV and moved over to join us. I looked at Connie as she advanced towards them, and was a little surprised to see a pleasant, professional smile on her face as well.

“Oh, Gary, it’s just wonderful,” she said to him. “Thank you so much for bringing us here. It’s amazing. You’ve just absolutely made my day, my whole month really.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am,” Gary said. He looked like he was maybe blushing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.