At Home: A Client's Appreciation for Authentic Architecture

Book excerpt: With more than 100 color photos, author Deborah Lencioni Lapp tells the story of her life in the houses she’s called home, and in so doing, demonstrates the importance of architecture in our everyday lives. Having worked closely with renowned architect Arthur Dyson on her first home, the award-winning Lencioni Residence, Lapp returns to Dyson decades later, after the death of her husband, after her children have grown, and after her remarriage, to create a new home—the award-winning Lapp RiverHouse—for the next phase in her and her partner's lives. From the planning stages to soliciting bids from contractors to the challenges and joys of construction, Lapp lays out in specific, eye-opening, and sometimes humorous detail, how a client-architect collaboration can and should work. In an age of cookie-cutter McMansions, Lapp shows us that a nourishing, energizing, and embracing home that reflects your authentic self is not only possible, it makes all the difference. “Deborah Lencioni Lapp weaves together the story of her own life, its sorrows and celebrations, with the story of the houses sheltering and reflecting that life; she gently—but unequivocally—reminds us that authenticity is reflected in all the choices that we make, not the least of which are the houses we build and the steps we take to make those houses ours. If the unexamined life is not worth living, then a thoughtful life will be present in every line, curve, angle, and space in which we move and breathe, a reminder of not only who we are but who we are meant to be.” —David Borofka, author of A Longing for Impossible Things and The End of Good Intentions