Monticello, the home Thomas Jefferson designed for himself, was in various ways a home of the future. Jefferson made adaptations, innovations, and transformations to suit the house to himself. Summing up this spirit of owner designed living, author Jack McLaughlin writes of Monticello: "My premise is simple: those who construct their own shelter replicate themselves, at their deepest and most significant level, in their houses. They are what they build." Jefferson and Monticello—The Biography of a Builder, pvii
How malleable could the built environment become? A house mutable, clay, flexible much like a living cell. Each cell of our body is transformable, self-renewing, selectively permeable, non-Euclidean. Why can't we build a house like that? By combining modeling software with phase transition materials we can.
