A Hobbit House
(Page 2 of 4)
March/April 2000
By Robyn Griggs Lawrence
He found more than 100 recipes for exterior plaster used to seal the clay and straw, including everything from horse urine to molasses. But all shared the same core ingredients: lime, sand, and horsehair. Lacking access to horsehair, Zuker substituted polyester fiber and added rock salt and alum. He cobbled together a rough recipe of one part lime, four parts sand, a handful of salt, a handful of alum, and enough fibers to make it all hold together.
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Sacred proportions
Before he could begin building his small home, Zuker had to get approval from the neighborhood homeowners’ association. That required architectural drawings, so he turned to his friend Murray Libersat, a faculty member at the University of Texas School of Architecture. Libersat, a temple designer who had studied Sastric architecture—a Hindu design system resulting in simple, elegant buildings that harmonize with the natural order of the universe—gave Zuker exact proportions for the 900-square-foot house and urged him not to deviate from them. Libersat had followed the wisdom of the sages, basing the cottage’s proportions on ancient mathematical formulas deemed auspicious and beneficial for occupants.
The plan called for a simple, rectangular 650-square-foot living area and a 180-square-foot bathroom area. (Zuker later added lofts above the sleeping and work areas, taking advantage of the 18-foot-high ceilings for space.)
Zuker designed the home as it was built so that details could be decided upon only in the proper context. He picked up on this idea after another architect friend had suggested he read Christopher Alexander’s classic building treatise A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press, 1977). Based on Alexander’s advice, Zuker waited until the structure was built to place windows. “I stood in the spot where the kitchen sink would be, and I moved my hands back and forth, like when you’re going to take a photo,” he explains.
Just grab it and do it
The first step in getting the house up was to lay a dry rubble foundation, without cement. Every builder Zuker approached said that was impossible. “I took the plans to a structural engineer, who said I would have to pour concrete and lay steel rebar,” Zuker recalls. “And then I would look at these pictures of houses that were 900 years old, and I knew they didn’t have rebar.”
Zuker convinced the owners of a limestone quarry in neighboring Cedar Park, Texas, to sell him 60 tons of boulders for $2 a ton (their bulk price), and he enlisted the help of Wesley King, a third-generation stonemason, to lay the foundation and the chimney. They dug down to bedrock and, with the help of three laborers, hauled the boulders from the driveway to the trench. “The stonemason really taught me a thing or two about common sense and work ethics,” Zuker says. “I was always trying to find the easy way to do it, devising pulleys and the like, but after I worked with him, I learned that you just grab it and do it. You don’t fret about it being heavy.”