In the early 1970s Raimund Abraham's renewed interest in the typology of the house resulted in numerous projects exploring the ritual of dwelling. To explore the various psychological conditions intuited in the archetypal house, Abraham used words as well as images. In a poem he titled "Elements of the House," he indicated often opposing sensations and feelings, natural elements and cycles, and spatial components to characterize his subject. With regard to the design for a House with Curtains, the open grid with blowing curtain walls gives physical form to "the wind," "movement," "transparencies," and "dreams." In the House without Rooms, what looks like the carved interior of a boulder embodies, "density," "paralysis," "isolation," and "wombs." Situated in barren landscapes, either imagined or from memory, both schemes are for houses that straddle the earth and the sky, and evoke life's oppositions.
Publication excerpt from an essay by Bevin Cline and Tina di Carlo, in Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 116.
