Anticapitalistic to their foundations: the 'Handmade Utopias' of Northern California

Featured spreads are from D.A.P. and Edition Patrick Frey’s highly-anticipated, 496-page new release Handmade Utopia: Back-to-the-Land Architecture in Northern California, collecting oral histories by Heads Together author David Jacob Kramer and photographs by Michael Schmelling. Featuring more than 780 reproductions, this is a true labor of love by lovers of idealistic, homegrown labor. “In pursuit of something better, back-to-the-landers radically reappraised what a home could and should be—and how it might inform the lives of its inhabitants,” Kramer writes. “Though the vast majority eventually retreated to more conventional urban and suburban lives, a handful have stuck it out and remain on-the-land today. Their homes have evolved according to need and available resources, their means of construction reflecting their aspirations and dissensions. This generation is now in their seventies and eighties. Their homes are remote, far from grandchildren and healthcare. Living off-grid is hard work. In rural NorCal, storms take down ‘widowmakers,’ deadly branches that block roads and wreck roofs. Climate change has meant more wildfires, longer droughts and dried-up wells. The legalization of pot has caused a core source of the community’s income to shrivel. New buyers don’t always want the liability of a home built in defiance of building codes. Many of these houses are strange and impractical, never constructed for their resale promise, anticapitalistic to their foundations.”

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