MIES - In a Shell by the Sea

Sometimes design is creepy. As a kid, if you like to dream of spaces, you think of Willy Wonka's amazing chocolate room, where the buttercups are drinkable and edible. You marvel at the Swiss Family Robinson, who turned a treehouse into a mansion. There is some childlike glee in those designs, which stipulates that corners should be curved and function singular.

The following is a design (from Dornob) - not so much architectural as nostalgic - which takes me back to roaming on the shoreline along the Oregon Coast. It is patterned after a nautilus shell; the kind of shell which makes that funny echo should you blow into it. Whether the space is habitable or not isn't the point of posting this; the point is this is what every kid wanted to design originally. Now that us kids have grown up, is this practical anymore? Or just creepy?

If it sounds like a simple question, that's because it is. The goal for any quality design is comfort. Can you live in a space? Whether or not the design is elaborate, is it habitable? That question is more fundamental than great architects and designers tend to give it credit. There is an art to comfort, and a design like this may push the boundaries a little too far. Things can take us back, to be sure. But even projections, of any kind, should have their limits.