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102.
OUTLAW BUILDING NEWS (Point Reyes, CA: Spring 1972).
4to. Slim wrps., 44pp. Illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings and diagrams.
The first and only issue of what was originally intended as "an irregular publication sharing news, ideas, experiments on how to build for yourself in the city and country." It documents the studio course for undergraduate students run by UC Berkeley professor Sim Van der Ryn and colleague Jim Campe over a period of ten weeks in 1971 at the former's property at Point Reyes in Northern California: "The class was designed to give some actual experience in how to make a place in the country - learning something of the process of building a livable situation in harmony with the setting and ourselves."
The course, "Making a Place in the Country - The Outlaw Builder's Studio", was an experimental seminar involving on-site building construction in which students collaborated in building their own shelters and lived together on the property for the course's duration. Thirty students constructed a temporary, back to the land, do-it-yourself communal village using wood salvaged from demolished chicken coops in Petaluma and materials found on site. The course also featured workshops and demonstrations from artists and craftsmen, including dome builder Lloyd Kahn, designer Gordon Ashby, and artist Gordon Onslow-Ford.
This well-illustrated report was issued by the students as an underground publication and became popular among the Bay Area’s counterculture community (contradicting as it did the cultural stereotype of 'lazy hippies'), and quickly sold out. Copies are now extremely scarce.
Short split at head of spine, o/w Very Good plus.
