Primers for a Handmade Utopia at Cooper Union follows Northern California’s back-to-the-land builders through photographs, oral histories, handmade tools and period publications. Salvaged materials, geodesic domes and improvised building methods produced homes whose construction continued to respond to their inhabitants. Many surviving builders are now in their seventies and eighties, giving the documentation an urgency beyond countercultural nostalgia.
The photograph’s moss-covered shingles and red triangular windows make a wonderful meeting of exact geometry and an untidy forest. The show is at the Foundation Building’s third-floor hallway gallery, 7 East 7th Street, through October 29. Today’s public hours are noon–6 p.m. Exhibition details