UTOPIA, HANDMADE

Little embers of Eden still glow in the mountains along the Northern California coast. This isolated and stunningly beautiful region was fertile soil for hippies who, in the 1960s and 70s, decided they’d had enough of the war and strife embedded in mainstream society and wanted to retreat “back to the land.” Few of these DIY mini-utopias stood the test of time, often living on only through the publications they produced, yellowed dispatches from an elaborate alternate history. A meticulously produced new book, Handmade Utopia: Back-to-the-Land Architecture in Northern California, edited with text and oral histories by David Jacob Kramer and photographs by Michael Schmelling, explores the history of the movement and surveys the remnants of the scene today, winding through the rugged landscape and introducing us to the world of the holdouts who never left.

Schmelling’s loving photography follows these communalists through the world they built half a century ago. Overgrown backroads lead past irregular wooden huts, whose clunky forms bulge in response to their builders’ impulses instead of a plan. Some of the photography captures structures in various states of decomposition after their residents moved on. Geodesic domes, which communes enthusiastically adopted until their propensity to leak became apparent, have finally succumbed to rains. An octagonal recording studio slumps off its stilts in a forest clearing. Kramer’s accompanying interviews show a sanguine attitude about witnessing buildings return to nature. “The structure is only as relevant and sustainable as the people that it sustains and makes relevant,” a local maker of Japanese flutes puts it. “We all have to leave at some point.”

Other structures are still well-cared for and range from cozy to opulent. The most masterful are the work of local builder Bob McKee, whose ability to coordinate land sales, lumber supplies, and labor influenced the style of back-to-the-land life. McKee designed elaborate asymmetrical forms that would be fitted with stained glass and covered in elaborate hand-cut shingles. The construction company he formed lives on as a lumber supply store with a round shingled chapel for woodworkers to contemplate in (the company supplies local alternative builders to this day).

Anecdotes from residents reveal how structures emerged from circumstance and personal interest. Developing the skills to meet your own needs was important on a rural commune, and a self-built dwelling was a path to self-actualization. The photography plays up the identification between dweller and dwelling, collaging portraits of residents with the often messy interiors of the places where they live. Stacks of handmade bowls, sagging bookshelves, and Eastern religious iconography abound. Despite the enormous effort required to make a home by hand, they are typically furnished by mismatched and entirely mundane commercial furniture.

This bricolage extends to the structures themselves. Scavenging became a key part of the communes’ aesthetic universe and birthed some material innovations. Hippies got their lumber by dismantling old barns, stealing from logging sites, and dredging up old redwood trunks that the previous century’s mills had left at the bottoms of rivers. They also recognized the value of unloved historic buildings and created a market for pieces salvaged from demolitions. Several spreads are devoted to Harriet Bye, who was the go-to person if you wanted to get an old window. Some buildings show her impact by seemingly being designed around as many mismatched windows as possible.

One of the defining features of the communes was their intense privacy, something further exacerbated by their eventual pivot to illegal weed farming. As hangers-on, addicts, and criminals overran the San Francisco scene during the Summer of Love, the hippies hoped to preserve their community bonds by making themselves less accessible. The Alternative: Communal Life in New America, a 1970 predecessor to Handmade Utopia, captures this well: far from a free-for-all, the communes had strict rules, often forbade drugs, and required extremely hard work. Kramer’s introductory essay quotes a 1971 pamphlet, “Publicity is the death of community … it would probably be a good idea to refrain from giving yourselves a name.” It is wonderful to be given a glimpse inside something deeply earnest, designed and built out of love: architecture to live with, not a financial asset or something for outside eyes.

The world can’t be shut out forever. Aging in a rural area is difficult, let alone in an unconventional and high-maintenance home. Fires worsened by climate change are an impending threat. And of course, there’s the other strand of San Francisco’s counterculture that mutated in ways that were impossible to predict, eventually making the Bay Area the global capital of techno-capitalist evil. Legions of IPO’d remote workers will continue to creep northward, turning communes into feudal estates. With billionaires biohacking at Burning Man, it’s easy to be cynical and forget the conviction and intellectual depth of these early experiments. It’s nice to be welcomed into the homes of some people who really meant it.