Sitting nestled on top of Genesee Mountain in Colorado, is Charles Deaton’s Sculptured House. The house is anything but a cookie-cutter house. People have called the house a “clamshell”, “spaceship,” “mushroom,” “eyeball,” and “taco” Charles Deaton however, preferred sculptured. After all, that is how the house was originally made. Deaton knew when he began the plaster sculpture that it would eventually end up as a house that he himself would live in. He did not want to “simply wrap a shell around a floor plan” He did not even choose a scale until the sculpture was completed. Deaton was a naturalist and found the naturally occurring curves and shapes to be fascinating. It is no wonder he chose such a curvilinear house to be his own.
Deaton designed the house in 1963 as the “sculpture you could live in”. The house was Deaton’s only residential project that he would create in his lifetime. His motto was always “People aren’t angular so why should they live in rectangles?” This motto makes me believe that he was really after something with this notion. Unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, another architect in the same period of time, the same lines and angles are missing in Deaton’s Sculpture House. His house has not a single straight wall. This would be tricky for an ordinary designer, but luckily for Deaton his daughter overtook the interiors, designing the furniture as art pieces. Thus, the house is an art piece, with art pieces inside. When asked the question if architecture is art, the Sculptured House is full proof that it is. The only difference in art and architecture is that architecture can be contained. The containment of people is what makes this house fascinating. The way that it is not a perfect clamshell is unique. It is curved, so that the main glass façade is facing the most light. During the day the house is exposed to many different highlights. The bedrooms are along different sides of the house, and have different effects on the mood of the room. The master bedroom gets streaks of light throughout the day onto the floor and bed and makes the house become part of the bedroom. The same happens with the other bedroom on the opposite side of the house. The light shines onto the bed and the shadow on the curved wall spotlight the bed to look like it is a work of art. The light and shadow effects throughout the house make it easy to see why Deaton wanted this work of art to be his own. Unfortunately due to debt, Deaton never lived in the home. He never was able to see the interior finished. His daughter Charlee was commissioned to take over the interior project in 2000.
The house sits proud on top of Genesee mountain showing off its beauty to the world. Charles Deaton would be proud to look at his residential masterpiece and the changes it went through to be standing here today
