The Architecture of Intimacy

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Architect Christopher Alexander, for example, attempts in his work to resolve the age-old Njord-Skadi dilemma in Scandinavian folklore: Njord loved the sea and Skadi the mountains. Each was restless and ill at ease in the place of the other, so they established a festival of meeting in between. Addressing the delicate problem of the balance of solitudes, Alexander asks, How large a field is required for companionship? And how much privacy does each person require?

The challenge is to design domains of intimacy rather than to construct close quarters. After all, intimacy, unlike closeness, is never repellent. One of the designs I have lived -- in a marriage that works! -- extends Alexander's plan in space and time to include a roving shared realm anchored by separate private dwellings. There is my husband's place (in Minneapolis) and my place (in St. Paul), and then there are the places in the world where we meet.

Living in distinct dwellings makes it necessary to be taken in to each other's intimacy. Such a design asks me to consider how my house houses him, and how his house houses me. The arrangement is stable but with an added note of impermanence because of the ever-present question 'Will you live together someday?'

Separate spaces posit triangles. Whether or not the triangle involves a third person, a third space destabilizes a potentially static 'twoness' and generates movement. The desire behind this design was made literal in the '60s ideal of communal life: Everyone lived in separate dwellings linked by a communal hearth, paths from house to house etching triangles in the meadow.

Even if you don't live in a dwelling entirely distinct from your partner's, houses should have structures to enable separation: walls, large work surfaces, different levels, sectioned yards, outside porches or decks above ground, discrete lighting (reading lights for one), solid doors, and window seats. And, of course, elements that encourage touching: couches for two, softening colors, beds, small passageways between some rooms, intimate tables for eating, entryways to facilitate greeting.

Nourishing separate spaces might seem a little too radical for some people, especially those who are married. But, as the impertinent writer Phyllis Rose says, 'With regard to marriage, we need more complex plots.'

Author Nor Hall has never lived with her husband of 15 years, Roger Hale. After all this time, they still have only the bare essentials -- a toothbrush, a bathrobe, a pair of pajamas -- at each other's houses. 'Our relationship has none of the niggling day-to-day problematics of life,' Hall says. 'Coming together is more stimulating.' An earlier version of this article appeared in Marriages (Spring 1996) by James Hillman, Ginette Paris, Nor Hall, Rachel Pollack, et al.

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