I turned around. A man in a suit disappeared down the sidewalk.
“What did I say?” she said.
“Are you telling me you’re being followed?”
“It’s unclear.”
Fishing vests, sleeping in public, antipsychotic medication, and now men following her?
When Bee was two, she developed a strange attachment to a novelty book Bernadette and I had bought years ago from a street vendor in Rome.
ROME Past and Present
A Guide
To the Monumental Centre of Ancient Rome
With Reconstructions of the Monuments
It has photographs of present-day ruins, with overlays of how they looked in their heyday. Bee would sit in her hospital bed, hooked up to her monitors, and flip back and forth among the images. The book had a puffy red plastic cover that she’d chew on.
I realized I was now looking at Bernadette Past and Present. There was a terrifying chasm between the woman I fell in love with and the ungovernable one sitting across from me.
We returned home. While Bernadette slept, I opened her medicine cabinet. It was crammed with prescription bottles written by an array of doctors for Xanax, Klonopin, Ambien, Halcion, trazodone, and others. All the bottles were empty.
Dr. Kurtz, I don’t pretend to understand what’s wrong with Bernadette. Is she depressed? Manic? Hooked on pills? Paranoid? I don’t know what constitutes a mental breakdown. Whatever you want to call it, I think it’s fair to say my wife is in need of serious attention.
Hannah Dillard spoke so highly of you specifically, Dr. Kurtz, and all you did to help Frank though his rough patch. If I remember correctly, at the outset Frank was resistant to treatment, but he soon embraced your program. Hannah was so impressed that she’s now a member of your board.
Bernadette, Bee, and I are scheduled to go to Antarctica in two weeks. Bernadette obviously does not want to go. I now think it might be a better idea if Bee and I go to Antarctica, just the two of us, while Bernadette checks into Madrona Hill. I can’t imagine Bernadette will be too keen on the idea, but it’s clear to me she needs some supervised R&R. I am anxious to hear your thoughts.
Sincerely,
Elgin Branch
PART TWO
Bernadette Past and Present
Architecture competition sponsored by the Green Builders of America
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Green Builders of America and the Turner Foundation announce:
20 × 20 × 20: The Twenty Mile House
Twenty Years Later
Twenty Years in the Future
Deadline for submission: February 1
Bernadette Fox’s Twenty Mile House no longer stands. There are few photos of it, and Ms. Fox is purported to have destroyed all plans. Still, its relevance grows with each passing year. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Twenty Mile House, the Green Builders of America, in conjunction with the Turner Foundation, invite architects, students, and builders to submit designs to reenvision and rebuild the Twenty Mile House and, in doing so, open a dialogue for what it means to “build green” in the next twenty years.
The challenge: Submit plans for a 3-bedroom, 4,200-sf single-family residence at 6528 Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. The only restriction is the one Ms. Fox placed on herself: Every material used must come from within twenty miles of the building site.
The winner: Will be announced at the GBA/AIA gala at the Getty Center and be awarded a $40,000 prize.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11
From Paul Jellinek, professor of architecture at USC,
to the guy Mom ran into on the street outside the library
Jacob,
Because you’ve taken an interest in Bernadette Fox, here’s a bit of a hagiography from the not-yet-published February issue of Artforum. They asked me to vet it for glaring mistakes. In case you have an impulse to contact the writer with news of your Bernadette Fox sighting, please don’t. Bernadette has obviously made a choice to get lost, and it seems to me we should respect it.
Paul
PDF of Artforum article
“Saint Bernadette: The Most Influential Architect You’ve Never Heard Of”
The Architects and Builders Association of America recently polled three hundred architectural graduate students and asked them which architects they admire most. The list is what you’d expect — Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler — with one exception. Tucked among the great men is a woman who is virtually unknown.
Bernadette Fox is extraordinary for many reasons. She was a young woman practicing solo in a male-dominated profession; she received a MacArthur grant at thirty-two; her handmade furniture stands in the permanent collection of the American Folk Art Museum; she is considered a pioneer of the green building movement; the only house she ever built no longer stands; she dropped out of architecture twenty years ago and has designed nothing since.
Alone, any of these attributes would make an architect noteworthy. Taken together, an icon was born. But who was Bernadette Fox? Was she forging the way for young women architects to come? Was she a genius? Was she green before there was green? Where is she now?
Artforum spoke with the handful of people who worked closely with Bernadette Fox. What follows is our attempt to unlock one of architecture’s true enigmas.
Princeton in the mideighties was the front line in the battle for the future of architecture. The modernist school was firmly established, its acolytes lauded and influential. The postmodernists, led by Princeton faculty member Michael Graves, were mounting a serious challenge. Graves had just built his Portland Public Service Building, its wit, ornamentation, and eclecticism a bold rejection of the austere, minimalist formality of the modernists. Meanwhile, deconstructivists, a more confrontational faction, were banding together. Led by former Princeton professor Peter Eisenman, deconstructivism rejected both modernism and postmodernism in favor of fragmentation and geometric unpredictability. Students at Princeton were firmly expected to pick sides, take up arms, and shed blood.
Ellie Saito was in Bernadette Fox’s class at Princeton.
ELLIE SAITO: For my thesis I designed a teahouse for the visitors center at Mount Fuji. It was essentially a pulled-apart cherry blossom made of exploding pink sails. I was defending my design during review. I was taking it from all sides. And Bernadette looked up from her knitting and asked, “Where are they going to put their shoes?” We all just looked at her. “Aren’t people supposed to take off their shoes in teahouses?” Bernadette said. “Where will they put them?”
Fox’s preoccupation with the prosaic caught the attention of Professor Michael Graves, who hired her to work in his New York office.
ELLIE SAITO: Bernadette was the only one in the whole class he hired. It was a big blow.
MICHAEL GRAVES: I’m not looking to hire an architect with a huge ego and huge ideas. I’m the one with a huge ego and huge ideas. I want someone who has the ability to carry out my ideas and solve the problems I throw at them. What struck me about Bernadette was the joy she took in tasks that most students would find beneath them. Architecture isn’t a profession usually chosen by egoless worker bees. So when you’re looking to hire, and you see a talented one, you grab her.