b'[Patty] People always ask, Why a spiral? What promptedthe way energy organizes itself. And it had a metaphysicalend of the right triangle in the center. I wrapped it around you to build a spiral house? The short answer is that Tomappeal as well, the way it expands and contracts simulta- from that center point out. It had a fence-like quality that had been working with the spiral shape in his sculpture, andneously around a fixed center. Looking at work that thedidnt impress me much. Still, I was curious about scale Id been asking him to design a guest house. He discovered,sculptor Isamu Noguchi created for the Venice Biennale inand about different ways of creating a spiraling structure much to his delight, that the spiral shape could be the basis1986, I was especially drawn to a large spiral slide made outin stone. I wondered, How big could I go with it? Large for a house design as well: the house as a very large, inter- of marble. The scale intrigued me, and I was also captivatedenough to be a house? I estimated a room height of eightactive sculpture. And, as it turned out, a house that wouldby its whimsical participatory quality. It inspired me toor nine feet and space for the floor, so ten feet per story. incorporate ancient principles of sacred geometry into thethink about the architectural possibilities of the spiral andThat would make it around forty feet, which seemed todaily life of a 21st-century couple. the pure joy of interacting with it.be a reasonable height. At the time, we were living in the two-bedroom ranchThat night in the painting studio I started playing withI started to look at how the space would be organized. house on our property in Upstate New York, using one bed- the idea of wrapping a triangle around itself into a spiralYoud have to come in where the spiral is open, so that room as an office and the garage as Toms painting studio.shape to create an inner space, just to see what that looked Whenever we had overnight guests, we would put them inlike and what I could do with it.our bedroom and move into the studio, leaving everyoneI cut a large right triangle out of foam core board and feeling awkward. And so, with the idea of a cozy Woodstockscored a bunch of straight lines parallel to the tall side so cabin in mind, I said, Lets build a guest house. I could bend it easily any way I wanted. Then I drew out a Tom resisted the idea for some time. He had no interestspiral on a large piece of paper and started to bend the foam 10Designing the Housein a conventional rectilinear structure. But once inspired bycore to follow the path of the spiral, starting with the tall the possibilities of a spiral house, he did the basic design ina single night. Heres how Tom tells the story:[Tom] It was late March in 1997, right after our wedding and Pattys birthday. Id been making stone sculptures for nine years and was wanting to work at a larger scale and in forms that allowed for more interaction between the viewer and the sculpture. I kept returning to the spiral form. It was everywhere in naturethe way plants and animals grow, Why a Spiral House?Having explored the spiral shape in his sculpture for more than five years, Tom began thinking about the architectural possibil-ities of the form and the pure joy of interacting with it on such a large scale. Left to right:The Return, EarthSeed, Axis Mundi, and the Spiral House'