Archinect - News

Why a house in Manhattan Beach is covered in a family's memories

2016-02-10T12:33:00-05:00

After Feb. 29, when he packs the plywood portraits back into the truck and heads back to Texas, the house will be demolished and replaced by a pair of three-story condos. "It's not going to be fun when I drive off," he says, "but this is always going to be my hometown."

"Six years ago, when developers offered artist Gary Sweeney "an armored truck full of money" for his childhood home in Manhattan Beach, he turned them down. Sweeney, who currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, was content renting out the old wood-paneled beach house to surfers and letting a management company deal with repairs.

But then the airline where Sweeney worked a day job as a baggage handler offered him cash to retire. He's in his 60s now, with no children and a wife whose job as a flight attendant would make traveling the world easy and affordable. On top of that, tree roots in the yard of the house at 320 35th St. were constantly mucking up the plumbing and maintenance costs were piling high. It was time to sell. Time to retire. Time to travel and make art full-time.

Eventually the developers came knocking again and offered Sweeney "two armored trucks full of money" for the property his parents purchased for $5,400 in 1945. He accepted on one condition: He would maintain occu...

Did the architecture of your schools leave an impression on you?

2015-10-20T18:01:00-04:00

'None of the buildings seemed built to impose and in all of them one had the sense that what mattered about a room was the spirit and determination with which it was filled, and the uses to which ingenuity could put it. When I want to remember what a first-class education felt like, that is the architecture I remember, and it mattered solely because of what people did with it.'

It seems that no matter how many years have passed, those schoolyard memories — whether cheerful or hellish — will always be buried in the back of our minds. In light of the 2015 Stirling Prize recently awarded to the Burntwood School in Wandsworth, London, some of The Guardian's writers share how the architecture of their educational stomping grounds as youngsters impacted them.

Do you relate to any of their stories? Which school campus from your own experiences left the strongest impression?