Architecture is serious business. Not only because architect's take themselves painfully serious, but because for folks who choose to go down the path of designing and building a custom house, it is probably the most money they will ever spend. Tends to be a bit sobering.

A house is the daily landscape of your life. You wake up to the walls and ceilings, floors and doors, that are your house. You go to sleep under the stars, but under that ceiling as well. Your house ought to be fun. I don't mean funhouse fun, although that can be done. I mean that as much as we often endeavor to create a house that is a safe refuge in the world, it should also be a place of joy. We don't have a lot of tools in our belts to pull this off as architects - the sun streaming in a window, the smell of blooming trees wafting through a kitchen, the solid satisfaction of a door closing.

A house can be whimsical. We have all seen those crazy structures, hobbled together by some singular, driven, local wacko made of license plates or aluminum cans or auto tires. But that ephemeral whimsy can be made of simpler stuff - a series of little ledges that hold glistening snow or scuppers that cascade the occasional shower.

A house made of only those things would be tiresome in short. But without these little moments, designed lightly, a house is not much more than a big motel room without even the magnificently awful painting over the bed.