House Tour: Eliphante & Hippodome NYT House & Home Roundup 1.31.08

House Tour: Eliphante & Hippodome
NYT House & Home Roundup 1.31.08

This bizarre sculptural home is perhaps the best (and most extreme) example of Slow Design. Located in Cornville, Arizona, Eliphante was created with found materials over a period of 28 years by the artist Michael Kahn and his wife Leda Livant...

Named for it's entrance (above) Eliphante and neighboring "buildings" are stretched along three acres of land. Made of driftwood and cast-off building supplies, the "Hippodome" is the large dome that Ms. Livant resides in. There is a piano, heat, electricty and water but the buildings are without a bathroom or toilet (there is a separate bath house that features a solar-heated shower). A Handmade Home tells the history of the place and offers some insight into it's free-form design:

The outdoor kitchen:

Kinda crazy, eh? Don't miss the complete slideshow, only about two-thirds of the images are posted here.

(Pics: David Kadlubowski)

Comments (12)

This is nuts and I love it, even though it seems like living in Davy Jones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Jones_(Pirates_of_the_Caribbean)

posted by visualingual on January 31st 2008 at 7:20am
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Amazing!

posted by callbob on January 31st 2008 at 7:49am
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I swear that was a set in the Dark Crystal!

posted by sillahee on January 31st 2008 at 7:49am
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Glee! I've been looking for info about this place ever since a friend told me she'd visited. Part of the fun was that my last name is Elefante, and the rest is that I love stuff like this! Luckily, Cornville isn't all that far from Phoenix, either, so now I can plan a visit!

posted by OneWallKitchen on January 31st 2008 at 8:37am
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nice to see these kinds of places again. I grew up in a slew of handmade homes. Rarely did we have electricity or a heat source that wasn't woodburning.
I kind of miss the uniqueness of these houses.

posted by little green on January 31st 2008 at 9:22am
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I thought the exact same thing, sillahee. What fun to live in a Jim Henson-like home, these pictures are stunning...

posted by HighSeas on January 31st 2008 at 10:24am
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This is so cool and livable. Beats the pants off that church yesterday.

posted by Usbek de Perse on January 31st 2008 at 3:29pm
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This is such a tonic after all of those anal-retentive modernist interiors, which look awful if the barcelona ottoman is so much as half an inch out of alignment.

I wish I had the vision to create a home like this. I especially love how the freeform ceiling spirals down to merge seamlessly with the countertop in the kitchen. That is so cool.

posted by Blandwagon on January 31st 2008 at 4:40pm
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Wow. This is a dream house. Or maybe I mean this is just like a house in a dream. It's beautiful.

posted by y-bloc on February 1st 2008 at 4:14am
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i'm sure my boyfriend and i (he's australian.. says a lot) will build something like this eventually when we retreat from society in the hills of australia. nice to see some inspiring pics to remind me it can be done!

posted by *heather leaf* on February 1st 2008 at 4:59am
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hippy skippy!

posted by buzzybee on May 29th 2008 at 11:37pm
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this looks like a combination of the main character's homes in What Dreams May Come.

I absolutely love it.

posted by am_clarke on September 3rd 2009 at 8:43pm
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