M: I want to talk a little bit about your experience growing up in sort of post-modern environments and how that's affected your work.

B: Well, I grew up... you know, my dad builds all the houses we’ve lived in (fig. 27). There are three at this point. And one of his main architectural interlocutors was Frank Gehry. (Maybe not the more recent stuff, like post-Bilbao, but the Santa Monica stuff. The L.A. stuff. The early stuff.) So he's basically done these houses throughout his life: '30s into mid-'40s is the house that I was born in and lived in, the house my mom still lives in.

figure 27

Roger Bell house in Sebastopol, CA. Photo courtesy of the artist.

And then he did another house (fig. 28) once they split up, which was very different, and then the final house, which is going to be the last house he’ll ever build (fig. 29), which he did in his late 50s and early 60s.

figures 28 and 29

Roger Bell House in Petaluma, CA. Photo by Brian McCloud Photography, 2014

Roger Bell house in Healdsburg, CA. Photo courtesy of the artist.

So it’s sort of been an evolution, and I've always been… if you think about Frank Gehry and his work, even the early stuff, I’ve always been in these modern environments. That’s what I’m comfortable in. Postmodern, really. I mean, my dad's a philosopher, but he taught classes in postmodern architecture in the ‘90s and that kind of thing. That’s definitely something: my mom, the chamber musician, house concerts, on one hand; and on the other hand, I’m very comfortable in these modern/postmodern kinds of buildings because of my dad. Not developer style "modern," but very singular and strange, the kinds of spaces that the first thing people do when they enter is go, “Whoa!” I mean, my bedroom, growing up, I climbed up a ladder and there was a vaulted ceiling with skylights and I had this weird wall and there was a little loft and my bed was in a cave and my bookshelf was on a slant and everything was custom. That’s the environment I grew up in, that’s what I’m used to, so I’m used to participating in these sort of, not necessarily extreme, but singular spaces.