On Long Island, A Sophisticated Backyard Playhouse for Children

One can only hope that the children of artist Jerome A. Levin will someday have a full understanding of how lucky they were. Levin, a father of three, has built a backyard house for his kids by employing the kind of careful consideration and meticulous attention reserved for full-sized contemporary homes—without extracting an iota of its child-like magic.

Levin, who trained as both artist and philosopher, sees great merit in small spaces—(“it enables you to think differently about your surroundings and your peers”)—and, not surprisingly, approached this 125 square-foot, year-long project in the backyard of his Long Island house from a perspective both esthetic and esoteric.

His self-titled “Metapod,” is deliberately ‘monastic,’ with furnishings edited down to a boat-like minimum, creating a serene, contemplative counterpoint to its lush and leafy garden setting. The house’s carefully chosen orientation affords the children (and their sleepover friends) bucolic views of the sun’s rising and setting, and plenty of uninterrupted internal space supremely “conducive to daydreaming.” Lucky kids.

Images: Dwell Magazine