Dwelling and Rhythm: The Isle Brevelle as a Landscape of Home

Abstract

This paper provides an exploration of the interplay between human dwelling and the rhythms of nature as manifested on the Isle Brevelle, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The first phase builds an understanding of what dwelling is on the Isle Brevelle and how it has been maintained over two hundred years. It leads through a description of the physical setting; the people's legend of their origin and the places sacred to it; the dispersed modern community, still attached to the Cane River; and finally to the Cane River itself as the focus of the community-at-home and at-large. In the second phase, canoeing the river, I become aware of a rhythm of water, topography, vegetation, and human settlement along its banks: a play of containment and release inherent in the land that is respected and enhanced by the people's acts of building. I realize that the resonance or correspondence between a place and the lives upon it is the “whole” of dwelling, not just an aspect; and that the designer—the stranger—can experience dwelling directly, clearing a way for future design to also resonate.