Handmade Utopia

Half a century ago, a legion of young idealists dropped out of society and went “back to the land,” creating a patchwork of utopian communes across Northern California. Handmade Utopia: Back-to-the-Land Architecture in Northern California tracks down the rogue souls still committed to this way of life, capturing their handbuilt, otherworldly residences alongside the stories of how they came to be—at what is now the tail end of one generation’s grand social experiment. Handmade Utopia travels the length of Northern California, which formed the epicenter of the movement, journeying down hidden dirt roads and deep into redwood forests to discover handmade homes kept hidden for decades. Michael Schmelling’s photography documents how these structures appear today and David Jacob Kramer’s oral histories detail how they came to be, and are presented alongside a plethora of archival materials.