Sea Ranch revisited

The NYTimes Magazine has posted a feature looking back at Halprin's ideas behind Sea Ranch and linking that experience with its continued success today. Like almost any historical piece on Sea Ranch, it is worth reading, but I was taking aback by one comment.

The author, Alice Gregory, describes the remarkable blend of architecture and landscape architecture this way, "This is precisely the appeal of Sea Ranch houses, which contrive to give residents the juvenile thrill of being simultaneously inside and outdoors." Reducing the long tradition of exploring the boundaries between indoors and outdoors to a "juvenile thrill" misses the essential nature of what so many designers have explored at that seemingly inescapable boundary.