Escape Home

A memoir by architectural designer Charles Paterson (born Karl Schanzer, 1929) who fled his native Vienna during Nazi occupation, studied with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, and ultimately created his own modern architectural practice in Aspen, Colorado at the beginning of the town’s skiing revival. First person accounts from other family members, including the author's stalwart, inventive, and visionary father, Stefan Schanzer, are also part of the book. His coauthor is his daughter, Carrie Paterson. The book connects family history with historical events, modern architecture in Central Europe (Adolf Loos married Charles Paterson's aunt Claire Beck and did several commissions for the family), and gives form to the elusive concept of “home,” freedom, and the unconstrained architectural possibilities of the postwar American West.