I first got interested in architecture at the tender age of ten, after watching the James Bond movie ‘Doctor No’. If you have seen the movie, you may remember the villain’s ‘secret lair’, a luxurious underwater cave accessed by a hidden elevator, furnished with hip and happening 1960’s ‘modern’ furniture, a crackling fire in a cantilevered saucer-shaped fireplace and a gigantic built-in aquarium with a convex lens that made ‘minnows look like whales’.
I had found my calling in life: to design secret lairs for evil villains.
I mapped out my career path and, after five years of architecture school, got an ‘Associate’ membership with SPECTRE and opened my office. Things were slow. I would hand out my business cards at SPECTRE meetings and conventions and got a couple little remodeling jobs designing secret bookcase doors. I discovered that it wasn’t enough work to support myself and my growing family. Most of the really established villains already had lairs.
I had to get some ‘normal’ jobs to pay the bills. One ‘normal’ job had led to another and, after a few years…my dream of designing lairs for arch-villains had withered away.
Then…one of my ‘normal’ clients…a wife and mother of two small children whose dreams of becoming a novelist had also withered along with her new responsibilities…had hired me to design their new custom home. We ended up designing a hidden writing room behind a secret panel in their walk-in closet where she could hide from the children one hour a day to write.
Secret rooms for good instead of evil. Fun!
Next came a ‘secret’ kid’s bedroom…a hidden gun room…an escape room…a ‘safe’ for a valuable collection…an indoor garden…the opportunities were endless.
Secret Stairways and Hidden Rooms
