Bringing the Outside In It’s common to hear modern designers talk about how important it is to…

Bringing the Outside InIt’s common to hear modern designers talk about how important it is to allow “nature to come inside.” When we built our modern house, we discovered that nature had its own ideas about coming indoors. When a local fifth grader visited once, his report later stated, “The Harmon house has twenty-seven windows, six doors, and one bat house.” You can see the bat house through our sunroom windows. At dusk in the summer, a half dozen furry golf balls fall out of it and quickly fly away. At dawn, the bats return, take a sip of water from a nearby pool, then disappear into the bat box again as though nothing happened. One summer night, I had just spotted Jupiter through the upstairs bathroom window when one of the bats flew inside through the balcony door that I’d forgotten to close . Suddenly we had a bat in the house as well as a planet. There was nothing to do but shut the bedroom door and leave the balcony door open. In the morning, the bat and Jupiter were gone.