January 2010 was the coldest in Dublin for 45 years. The snow brought transport, pedestrians and businesses to a halt, the threat of low gas supplies and then water shortages with the thaw – one snap of bad weather and we are all reminded of how reliant we are on our infrastructure systems and networks to live our lives in comfort and how vulnerable we are when they break down.

For me, this past month brought into sharp focus everything I’d learned whilst participating in the ‘Community Powerdown’ course run by the Cultivate Centre in Dublin, last year – an exploration of the challenges we all face as the supply of carbon-based fuels like oil and gas run out.

From 'Energy & Power' - a 1971 oil use projection

The phenomenon is known as  ‘Peak Oil’, coined by M. King Hubbert in the 1950′s as he investigated the rate of oil production over time – the bell-shaped graph above is a typical projection of how oil production will fall off sharply, as resources become exhausted. Since Hubbert’s time, world population has grown; technology is more advanced and prevalent and, as a result, our energy demands have more than doubled.

Schools of thought vary on the timing of Peak Oil but whether it is in our near future or our near past, we have reached a turning point where the resources we are reliant upon for our current way of life will steadily become more scarce:

• more difficult to access,
• more likely to cause friction and aggression as competition to find and control dwindling resources increases and, of course,
• more expensive as supply drops and demand increases.

To put this into perspective – in 2008, 80-90% of total worldwide energy consumption came from burning fossil fuels.

As part of the ‘Community Powerdown’workshops, each week a dozen of us, from different age groups, backgrounds, interests and awareness of environmental issues sat down to look at how Peak Oil would affect us and what measures we could put in place to make our lives more resilient to this kind of change.

Reading this,  you may think changing your heating to something more sustainable like wind power, a couple of solar panels or a wood-chip boiler, in the future, will take care of the problem – as I did before I embarked on the course – but the impact of Peak Oil goes far beyond the question of how we heat our homes.

'Leavin' on a jet plane... don't know if I'll be back again'

Without oil, how do we travel? Cars, buses, motorbikes, mopeds, trains and planes all rely on carbon-fuels and the impetus isn’t there to develop alternatives whilst these fuels are perceived to be in plentiful supply.

Who made your lunch today?

What will we eat? It takes ploughs, tractors, sowers, reapers to tend the land in this time of large scale industrial farming. Ingredients have to be transported to factories, which have to be heated and whose machines have to be powered and whose products then have to be transported around the country and the world.

One of the facts I found most startling is that our current food chain is only 3 meals deep – if anything were to disrupt the flow of supply and demand, we have only enough food to last 3 days before serious problems occur. Think about the lorry drivers strike in the UK a few years back or the snow we’ve just experienced – this is how easy it is to disrupt the systems we rely on.

'Life in the fast lane...'

Where and how will we work? In their book, ‘Microtrends – Surprising Tales of the Way we Live Today’, Mark J. Penn & E. Kinney Zalsne identify not one but two trends around the commuter lifestyle – Commuter Couples whose jobs dictate almost separate lives and who are reliant on travel just to spend time together and Extreme Commuters who travel at least 90 minutes each way daily to get to work. There’s even a Mega-Commuter trend, especially in Europe, where people are reliant on flying to and from work.

Without cheap independent transport, the long-distance work commute, a reality for many in Ireland who could not afford to buy boom-time housing in locations where they worked, becomes completely unsustainable.

'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo...'

Where and how do we live?  The construction industry is one of the largest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions in the world and that’s before we move into our homes and face the challenges of heating, lighting, powering TVs, DVDs, X-Boxes, computers, printers, washing machines, dryers, fridges, cookers, dishwashers etc.

Here today, gone tomorrow?

What kind of communities will we have to create? These are huge problems and whilst each of us can change our behaviour as individuals, there is also a need for us to come together and agree changes that will work at a larger scale – sharing of resources, reduction of waste, sustainable living systems.

At a time when we prize our independence so highly, these are frightening prospects. But it is much more frightening to have change thrust upon us than to look ahead, anticipate a new set of circumstances and start planning for it ourselves.

If you’re interested in learning about these issues, Cultivate are running the course again as ‘Community Resilience – 10 Active Learning Lessons’, on Tuesday evenings from 16th February to 27th April at the Greenhouse, 17 St Andrew’s Street. To book or find out more, contact Cultivate at 01 674 5773 or on the web-site – it costs €180.00 for 10 weeks and there are 2 free places available to those who are passionate about or active in sustainability or resilience development.

In the past 2 years, we’ve seen all too clearly what comes of short-term thinking – there is always a price to pay. Our current thoughts and actions create the world we live in tomorrow – so take a moment and ask yourself, what kind of future am I making today?

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in:

The DIY Energy Efficient Home

Dublin Open House: A-Rated House by FKL Architects

Is Your Home BER Ready?

Do you have any any pet peeves about housing or home design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to read more about.

People tend to call on me when they have a problem with their homes – a long-standing issue they can no longer ignore or something new created by a change in circumstance. Either way, it’s just human nature to have a problem with problems. Often we don’t even want to acknowledge they exist for fear of discovering bigger, uglier problems lurking beneath!

Me – I love problems. Once you clearly identify a problem, you’re already half way to solving it. The key usually lies in understanding the problem itself, and applying a little bit of creative thinking to unlock it.

I got to thinking about this after watching ‘Dancing on Ice – The Story of Bolero’ on TV last night – a documentary about Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s record-breaking routine at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. As a teenager, I watched them skate to victory and remember both the beauty of the ‘Bolero’routine and the acclaim that followed when they were awarded full marks by each of the 12 judges – a feat that hasn’t been matched before or since.

But what I found intriguing, watching the documentary, was how this extraordinary performance essentially started out as a problem. The original ‘Bolero’piece by Ravel is 17 mins long – the competition rules only allow only 4 minutes skating time. Torvill & Dean hired a composer and worked with him to condense the key elements of the piece to meet the competition requirements. After working on the piece for 3 days, they managed to reduce it to 4 mins… and 28 seconds. No matter how hard they tried they couldn’t make it any shorter without losing the things they loved about the music.

Many might have given up at this point, picked another piece and worked with that instead but Torvill & Dean knew this was the right music for them and were determined to use it. When they examined the competition rules, they discovered the ’4 minute’clock on the routine only started when their skates made contact with the ice – and so they designed a routine where they didn’t make contact with the ice for the first 28 seconds! What they created as a result was iconic, ground-breaking and, of course, Olympic Gold.

Had they been able to condense Bolero into 4 minutes exactly, would they have come up with as memorable an opening? The need to solve the problem of the extra 28 seconds made them look at their work from a completely different angle. It was creative thinking at its most elegant – a response that not only solves the initial problem but enhances and improves the whole, taking it to new heights.

I know I’ve struck gold when a client tells me I’ve presented them with an idea for their home they’d never have thought of themselves and, instead of seeing a problem, they start to get excited about new possibilities. Next time you’re feeling dissatisfied about your home, remember this – as troublesome and annoying as a problem like lack of space or natural light may be, it also brings the opportunity to create something new and better. All it takes is a little creative thinking. Now isn’t that music to your ears?

If you found this article of interest, you may also like:

It’s Not About Looks – Good Design Works

Elephant in the Room 1: The Bad Extension

Elephant in the Room 2: Spaced Out

Do you have any any pet peeves about housing or home design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to see featured.

As part of the Dublin Open House event in October, I took a look around FKL Architects‘ ‘A-Rated House’in Rathmines, Dublin – a concrete built 2-storey home, designed to respond the physical and planning restrictions of a small North-facing mews plot in the South Dublin inner city suburbs.

The 3-bed house was designed for Michelle Fagan and Gary Lysaght, both partners at FKL Architects, and their family, and besides setting a new aesthetic brief for environmentally responsible design, it also offers some interesting spatial ideas to meet the challenges of modern family living.

5 Ideas to take from FKL’s A-Rated House (after pics)

Front View from Laneway

Entry and Stair

View from kitchen toward garden

Double-height 'Slot' thru House

Stair & Rooflights

Upstairs Living Room

Balustrade around double-height 'Slot'

View from Living Room toward Landing 'Bridge'

Master Bedroom

Rooflight in Bathroom

Rear View from Garden

5 Ideas to take from FKL’s A-Rated House:

Green Credentials:

Eco- friendly concrete, external insulation, a green living roof to replace the building footprint, solar panels, heat recovery, vegetable plot and a lively suburban location, eliminating the need for a car as fundamental ingredient in daily life – all go to show creating a beautiful, modern home doesn’t have to mean sacrificing environmental credibility.

It’s Not White:

For anyone who’s ever tried to co-exist in a minimal white interior with grubby-pawed toddlers or to impress aesthetic appreciation upon crayon-toting kids, the passing of this particular trend must surely meet with a chorus of Hallelujiahs! The A-Rated House’s concrete interior creates a neutral background that’s easy on the eye, with timber cabinets and wall panels providing an added visual warmth.

Upstairs, Downstairs

The most interesting idea at work in the A-Rated House is the central double-height slot that divides the building in two – bridged only where the stair lands at first floor level – creating a visual and spatial link between upstairs and downstairs. Wherever you are in the house, you are aware of this relationship to everything else – a truly open plan type of living. The advantage is that everything in the house feels connected – the disadvantage could be a lack of privacy.

Light Matters

One of the biggest challenges of building in this location is the orientation – the house faces South onto a narrow laneway, with the living rooms and garden facing North. Light from the front of the house, and from strategically placed rooflights, travels down through the central double-height space bringing sunlight into the rear of the house – the family can enjoy the tracking of the sun’s path through the course of the day across this space. Dividing the living space between ground and first floor levels  also maximises natural light and views at the upper level.

Flexible Space

At the rear of the house at ground floor level, addressing the garden and only partially open to the kitchen dining space, is a family living room or snug. This space has a doorway linking it to a discrete ‘service’corridor giving access to a Utility and storage area, the integral garage and also downstairs WC / Shower room. The snug can therefore double as guest accommodation complete with en-suite bathroom, when required.

Final Thoughts

My only concern about the open plan nature of the house would be a lack of privacy that could become an issue as the family grows older. When puberty and the woe-ridden adolescent years hit, a place of retreat becomes essential to the sanity of teenagers and parents alike.

The saving grace here comes in the unlikely form of the City Fathers and their insistence that off-street parking be provided as an integral part of the design, despite the owners not owning or wishing to own a car! The ‘garage’(although this seems too mean a word for the clean, bright space created for this purpose), already separated from the main body of the house by the service zone, provides the possibility of sanctuary – the final component  to make this a truly sustainable and flexible home.

If you found this article of interest, you may also like:

Dublin Open House: House 1 | House 2 by TAKA Architects (and 5 Ideas to Steal…)

The Hidden Potential in your Home

It’s Not About Looks – Good Design Works

Do you have any any pet peeves about housing or home design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to see featured.

'The files are *in* the computer?!'

Well, it’s only taken 9 weeks, 2 USB cables, umpteen file download drive searches, 3 near misses, 1 borderline manic episode, a brief period of rest and medication, followed by a couple of tantrums but the Dublin Open House pics have finally been wrested from the top security vault that is the ViviCam 4345 digital camera, by cunning, guile, ingenuity and well – by accident, if I’m completely honest.

Turns out the key to copying the pics in the camera memory to the memory card is to copy the completely irrelevant pics on the memory card to the memory card…

Eh?

Exactly. A model of rational thought and ease of consumer use worthy of Microsoft itself.

So, enjoy the following posts – I’m off to lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Dublin Open House: A-Rated House by FKL Architects

Dublin Open House: House 1 | House 2 by TAKA

A few weeks ago, I heartily urged you all to attend the Dublin Open House event and take a look at some of the best examples of new residential design in this fine City. So hearty were my urgings that I almost couldn’t get a spot on the house tours myself. A couple of cancellations later, and some fancy footwork by the lovely Dympna and Annette at the Open House booking office, and I was back on track.

On Sunday afternoon with a skip in my step, I grabbed my camera and headed across the river into deepest, darkest Southside Dublin.

Imagine my delight when wandering inside FKL’s ‘A-Rated House’to catch the light falling across the staircase just so! To capture the dapple of the lengthening shadows on Taka’s ‘House 1 & House 2′ modelled brick facade!

So giddy was I in anticipation of architectural splendour, so ardent in my pursuit of delectable design, the fact that I had removed the memory card from my camera to download the latest client house pics earlier that week went entirely un-noticed. D’oh, indeed.

But no matter, I hear you cry (for my tale of woe has moved you to your wobbly core) – modern digital cameras have built in memory that stores your pics without need of a separate memory card!

Bless your tender hearts. After all, how could you know? About that fateful day, months before – an over-stuffed bag, the USB cable, the pierced foil of a bumper size pot of yoghurt.

Probiotic.

Fear not – there is, I am glad to say, a happy ending. Even as I type, Pixmania’s trusty steeds are hurtling a new USB camera cable to living:room’s door and those Open House pictorial masterpieces will shortly be available for your viewing pleasure.

Watch this space.

Click on the top right icon to view in full screen mode:

If you would like to discover the potential in your home and be featured in a future issue of the magazine, we require the following info:

• photos of your house – an external shot of the front & internal shots of the problem areas;
• a floor plan, if you have one – even a rough sketch will do!
• a description of your home, highlighting the problems you’re experiencing.

Send these to info@livingroom.ie or anthea@decorateireland.ie, with ‘Property Potential Feature’in the Subject line. Decorate & Improve Your Home is a Quarterly magazine and we can only feature one home potential project per issue, so if you aren’t selected initially, please keep trying!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in:

The Elephant in the Room 1: The Bad Extension

The Elephant in the Room 2: Spaced Out

It’s Not About Looks: Good Design Works

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any any pet peeves about housing? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to know more about.

BBC2 ran a series called ‘Home for Life’ recently, where brand consultants, Jamie Anley and Phil Nutley, helped homeowners move past the bland Magnolia School of Interior Decor and put a personal stamp on their homes. Watching the first of these programmes, where a couple struggled with the living room of a fairly typical home, I was struck by another problem aspect of modern housing – are we more concerned with how our homes look than how they work?

Do we even think about how our homes work? We pick one that seems to have the right amount of space for the things we want to do – eat, sleep, play etc., then decide which rooms will do what and put Stuff in – easy!

On the face of it, yes, it sounds easy but where we put Stuff and, indeed, the size, shape and location of the rooms have a bigger  impact on how we use them than we might realise.

Maybe you never got further than ‘Will I be able to fit everything in?’or ‘Can I see the TV from there?’But when it comes to planning a room, a number of factors play a part:

• What do you want to use the room for?
• Who will be using it?
• How often is it used?
• How much space do you really have?
• Can you move around easily?
• Is it pleasant to be in?
• Are there any safety issues?
• Is there enough natural light and ventilation?

And there are less tangible forces at work too. Think about your living room or bedroom design – where is the sofa or bed? In a typical home, they’re most likely positioned against the wall with the most free space and there is a simple psychological reason for this – we feel safe when we have something solid like a wall behind us.

I see this all the time in my local cafe where half the tables are arranged along the side walls and half are located in the middle of the room. I’ve never yet seen a customer pick a table in the middle of the room, if a table along the wall was free!

It’s a defensive measure, something that’s hot-wired into our psyche as part of our ‘fight or flight’ instinct – if we can’t see what’s behind us we may be vulnerable from that direction but when we know exactly what’s back there, we can focus our energy elsewhere. It’s particularly true of the places where we want to relax and rest – why do you think our ancestors made their homes in caves?

Early Ancestors put a personal stamp on their Homes..

The threat of large, toothy predators having somewhat diminished in recent years, this basic instinct nevertheless holds true. At a purely practical level, in a living room design, locating a sofa against a wall means we’re less likely to have the wits scared out of us by someone brushing past unexpectedly while we’re sitting there.

Wall space then is one of the most valuable parts of a room – it dictates how we use it and how flexible it is to change. But, in our homes, there is a lot of competition for this usable space – doors, windows, chimneys, radiators – all of these can restrict how and where we place furniture when planning a room and how useable it is as a result.

The other crucial factor determining how much useful and usable space we have in our homes is movement through and between rooms – circulation. As more and more homes skirt the dividing line between open plan and traditional layouts – by knocking down walls or opening them up to link rooms together – the impact of bad circulation on our homes has increased.

The golden rule with circulation is that it should happen around the main function areas of a room, not through them. Where a circulation route cuts across the activity area, it limits the way that room can be used – more circulation means less usable space.

A Typical Kitchen - Bad Circulation v. Good Circulation

In this example of a Typical Kitchen, both sketches show the various routes that someone might take through the kitchen to the garden at the top of the plan or to a utility room at the side.

On the left, almost every route interferes with the use of the kitchen. Why is this a problem? Well, given that this is where we handle sharp knives, hot pans and kettles of boiling water, the last thing we need is the smaller members of our family careening about in our path.

On the right, a different kitchen design in the same space makes it possible to move through the room without interfering with either the working area of the kitchen or someone sitting at the table. The island unit also allows us to keep an eye on kids playing at the table or chat to friends, instead of working facing away from the room.

What I noticed, watching that first episode of ‘Home for Life’, was that the living room – the room in which the family spent most of their free time – was a perfect storm of unusable space. The drawings below show the approx. floor layout for the house – circulation routes are shown by the dotted lines & blue arrows and the red lines show usable wall space in the living room.

Floor Plan - Before Makeover

Before the makeover, the living room had virtually no usable wall space, as each wall is interrupted by a window, a chimney, doors etc. The sofa ended up in the only spot available – forming an island in the middle of the room, surrounded by activity on all sides – hardly an ideal spot to relax!

Floor Plan - After Makeover

After the makeover, the situation is not much better – the redundant chimney has been removed to create some usable wall space but the other problem areas haven’t been tackled. The furniture is now lined up along the one usable wall, like a waiting room, and anyone sitting, watching TV is still likely to be disturbed by others moving about the house.

Now the aim of the programme wasn’t to improve the value or solve design problems but it seemed to me to be a lost opportunity – when carrying out extensive decorative work anyway, it would have been the ideal time to fix the problem and make their home work.

Here’s what I would have done:

Floor Plan - Quick Fix Option

See the difference?

The Quick Fix blocks up the door from the living room to the dining room and creates a new door from the kitchen instead – a relatively simple job that would certainly have fit within their budget for the makeover. The living room is no longer the centre of a spaghetti junction and instead becomes a destination within the house. Now the family can:

• Move through the house without having to cross the living room,
• Sit comfortably or have a conversation without being disturbed and -
• See what’s going on and who’s moving about instead of sitting with their backs to the rest of the house.

With a bigger budget, they could have gone one step further:

Floor Plan - Max. Value Option

The Maximum Value option takes the partition wall between the kitchen and dining room away altogether (subject to a structural survey), creating a large open plan kitchen dining room adjacent to the garden – a requirement that is top of the family home buyers’wish list. It gives double the value – the family have the use and enjoyment of this space while they live here and it has ready-made appeal to their target market, if they ever decide to move on.

The Quick Fix option could easily be upgraded to the Max. Value option at a later date, as need and funds dictate. And for a Deluxe version, knock the wall between the window & door in the kitchen (this would require structural support) and insert sliding, bi-fold doors to open the whole room up to the garden.

The beauty of all these options is that they don’t require planning permission.*

Try these simple exercises on a floor plan of your home to identify usable wall space & circulation routes – you may be surprised at what you find!

On ‘Home for Life’, the finished house looked lovely and the owners were delighted with the change but the basic problem of how they use their front room remained unresolved. By focusing on how the room looked instead of how it worked, they missed an opportunity to add value to their home and improve their overall quality of life.

I think this is one of the most misunderstood aspects of design:

Good design is how something works, not simply how it looks.

I applaud the ‘Home for Life’series for encouraging homeowners to think of their homes as places that reflect who they are, not just what they’re worth. As the sketches above illustrate, small changes can reap big rewards and needn’t cost the earth. I firmly believe now, more than ever, it’s important to ensure that the money we spend on our homes improves our experience of them and, in doing so, adds value.

Note: I have no connection to the ‘Home for Life’programme and these observations are made simply as a viewer of the series.

* These changes could be carried out under Exempt Development in the Republic of Ireland – if carrying out similar work, please check with your local planning authority.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in:

The Elephant in the Room 1: The Bad Extension

The Elephant in the Room 2: Spaced Out

Is Your Home an iPhone or a Model T Ford?

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any any pet peeves about housing? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to know more about.

The Model T - 'Any colour... so long as it's black'

Back in 1909, when Henry Ford was asked what colour his new motor car – the Model T – was available in, he replied, ‘Any customer can have the car painted any colour he wants, so long as it’s black.’

A hundred years later and things have moved on. It’s the age of the iPhone – a multi-media communication system that can be an entertainment centre, with access to our favourite music & movies, or a mobile office, allowing us to conduct business whenever, wherever – all at the click of a button. Now, what colour of button would you like?

Unlike ole Henry, Apple puts the customer firmly in the driving seat – we pick the phone, choose the applications – hey presto, we get what we want.

When it comes to buying our homes, however, we’re not so lucky. New research by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) shows that much of new housing built in the UK is not fit for the demands of 21^st Century living. When we spend the largest part of our lives in our homes, isn’t it about time we approached the way we design and build them less like a Model T Ford and more like an iPhone?

According to the survey, based on 2,249 new houses built in the UK from 2003 – 2006, 44% of owners found their kitchen too small for cooking, 37% don’t have enough living space and a whopping 57% don’t have enough storage space in their homes. Providing adequate storage in new housing has long been a bugbear of mine, so don’t get me started. British houses are now the smallest in Europe and the CABE report identifies a need for higher space standards enforced by local planning departments.

But are bigger houses really the answer?

Building bigger presents other problems in a time of scarce materials, rising fuel costs and an increasing need for sustainable use of land. In a recent post, The Elephant in the Room 2: Spaced Out, I talked about a 40sqm apartment in Paris that is home to a family of 4 and their dog – it’s a beautiful home that has been designed to work for them and where every square inch of available space is put to good use.

Is the problem then with new housing lack of space or simply poor design?

CABE point to physical size as the culprit here yet the survey itself is not based on the vital statistics of houses but on how homeowners feel about the space they have – it measures the quality of the experience of living in their homes, not their size.

And when has size ever been a measure of quality, anyway?

The way we read space can be changed and manipulated, even if we don’t realise it. A room with a dark colour on the walls will appear smaller than one with a light colour; lots of natural light makes a small room look spacious and low ceilings make a large room seem cramped. The current trend for bulky ‘corner’ sofas is a case in point – it may give off the sophisticated Manhattan loft vibe, a la ‘Friends’, in the furniture showroom but in the average home it becomes more like an assault course on the Krypton Factor.

Light and dark affect our visual perception of a space

The way we feel about the space we live in is another moveable feast, influenced by factors that often have very little to do with its size:

• Did we live in a larger or smaller house prior to this one?
• Are we experiencing lifestyle changes that also change our expectations from our home – getting married, the birth of a child, becoming self-employed or unemployed?
• Do we like the neighbourhood and the neighbours?
• Have the neighbours we don’t like just extended their house to make it twice as big as ours?

Any one of these can change how we feel about our home on a given day.

Another problem with minimum space standards is that there is more variety in our lifestyles than ever before and this is not addressed by the traditional labels we put on our homes – bedroom, living room, dining room. When our housing options include studio apartments, lofts, work-live units, houseboats, warehouses, community housing and countless other unorthodox types of home, do we need to think about ‘rooms’ at all?

I remember reading once about a man who bought a broom cupboard in the Dakota Building, overlooking Central Park in New York (the building, that is, not the cupboard) – it had enough space for a bed & his clothes and that was all he really needed for his City stopovers. It’s a great example of lateral thinking and for the fraction of the cost of an apartment he lays his head and collects his mail at one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan!

Location Location Location!

It may seem extreme, even a little Harry Potter-esque, but he’s not alone. TV programmes like Channel 4′s ‘Relocation, Relocation’, with Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, focus exclusively on homeowners down-sizing in city locations to create a higher quality (there’s that word again) of life for themselves in the countryside. Shouldn’t we, as buyers have the choice to opt for compact living arrangements, particularly in areas with highly competitive housing markets, if that’s what works for us?

The challenge now, as it has always has been with housing, is how to:

• create home environments that we enjoy living in, regardless of size -
• that work the way we need them to work -
• are sensitive to environmental issues, both at a local and a global scale -
• are flexible enough to meet the wide range of demands and expectations we have of them (these varying from person to person and changing all the time) -
• and do all of this across different age groups, family sizes, income levels and social brackets…

Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? Well, the typical housing developer would most likely agree and few of them even try. It’s more cost-effective for a developer to build as few ‘types’ of house as possible and much easier to convince us to buy what they build, than to figure out how to build the kind of houses we might want to live in – and still make a profit. Developer-built modern housing is the Model T Ford – not what we want but what choice do we have?

One –off housing, designed for a specific owner, is more successful in hitting the quality criteria and often more innovative in its approach. Japanese architect, Kazuyo Sejima, designed ‘House in a Plum Grove’ in Tokyo, ignoring traditional room conventions, and arranging the layout around the number and type of activities that would take place there, instead. Each activity space is linked so the whole house acts like one large room with lots of smaller spaces off – the family can interact or withdraw, as they choose.

House in a Plum Grove, Tokyo (Photo by Axel Vansteenkiste)

Our Future ‘iHomes’ probably lie somewhere in between – where developers will construct the exterior of a building, we’ll choose how much space we want based on square footage instead of rooms – rather like slicing up a cake – and then customize the inside to suit our own needs, more than likely using flat-pack ‘room pods’we’ll buy off-the-shelf at IKEA.

Imposing minimum space standards based on the number of ‘rooms’in each type of ‘house’ doesn’t create higher quality homes or come close to addressing the complexity of the issues involved in designing modern housing – that requires a different type of thinking altogether. If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got – only bigger.

We may not have the answers yet, but – with the housing market on pause and housing developers no longer dominating the conversation – it’s the perfect time to be asking the question:

Where do we want to live?

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any any pet peeves about housing? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to know more about.