How can we scale down our homes and our image of luxurious living?

In order to add another dynamic to this discussion let’s look at the difference between the typical modern home and the typical modern apartment. There is a monstrous discrepancy there. A typical 2 br apartment is between 800 and 1200 sf, yet the typical suburban single family home is upwards of 2,200+ sf of livable space. Is it just me or does this seem very very strange?
So, I don’t think the challenge is scaling down our “image” of luxurious living but rather just provide homes that are more space efficient instead of continuing down the path of designing and building the “bigger is better” home. If just one developer took this idea of “space efficient and sustainable living” and ran with it, I think it would be an overnight success.

Tuesday, May 24 at 1:55pm

Over the past few decades, the American Dream was supersized. Our homes, like our vehicles, ballooned in size, taking up more space on the landscape, extending the distance between us, and accelerating energy consumption. With the recent recession and rise in oil prices, we’ve been reminded, many of us harshly, that big is not necessarily better. Yet architects and builders, like automotive designers and makers, face the challenge of satisfying a consumer who may have become convinced that luxury and size are interchangeable and that “downsizing” echoes too closely the idea of the lost job and lost status. In other words, some believe that choosing a smaller house or car reflects a reversal rather than progress.

It is time to awaken an appreciation of the aesthetic of simplicity and compactness in design of our homes and vehicles. Consumers have embraced it in other product areas such as computers and consumer electronics when it has been paired with technological innovation and lifestyle benefits that pair small scale with modernity. Focusing on the freedom created by smaller homes and vehicles is critical: a smaller home frees more time and money to spend on entertaining; a smaller car (and a smaller commute if I choose my home site closer to work) means I can spend more time and money on travel.

Wednesday, May 25 at 10:51am

I suspect there will always be a market for large and opulent luxury homes with “great halls” and bathroom plasma televisions, but there’s a vigorous Less is More movement out there that is probably filtering upward, and seeding interest in the upper end of the market for more compact, efficient, and intensively designed urban homes.

Though the pull of the “private green” – an exclusive postage stamp of yard or garden, the central draw of the suburbs – remains powerful, I suspect abundant elbow room is not as much a status symbol as it once was.

The small-house movement is big. In Vancouver, where I live, infill backyard mini-homes (“laneway homes”) are densifying established single-family detached neighborhoods. Though they are generally not suitable for families, they are a great option for professional couples who want a little more than a condo. For one example, see Smallworks.

Wednesday, May 25 at 2:45pm

If you’re going to live in a small space you may need the support of a city that offers great public amenities, from parks to civic spaces. These spaces need financial resources, however, to be both built and maintained.

Think we’re ready to spend more on public space and less on our individual pieces of heaven?

Thursday, May 26 at 10:46pm

Here are some old and good ways to make small feel luxurious:

We can use size to impress if we use it sparingly. In a house where every room is super-sized, it’s easy to become numb to scale. But if most of the house’s rooms are modest, one big room can make a huge impression.

We can bolster the house with room-sized outdoor space, giving each room a landscape space that extends its lines, scale, and character without increasing its heating bill.

We can site our houses for a slow reveal, allowing only glimpses of the house until one is nearly at the front door. A that distance, detail – not scale – will be what counts.

Friday, May 27 at 11:11am

A very interesting approach is the Reggio pedagogic in a small village in italy. It is the idea, that the space is the third educator for children which made this concept world famous. The role of the teacher differs strongly from the traditional one, the teacher is primarely responsible to create a working environment which encourages the kids natural interst in exploring the world. Coming to archticture the center of reggio is the Piazza and around the school buildings are more like houses in an old Italien village. Of course this is a radical concept, but what I don`t understand is why most schools in the western world look more or less the same since 100 years. They don´t reflect the enormous progress in learning, positive psychology and architecture.

Sunday, May 29 at 5:46pm

My suggestion? Try living in a small space for awhile. Having worked on projects in other countries, I’ve had the chance to live in spaces much smaller and this has impacted the way I look at how much space I actually need to live well.

Thursday, June 2 at 12:19pm

This question is very though-provoking. In response, I started thinking about what it is that makes people want as big a house as possible in the first place? Part of the reason is the several huge economic booms over last 20 years, combined with the increased amount of cheap overseas production of goods, means that everyone quite simply buys more things. Without careful editing, we all find ourselves with more furniture, clothing, sporting goods, kitchen gadgets, etc. than we need. We need a place for all the stuff. Maybe we also feel more secure in changing times sitting on a mountain of things in our very own castle.

Whatever the reason, now is the perfect time to consider the concept of adopting a small scale that fits our essential needs yet is comfortable and elegant. With Johnson, the overall Glass House property seems to have afford him with the ability to articulate an authentic best vision of himself and how he saw the world. Hilary Lewis’ tour brilliantly underscored the many ways in which Johnson did this all over the grounds.

Today, most architects would need to start with clients who had a clear understanding of that as a goal. They would probably need to be willing to edit their belongings in order to partner with the architect. Considering Saarinen’s Miller House in Indiana or Johnson’s Hodgson House across from the Glass House, they both were examples of structures where the clients were willing to do this kind of critical thinking. The Miller House is especially interesting b/c the clients did not adopt a stark minimalist look but still edited their family belongings to align them with a smaller scale modern architecture. Perhaps the trend of going green will incentivate more people towards this way of thinking. Seeing the Glass House property inspires me to seek both a house and a lifestyle stripped down to things that have meaning in terms of design and/or feelings and letting the rest fall away. Thoreau had some good thoughts on this:

“A man is rich in proportion tothe number of things
which he can afford to let alone.”

and

“Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity”

Friday, June 3 at 1:30pm

The only way that houses will return to “normal” sizes is to make it socially unacceptable to have a big stupid house.

It can be dome in the same way that the Hummer was rendered obsolete. It’s no longer cool to have a Hummer. In fact there is a boorish, uncultured impression that now is attached to that vehicle.

The same can, must, be done to houses. For many reasons, environmental being but one. Another is our children. I saw a 1st grader (I work in a school) write an “I like, I don’t like” book in which she associated small houses with dirty, poor people and big giant houses, like hers, with clean beautiful people.

Is that the message we intend to send or teach

Sunday, June 5 at 2:37pm