Re: Dealing with the vast differences in cohousing intentions
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 08:17:03 -0700 (MST)
> you are no longer making concrete type decisions and instead  you are making
> subjective decisions about how to live together, and these decisions often
> strongly reflect personal expectations and values.

I learned this this week in reference to "ugly" signs. I have a personal
adversion to signs because they inflict a blight on the landscape, and the
sink, and the doors, and the walls, and .... The first response to an
irritation (and often the last) is to post a sign. The signs are rarely
attractive or humorous, are often indecipherable, and are usually
substitutes for effective action.

I finally want ballistic last week over 10 that had been posted without
community review (aesthetic or otherwise) and with intentions of being
permanent . I told the poster, who could not understand why anyone would
object to any sign being posted, that they were ugly, thereby hurting this
feelings.

Another person in the community called me to talk about this asserting that
"ugly" was in the eye of the beholder. Having been through 8 years of
college in which all I studied was ugly vs beautiful and 25 years of
teaching, among other things, graphics -- logo development and signage among
them -- I was livid.

But the fact is cohousing is not a professional context. It doesn't matter
whether professional criteria are met or not. They are not relevant. What
works for the group, works for the group. Even safety and legality are
relative values.

There are still other issues with the signs -- like process and readability
-- do they work? But if after we follow the process and sort out the legal
issues (fire codes) the community likes them it doesn't matter whether every
graphic designer in the world, including me, would reject them.

It only matters that people are happy living with them.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org


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