Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Re: Scaling down

[Philip Proefrock (proefrock]

Howard wrote:
----- Original Message -----
> Something I learned when having my unit built is 
> that space is cheap.
> It's all the fixtures that make a building 
> expensive.  ...  Yes, there is a tradeoff between 
> quantity and quality for a fixed cost, but it's not 
> as steep as you might think.

Too often this is the problem.  Builders can add a few more square feet
here and a few more there, and sure, that pushes up the appraised value of
the house, and it's real impressive at first, but it's not any more
livable.  

In fact, it can be *less* livable.  

Because it is cheap and easy to do, inflating the size of a dwelling leads
to the carpet-bombing subdivisions we're seeing across the country. 
Consumers think that they are 'getting something' with a size increase,
whereas by spending the money and the time on improving the design they are
just throwing money away.

> It isn't "having too much space" which makes a 
> building unlivable, but rather "using the space 
> poorly".  A bad design of a given square footage
> costs just as much to build as a good design.  
> Shrinking doesn't automagically make things better.  
> You still need to pay attention to
> social spaces, their connection, traffic flow, 
> lighting, etc., etc.
>
> In fact, small units require even more "poetry" 
> because you have to pack multiple uses/meanings into 
> single features to make them work.
> Therefore I think it's more important to focus on 
> such poetry, on "getting the design to work", than on 
> size per se.  ...

This is what "The Not So Big House" advocates.  It's not a screed on
'voluntary simplicity.'  Rather, she advocates for design and for 'poetry'
in place of sheer size and volume.

Philip Proefrock

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