----- Original Message -----
To:
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 9:49
AM
Subject: Re: [GBlist] Re Monster
Buildings
John, Mary Ann, Ralph and others following this
line,
Sarah has subtitled the book "Designing for the
way we really live." She never said we shouldn't have single purpose
rooms. She has a meditation space she uses daily. What she said is
to design for the needs of a specific client and how they live. She has
examples of formal dining spaces as well as informal spaces.
Her premise is that houses have gotten big and
impersonal, that people bought big to impress, to have the space they thought
they needed, for a variety of reasons. Only to find that it doesn't feel
like home. She argues for building smaller and designing for what you
need so that you can afford good design, good detailing and good
construction. None of her houses exceed 3000 sf and one project in WA
was built as a small development on 2/3 acre of 600 to 900 sf
cottages.
As far as the 14,070 sf IL house that I
originally posted, it is represented as energy efficient, eco-friendly and
environmentally friendly as well as an ALA Health House. Green means
different things to people, but those are attributes I would consider
Green.
And as far as that house goes, I think it is a
prime example of what Sarah is criticizing. It is cavernous and
overwhelming. In spite of expensive materials, it is poorly designed and
detailed. To my eye, it looks cheap. It looks like it was designed
by someone who had little creativity but wanted to impress and the only way he
could impress was to design big. It is ironic that his firm is listed on
Sarah's website, notsobig.com.
I looked up the Life Home on their website.
Sarah's firm did the last one. Robert Stern designed the first, which I
think was 2400sf. The challenge put to him was to design a well designed
house that was reasonably affordable. Stern said that a house should fit
like a mitten, not like a glove. By which he meant that it should fit
well, but not so tightly that it only fit one hand.
Bob Jordan
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 8:28
PM
Subject: RE: [GBlist] Re Monster
Buildings
A good point
about additions being 'moved into' and the balance of house becoming used
less. Part of the reasoning I guess is that an addition tends to become
'personalized' by the owner at the design stage and tends to reflect or
serve their needs better, generally with better comfort levels
(heating,lighting, etc.). A more considered space generally if the same
degree of attention is given to an overall house design it tends to become
easy to reduce the scale and build upon more positive
things.
There is a
lot of ambiguity in generic large house design. Each room becomes a room to
'live in' as if someone did not know how to live - therefore master bedrooms
become palatial as if one is going to spend their entire life there, ditto
for the mast. bath and every other room. I could say that this
reflects an insecurity with how to best occupy a house or how to best
provide for needs, not yet realized, or children's needs, etc.
Ironically people are not very different and the type of personalized space
an addition represents also becomes the kind of space that guests or future
owners tend to be drawn to.
JOHN SALMEN
TERRAIN E.D.S.
I have been following this discussion and am also acquainted with the
"Not So Big House" book. I am planning to sell my "overly big"
suburban house and build a "not so big" energy efficient
