Tuesday, April 04, 2006

House Thinking

I am listening to talking heads on the radio about a new book called House Thinking by Winifred Gallagher. The book is based on historical research on ways that we think about the rooms in our house.

Most of the redesign discussion I've heard in the last several years have dealt primarily with the effects that the redesign has on the resell value of the house, taxes or on the all important mortgage. The discussion of how we actually live in the house takes second stage. For example, today people are spending outrageous amounts on kitchen redesigns ... this is happening at a time when people are doing less cooking.

Of course, we are not unique in building our houses around false ideals. The reasons houses of 50 years ago were split into many different rooms is that the number of rooms was a primary factor in the selling price of a home.

House Thinking sounds like an excellent contribution to the overall dialogue about how we should organize our lives in this modern world.

No comments: