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imomus1. All my life I've been terrified and mystified by the price of houses. I never bought one because I couldn't even conceive of scraping together a quarter of a million pounds, and certainly didn't want to borrow it. Meanwhile, most houses looked incredibly shabby and conformist and depressing to me. Houses only looked exciting in architecture magazines, books, blogs. There, they almost seemed worth the money.
2. The trouble with expecting houses to be exciting and original -- the way you might expect a piece of music to be -- is that houses have to stand up, and be fireproof, and meet all sorts of building codes and planning restrictions. This Camouflage House in Japan, for instance, shaped like a greenhouse. Are you allowed to live in a greenhouse?
3. An extremely depressing Yahoo Answers topic headed What would happen if I built an unconventional house that did not meet building codes? has the following "best answer": "Before you even START building, you'll have to get a building permit from the city or local government. To do this, you'll have to provide them with architectural renderings (blueprints) that show every aspect of the house: dimensions, building materials to be used, electrical and plumbing schematics, and what the exterior will be made of, as well as other things. Some localities dictate what the exterior must look like. For example, in our city, the exterior of the house MUST BE at least 70% brick.... No matter what, it would be unadvisable to start building without the proper building permits. Not only can the city come in and tear down what you've already done, but you can be subject to fines and even jail time."
4. Imagine a world in which people could be jailed for making an unconventional piece of music! Imagine a world where the local authorities told you exactly what sounds you were allowed to make! (Actually, Britain is approaching this kind of world, at least as far as live music events go. Proposed new legislation not only limits volumes, but requires "planning permission" applications for concerts across pages and pages of forms, weeks in advance of a concert.)
5. So who would be an architect, when they could be a musician? Well, some people clearly get off on bending the rules. I'm very impressed by dRMM's Sliding House in Suffolk, recently finished. From Dezeen's account of this beautiful building, a lot of its features have come about to squeeze the maximum innovation and originality possible into the nooks and crannies of tight planning restrictions. The structure poses as three conventional forms, all looking a bit like vernacular farm architecture, sheds, and so on. "A 28m linear building of apparent simplicity follows the requisite maximum 5.8m permitted width, 7.2m height is sliced into 3 programmes; 16m house, 5m garage and 7m annexe." In the comments under Dezeen's piece, the client chips in, explaining why the stained larch shell of the house slides along rails, powered by electric motors: "the function of the roof is shade, insulation, decoration and (importantly) hiding all that scary glass from the planning officers". The unsheathed house looks like a greenhouse, you see, and you wouldn't be allowed to live in a greenhouse.
6. Maybe one reason you wouldn't be allowed to live in a greenhouse is that it's just too cheap. Part of me believes that the boringness-expensiveness of conventional houses is one gigantic conspiracy. I googled to find the price of industrial greenhouse barns designed for livestock and found one (Ovaltech -- "the optimal breeding tunnel", yum!) by Harnois. It's big, light, elegant -- the kind of place I'd happily live. The FAQ says: "Prices range from $2.50 to $3.25 per square foot for the Ovaltech... Two people working steadily could erect a 30'x100' Ovaltech greenhouse in about two days." That makes the price of an elegant Ovaltech greenhouse barn around $10,000.
7. Okay, maybe it's not practical to live in a barn unless you're a cow. But perfectly liveable and likeable houses can be built for less than $10,000. The Design Indaba 10x10: Ten Houses for Freedom Park project saw ten Western architects donating pro bono open source low cost housing designs to a site outside Cape Town. The aim was to provide ten family homes of at least 42m2 for just 65,000 Rand (£4,300/$8,600) each. The budget went up because of 30% inflation during the building period, but it was still fantastically cheap and, as you can see from the 10x10 blog, the houses are looking pretty nice. (Whether they're exactly what the residents of Freedom Park dreamed of is another matter.)
8. This stuff -- exacerbated, of course, by the recent-but-thankfully-now-popped housing bubble -- is why I neither became an architect nor bought a house. I always wondered why architecture student friends tended to build their first house in Mexico or some similar developing nation. Only there, it seems, are the building codes lax enough and the land and labour costs low enough for an architect to feel as free as a musician.
2. The trouble with expecting houses to be exciting and original -- the way you might expect a piece of music to be -- is that houses have to stand up, and be fireproof, and meet all sorts of building codes and planning restrictions. This Camouflage House in Japan, for instance, shaped like a greenhouse. Are you allowed to live in a greenhouse?
3. An extremely depressing Yahoo Answers topic headed What would happen if I built an unconventional house that did not meet building codes? has the following "best answer": "Before you even START building, you'll have to get a building permit from the city or local government. To do this, you'll have to provide them with architectural renderings (blueprints) that show every aspect of the house: dimensions, building materials to be used, electrical and plumbing schematics, and what the exterior will be made of, as well as other things. Some localities dictate what the exterior must look like. For example, in our city, the exterior of the house MUST BE at least 70% brick.... No matter what, it would be unadvisable to start building without the proper building permits. Not only can the city come in and tear down what you've already done, but you can be subject to fines and even jail time."
4. Imagine a world in which people could be jailed for making an unconventional piece of music! Imagine a world where the local authorities told you exactly what sounds you were allowed to make! (Actually, Britain is approaching this kind of world, at least as far as live music events go. Proposed new legislation not only limits volumes, but requires "planning permission" applications for concerts across pages and pages of forms, weeks in advance of a concert.)
5. So who would be an architect, when they could be a musician? Well, some people clearly get off on bending the rules. I'm very impressed by dRMM's Sliding House in Suffolk, recently finished. From Dezeen's account of this beautiful building, a lot of its features have come about to squeeze the maximum innovation and originality possible into the nooks and crannies of tight planning restrictions. The structure poses as three conventional forms, all looking a bit like vernacular farm architecture, sheds, and so on. "A 28m linear building of apparent simplicity follows the requisite maximum 5.8m permitted width, 7.2m height is sliced into 3 programmes; 16m house, 5m garage and 7m annexe." In the comments under Dezeen's piece, the client chips in, explaining why the stained larch shell of the house slides along rails, powered by electric motors: "the function of the roof is shade, insulation, decoration and (importantly) hiding all that scary glass from the planning officers". The unsheathed house looks like a greenhouse, you see, and you wouldn't be allowed to live in a greenhouse.
6. Maybe one reason you wouldn't be allowed to live in a greenhouse is that it's just too cheap. Part of me believes that the boringness-expensiveness of conventional houses is one gigantic conspiracy. I googled to find the price of industrial greenhouse barns designed for livestock and found one (Ovaltech -- "the optimal breeding tunnel", yum!) by Harnois. It's big, light, elegant -- the kind of place I'd happily live. The FAQ says: "Prices range from $2.50 to $3.25 per square foot for the Ovaltech... Two people working steadily could erect a 30'x100' Ovaltech greenhouse in about two days." That makes the price of an elegant Ovaltech greenhouse barn around $10,000.
7. Okay, maybe it's not practical to live in a barn unless you're a cow. But perfectly liveable and likeable houses can be built for less than $10,000. The Design Indaba 10x10: Ten Houses for Freedom Park project saw ten Western architects donating pro bono open source low cost housing designs to a site outside Cape Town. The aim was to provide ten family homes of at least 42m2 for just 65,000 Rand (£4,300/$8,600) each. The budget went up because of 30% inflation during the building period, but it was still fantastically cheap and, as you can see from the 10x10 blog, the houses are looking pretty nice. (Whether they're exactly what the residents of Freedom Park dreamed of is another matter.)
8. This stuff -- exacerbated, of course, by the recent-but-thankfully-now-popped housing bubble -- is why I neither became an architect nor bought a house. I always wondered why architecture student friends tended to build their first house in Mexico or some similar developing nation. Only there, it seems, are the building codes lax enough and the land and labour costs low enough for an architect to feel as free as a musician.
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Word.
Date: 2009-02-07 03:18 am (UTC)It's not even the code in the West or the stuck-up perception of what a 'home' should be or look like. There's no general appreciation. It's always 'Not In My Backyard' (NIMBY).
To built, you have to go some place where the preconceptions are not so rigid.
But most important, you can't have good architecture without a great client.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 03:19 am (UTC)Honestly, I think the world should be a bit more like Korea, where it's actually become desirable and hip to live in apartments. The outsides tend to be very bland and utilitarian, but they usually have really generous, open designs on the inside. And the best part is that, because these apartments are marketed to the middle class instead of multimillionaires, it's possible to get a well-appointed 3-bedroom apartment for something like W700,000/mo, which is like $700 US (less actually, since the won is currently in the shitter). And we're talking a major metropolitan area (I live in a city of roughly 3 million right now).
Re: Word.
Date: 2009-02-07 03:22 am (UTC)Re: Word.
Date: 2009-02-07 03:39 am (UTC)Though in most if Europe, hell, let's say anywhere outside the American sphere, you'll get a more positive nod toward unconventional design.
It's a sweeping statement, but there you have it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 04:01 am (UTC)Coincidentally/not-so-ironically, now would probably be the best time to buy land.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 04:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 04:29 am (UTC)I think the temperature within a greenhouse vertically varies greatly and that could lead to other problems. You would want a series of spaces that were closed off and related to the greenhouse, like a bio-dome, where it’s so big, the temperature variations could be controlled (I know Whimsy is an advocate of this type of living…).
The academy of science building in San Fran had to do some interesting detailing to deal with the heat gain in their little greenhouse inside the building.
In the end, a lot of modernist houses are glass boxes. They ought to have a really wicked greenhouse effect, but they also don't have the plants and they keep the air moving. Anything Mies, for instance.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 04:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 04:55 am (UTC)http://bygosh.com/peterrabbit/images/peterrabbit25.jpg
http://www.fmft.net/Peter%20Rabbit%20Beatrix%20Potter%205.JPG
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 05:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 05:48 am (UTC)Not sure where you're from, but you have to understand that Americans have, since WWII ended, been inundated with the "American Dream" message. Everybody is supposed to aspire to own a home out in the burbs with a picket fence and 2.3 children and a dog, etc. I think that this is changing, but the process is going to be slow.
The reason why Korea has a different outlook on the situation is not because they're just terribly advanced people, but because they physically lack the land mass to put everybody up like that, if such a thing were even possible. People want to urbanize because that is, quite literally, where everything is located, not just "stuff to do" but also essential things, like jobs. In the U.S. we have so many fully functional boondocks that people aren't drawn into the cities as efficiently.
Re: Word.
Date: 2009-02-07 05:53 am (UTC)Buildings codes usually reference the basic structure of a building: how a foundation must be laid down; how far the building must be from the road; how far apart your electrical outlets must be, etc.
I think the fact that so many houses in America look like shit has more to do with the fact that people are unoriginal bastards who don't want their big investment to stick out in any way. Well, that and the fact that most people are buying essentially prefab homes anyway, not hiring architects to do custom work.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 06:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 06:33 am (UTC)Then again, it didn't seem to stop Philip Johnson. (http://philipjohnsonglasshouse.org/)
One of my favorite structures in the world is a fernery. This one, (http://flickr.com/photos/34822101@N08/sets/72157613170333241/) in fact.
Greenhouses are marvelous structures, prefiguring modernism in the sense that engineers designed as many as architects. Such structures demanded a new way of building, which involved surface tension rather than rigid frameworks. The metal frames were actually quite flimsy until you got the glass into place, at which point the structures were quite stable.
Other qualities inherent to greenhouse construction made their way into later forms of architecture: the machine aesthetic, lightness, and impermanence. Most 19th-century greenhouses had on average a twenty-year lifespan, some of them, built for world fairs or expositions, lasted a mere five years. Most that survived immediate obsolescence perished during the mid 20th Century, a time that was very impatient with older architecture, particularly Victorian-era structures, which were not only unfashionable but were also costly to maintain. Very few 19th-century greenhouses survived this period.
There were regional variations in construction: Russian greenhouses, to combat the harsh winters, made their greenhouses narrower and with a brick North face. Germans seemed to prefer a squarish design. It was the British greenhouses who are still held as the most realized examples of the period: their greenhouses were built in graceful arcs, so that the sun's rays would always hit the glass panes at a perpendicular angle. A beautiful, elegant form born of function--a fitting quality for a structure designed to house lifeforms.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 06:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 06:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 06:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 06:51 am (UTC)CEBs
Date: 2009-02-07 06:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 09:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 09:29 am (UTC)Yes, if you want to be a licensed architect who sells houses to other people for money, you're going to have to make compromises, but so do musicians who want to sell CDs. You're ignoring the blurry spectrum between architecure and sculpture, where there are many interesting people tinkering around with space.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 10:37 am (UTC)"6. Maybe one reason you wouldn't be allowed to live in a greenhouse is that it's just too cheap. Part of me believes that the boringness-expensiveness of conventional houses is one gigantic conspiracy."
I'm assuming that a lot of planning regulation insures that nobody builds houses that are unsafe or infringe on the rights of others. There's also the "does it fit in with the area" issue for which I have much less sympathy. You're right though -- there must be a cheaper way to own property rather than spending half a million on a semi-detached... why aren't more people using their money to build cheaper, unconventional living spaces?
With all the artists who read this blog there must be at least one architect who can answer some of these questions regarding building regulation.
Re: Word.
Date: 2009-02-07 10:38 am (UTC)I'm one of life's born 'customisers'. I like tweaking things and faffing about with them. I recently built a PC out of some old junk I found, and spent a happy couple of days with spraypaint turning it into a funky metallic-green monster that sits in the corner of my room.
I'm the same with most other things: Windows/Linux desktop graphics, mobile phone cases and so on.
Unfortunately you can't do this when you rent a place in the UK, and most of the time you're stuck with Magnolia. I understand that things are a bit different in Germany, where apparently tenants have more rights than us landless serfs over here.
The though of borrowing £200,000 off someone to buy a place to live in, and being in hock to some faceless organisation as a result, scared the $#!+ out of me. However if I don't, I can't see myself ever having a place that's really 'me' (complete with leaping-fish taps in the bathroom and koi carp in a pond outside).
I considered something similar to your suggestion in #6, living in a big greenhouse or something similarly prefabricated. I looked into this and found that I would also need to buy land to put it on (expensive) and get permission off the council to live on it. A couple of friends of mine got into trouble for living in a van and growing potatoes in a bit of land, because they didn't have the required forms in triplicate signed by the Pope and a dead 17th century poet.
We really have very little freedom in this country. We believe we do, but it's only when you try to break out of the 'Approved Model of Living™' that you start banging your head against the invisible bars og the cage.
At the moment I'm lurching from contract to contract (no permanent jobs available), and since my rent's quite low (less than the interest repayments) I'm saving up as much as possible in the hope that one day I can buy a craphole somewhere in an auction and 're-imagine' it to my heart's content.
Maybe one day a branch of architecture will emerge that champions customisability, with easily changeable walls and features. Changing a bath or a window should really be no more difficult than changing a graphics card or a SIM, and the same could perhaps be done with non-supporting walls, chimneys, solar panels and suchlike...
Just as modern technology allows us all to create our own music (Computer Music magazine has a bunch of free music production tools on the cover DVD each month), make our own films and so on, perhaps one day it will allow us to become our own architects too.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-07 10:40 am (UTC)