Homes, buildings, and architecture

One of my passions has always been homes, buildings, and architecture. I wanted to be an architect, like many kids, but then I realized that it is a dying profession — thanks, in large part, to the cookie cutter mentality of many builders today.

It has always been clear that eventually, I would want to aid in planning and building my own home. After reading The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka, some of the ways to do it became clearer. The Not So Big House presents several very attractive ideas for home building. Most center around building a home that you would want to live in for your entire life and even pass on to future generations much like homes of the past. This idea serves as a stark contrast to the huge suburban homes being built with only square footage figures and cheap materials in mind.

Here’s a quote illustrating this point:

“The current pattern of building big to allow for quantities of furniture with still more room to spare is more akin to wearing a sack than a tailored suit. It may offer capacity, but at the cost of comfort and charm.”

Additional thoughts expressed in the book are of building simpler homes with higher quality, recycled and recyclable materials, that are energy efficient, and provide their inhabitants with practical, and in some senses, spiritual satisfaction.

The Site, though not much to look at, has some very interesting information (with links to more) in regards to concepts such as New Urbanism, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and spatial proportions and geometry (including some very interesting links to geometry related sites, including The Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Section, The Infinite Fractal Loop, and The Meru Foundation. When I get some time I will try to post something about “sacred geometry” — a topic I am very interested in.