{"id":151,"date":"2019-08-08T21:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T21:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/?p=151"},"modified":"2019-08-08T21:00:37","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T21:00:37","slug":"why-does-housing-need-to-be-brave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/?p=151","title":{"rendered":"Why Does Housing Need to be Brave?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why\ndoes housing need to be brave?, you might wonder. Do you remember the pressure\nin high school to fit in? Or the challenge in your profession to do as everyone\nelse does? These days it seems that value has been found in making mistakes and\nstepping outside the lines, essentially in following an untried path. Yet some\nthings, no matter the unconventional line you might be walking, some things\nseem to be held in place with much deeper roots. Housing is one of those\nthings. To convince your neighbors or city council or even your spouse that\nproviding a place for a stranger to live in your backyard in a modest small\nhouse is a good thing, can be an unexpected uphill battle. Most of us living in\ndesirable cities realize that the oft spoken housing crisis is quite real. Land\nis valuable beyond what any of us imagined when we bought into our single\nfamily houses decades ago. And population growth is not a far off phenomena\ngoing on in lands far beyond our reach. This is going on right here, right now\nwith ever expanding consequences. And as I often have pointed out to my city\ncouncil, you would not know we were in the midst of a climate crisis to walk\nthrough our city and see the smashing up of old structures and tipping them into\nthe landfill and the super sizing of new constructions with barely lip service\nto green building much less renewable energy or regenerative practices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When will\nthe immediacy of climate change disrupt our patterns?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
rain drops on porch roof<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I like to think small. I like to think about the single things any one of us can do in our daily routines. Like recycle that can or bottle. Like walk or take a bike. Like turn off lights and grow native grass to reduce water use. Things we have heard a million times over the past decades, these should all be second nature by now, you think? I met a man at a political event just a day ago. As we got to talking something steered the conversation to recycling and I matter-of-factly acknowledged that we certainly would know that cardboard and wood are recyclable and reusable. His response shook my reality. He said, no, he did not recycle. Yes he lived in Boulder, yes he lived in an apartment building with massive recycle bins. But no, he did not recycle. That was for white people. SILENCE <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow does this happen?\nHow is it that the consequences of our actions do not trickle upward to the\nconsequences for our planet? Do I recycle because it rocks my little green world\nor do I recycle because I know that we live on a planet of finite resources\nwith a population explosion that is severely taxing the ability for this planet\nto supply our growing needs? I saw that vulnerable little blue marble of a\nplanet in those photos from space. They made my heart swell as I thought of the\nmillions of creatures that make this home. It is nothing short of a miracle, that\nthis much life has arisen in ecological cooperation for billions of years.  And in a couple of hundred years humans have\ntaken the path of dominating every other specie on the planet. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I return to\nthinking small. Because that is where you and I can still see the wonder of\nlife. I practice architecture. And what I have noticed is that it is\nincreasingly difficult to include the word beauty and even sustainability into\nthe client conversation. I am convinced that the Internet has made us stupid. It\nprovides a means for untrained people to gain limited information about things\nthey truly know nothing about and cannot begin to know from a stroll on the\nInternet. This may be nice for looking up facts like, what year was Elvis born?\nBut it is such a disservice to use it to educate yourself about how to make a\nhouse or a space. It provides false understanding and closes you to the true\nsources of a great house or a delightful space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s\nworld we can still find many places to hide our heads in the sand. While you\nare there, check out that gain of sand for it holds all the connections to\neverything else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see small houses that way. Although backyard houses are just bit players in the housing options, they are a key nexus that can nudge us to use less and to participate more and with good design, small houses can provoke us to feel our interconnection. That is no longer small, that is brave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Zumthor’s Vals thermal baths, photo Fernando Guerra<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why does housing need to be brave?, you might wonder. Do you remember the pressure in high school to fit in? Or the challenge in your profession to do as everyone else does? These days it seems that value has been found in making mistakes and stepping outside the lines, essentially in following an untried … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Why Does Housing Need to be Brave?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,39,31,35,34,33,36,37,23,38,32],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adu-2","tag-adus","tag-architecture-2","tag-brave","tag-bravehousing","tag-bravenewhousing","tag-climatechange","tag-climatecrisis","tag-gooddesign","tag-smallhouses","tag-zumthor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/good-design-is-like-that.studiopoints.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}