Over this Thanksgiving, my wife and I stayed in an Airbnb across the street from my inlaws in Spokane, WA.
It was a new construction townhouse, medium high-end. From the outside, it looks like one of those "creative contemporary designs," and looks as if the architect made an effort. The inside promises to be "eclectic" or at least "interesting."
The front door opens onto a tiled floor (ceramic tiles made to look like wood planks). White carpeted staircases go up to a kitchen and down to a garage. The living room is to the left, and its ceiling is shared with the kitchen on the second floor, so the living room has a higher ceiling than it is wide or deep, giving it the feeling of a well. Two stories of picture windows that overlook the nearby sidewalk don't really give it an open feeling as much as fishbowl exposure to onlookers. A wire balcony separates a large dead space from the cramped and dark kitchen. Windows on the side of the building look into the unit next door's matching windows. The breakfast table off the kitchen sits between three windowless walls (bathroom on left, back wall was the next door unit, and a staircase formed the right wall). The round table in the space is big enough for four people, but too small for anyone to get around a seated person. The floor-to-floor white carpeting in the bedrooms goes to the bathroom door edge, which was right next to a door-less shower. The stacked washer and dryer are in a closet in the bathroom.
Is it surprising that the ceramic tile felt cold and awful after we took off our shoes to avoid further dingi-fying the already dingy white carpet? That all the shades were drawn on all the windows making the place feel claustrophobic and dark despite the white walls uninterrupted by art? That the carpet was wet in the bedroom around the bathroom door? That we never sat at the round table, preferring to stand in the kitchen? That the whole place felt so uncomfortable and inhospitable, and plainly designed for purpose that could not be understood by humans? Even the washer and dryer doors couldn't open fully because the closet door was in the way.
Nearly every detail of the building reflects the primacy of simple lines coming from an architect's pencil, and a complete disregard of how human beings actually live or work in a space. Many important "specs" were achieved in the design, such as three bathrooms, a double sink in the mater bedroom, a walk-in closet, etc, while none of it was livable.
I can only imagine the people who buy and stay in these townhomes find the status to be worth a lot of inconvenience, mild suffering, and depression. It is certainly "eclectic" and different, and perhaps that is enough with standards set low enough.
Back to Metropolis-- Maria offers some profound and simple wisdom at the end. This townhome reminds us how we ignore it. The head didn't speak to any of the hands in the design of this townhouse, not the ones who made it, nor to the ones who use it. The head took the design money and ran.
The solutions to making this townhouse livable are easy. Avoid tile/carpeting mix in cold-climate houses. Either you keep your shoes on all the time with hardwoods or linoleum everywhere, or carpet everything to make shoe-less comfortable.
Use giant picture windows when you have something to look at other than the sidewalk out front or the inside of your neighbor's house.
Design a washer-dryer closet with a sliding door.
Avoid placing bathrooms and stairwells in places that make the living space unlivable.
Of course compromises are necessary: but avoid them to attain "specs" that make places look better on paper than they are livable.
In short, as a designer, follow the heart as it is empathetic for the end user. Don't follow the head looking for something easy to draw and delivering a maximum paycheck.
Avoiding a heartless design isn't rocket surgery. It just takes heart.
Are we really so needy for maximum profit as to deny ourselves the basics of living well?
Won't the rich architect who chose profit just end up in a higher-end home as equally built for profit, disregarding how livable it is? Won't the profit just bring a different kind of inconvenience, mild suffering and depression?
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