McMansions, move over
The structures we live in offer some clues as to who we are.
from the April 26, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 2
Guests in our home inevitably encounter my husband's library of books about tiny houses, so it was natural for this to become a topic of conversation when we recently hosted Easter dinner. The table cleared, we pored over books, animatedly pointing out our favorite succinct and simple structures.
It's a curious phenomenon, the interest in tiny houses, as described in the Monitor's "Incredible shrinking houses" (April 20). Even Oprah Winfrey recently devoted an hour to the topic of living small.
One wonders, is this "boomlet" a reaction to the recent McMansion construction trend or, more generally, to the excesses of modern consumerism?
I recall a respondent desire for temperate and modest living on the heels of a visit to Versailles. An afternoon at the Palace of the Sun King was, for me, opulence that went way beyond bordering on excess.
However, much as it appears to be about smallness, could the growing interest in shrinking houses be about sharpening our focus? About zooming in on what matters most?
Our Easter guests talked about what didn't matter most to them – the unnecessary "stuff" accumulating in their basements, attics, and garages. Then they talked about their imagined sense of buoyancy at shedding those things and living a leaner lifestyle. There was an inarticulate impulse – even yearning – in all this.
Here is what I think this may really be all about.
The structures we live in do offer some clues as to who or what we are, whether it be a yurt in the Tibetan Himalayas or a loft in Tribeca. At its most fundamental, then, could this be an ages-old story? Even a holy one of yearning to bring into sharp focus who we are, what man – including both male and female – really is? I think that's quite possible.
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