Diagram Architects

Rule 6 – Enough is Enough

In May 2007, while launching a local architectural competition, the Victorian planning minister Justin Madden made a speech that lit the first spark in a local political firestorm.

“We are suffering housing obesity..” he claimed.”..Our increasing affluence has led to bigger houses, and I’m sure that you’re familiar with the term ‘McMansions’….”

He linked the inexorable growth of house sizes to a number of social and environmental ills: Urban sprawl, stretched infrastructure, loss of arable farmland, resource overuse, greenhouse pollution and childhood obesity.

The response was swift, loud and vicious. Within hours the minister had been accused of turning his back on the working class, forgetting the principles of freedom and democracy and spitting on the Australian way of life. Critics included the usual opportunistic soapbox shouters, some special interest groups (including the Housing Industry Association) and some offended homeowners who resented the minister’s criticism of the lifestyles they had worked so hard to achieve. The minister’s own house was scrutinised, and much noise was made about his own five bedrooms and family room and the Victorian Premier’s holiday house.

Within a week of the speech, The Honourable Minister for Planning had deeply qualified his statement and retracted to lick his wounds. An important lesson had been learned: You don’t knock the Australian Dream without risking a kick in the guts.

So what could I possibly add to this debate?

The economic and ecological advantages of a smaller house are pretty straightforward. Smaller houses need less stuff to make. Fewer things need to be dug out of the ground, cut out of the forest, synthesised, processed, transported, packaged and installed to make a smaller house. All other things being equal, smaller houses require less energy to heat, cool or light.

Smaller lot sizes swallow less arable land. More people can be serviced by every kilometre of cable, pipe, road or rail. Trips are shorter, transport is easier, and it becomes easier to ride or walk to where you need to go – and more economical for business or government to provide you with what you want locally. There are fewer transmission losses from electricity, fewer leaks from plumbing, and less energy required to pump, reticulate or deliver the basic infrastructure deliverables.

So how do we resolve that with our lovely big backyards with spreading trees and lawns for backyard cricket, our two-car garages, our rumpus rooms, parent’s retreats and home workshops?

There’s a great line attributed to William Morris that goes: “Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”. Morris supposedly said that in 1880, and yet it’s one of the best pieces of advice for sustainable living in the 21^st century that I can think of.

Everything in your home – every room, space, fitting or material should be working hard for you, improving your life or giving you pleasure, serving a purpose, giving you joy or ideally all of the above. If it’s not useful, and it doesn’t make you happy, it’s plaque in the arteries of your life – and those of the world at large. It’s not the stuff we love and need that’s choking the world: It’s the novelty rubbish, the unused space, the waste. It’s the stand-by power or the light left on in an empty room. It’s the stuff we wouldn’t miss if it wasn’t there.

Good design – really good, brain busting, life-improving, back-to-basics design, is about knowing what you need and what makes you happy, and removing everything else. It’s no accident that Thoreau’s manifesto for the essential life is at heart a story about designing and building a simple house at Walden Pond. Inflating your house for the sake of fashion, or your designer’s own self aggrandisement, or because they just didn’t bother asking what’s important to you – that’s housing obesity.

Mies van der Rohe once famously said “Less is More”. Robert Venturi responded archly with “Less is a Bore”. For the sake of a trim, taught and terrific world, I’m going to propose some less incendiary and more realistic domestic dietary advice:

“Enough is Enough”.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under 10 rules for energy efficient house design, energy efficiency, green house design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.