Opinion of Not So Big House

I realized this morning that my entry last night came without an opinion of Susanka's Not So Big House.  While a description of a book tends to go in Readings Along These Lines I think it pertinent to explain this particular book here.  As I mentioned in my last entry, "To explain, the basic idea of the book is to minimize unused space in a house.  For example, a typical house may come with a dining room and parlor room.  After following Susanka's methodology of recording spaces one spends the most time in and one feels the most comfortable in one, may discover that the dining room is nothing but wasted space." While I have not yet read the book in its entirety, the premise behind this particular methodology sounds wonderful to me.  Following such methodology would allow for differences in culture and even differences from individual to individual within the same culture.  In my mind this is how architecture should be, though it is interesting to think of such a concept in relation to the reselling of houses, which I am curious to see how Susanka approaches. 

To me this is much more ideal than the concept of universal architecture, one which I absolutely appall and is used by several famous architects like Mies van der Rohe.  The idea of universal architecture is to create a building which could be placed in Santa Fe, NM; Mexico City; Atlanta, GA; Dubai; Dalian, China; or in a bubble on the moon.  The site does not make any difference at all.  This concept is fairly absurd to me as it means that a building comes void of the culture of the area and that culture doesn't change built artifacts.

Based on this analysis, the fact that my family's friend paid enough attention to architecture to include any elements from Susanka's book is very impressive to me.  To include elements from such a book, shows that one has good taste and a good approach to built form.