ArchitectureBoston just published an issue about neighborhood, which got me thinking. Sure it’s the twenty-first century, but our neighborhood is in an eighteenth century Salem condominium building. It’s a four-unit Georgian that was once an approximately 4,600 square-foot single-family home for a successful sea captain. Since the house is symmetrical with a center stair hall, it divided rather neatly into separate, eminently livable units in the ‘80s. My husband and I occupy one of the upper quadrants on the second and third floors. We share horse-hair plaster walls, wide-pine floors, twisting balusters and pride of place with our neighbors in the building.

Together we plan the building’s future, and, in the process, intertwine our destinies. We’ve orchestrated innumerable maintenance projects to repair or replace: the foundation sills, the siding, the trim, the roof, and the chimney, to name a few. At times, project planning and funding have become contentious as individual budgets tighten due to life events and fluctuating economies. Yet, over seven years of ad hoc condominium meetings, we’ve all managed to make accommodations for the better of the building, the group, and, thus, ourselves. We informally take turns bringing trash to the curb, cleaning the entry hall, tending to the garden, and looking after each other’s house plants or cats. We’ve even started sharing dinner get-togethers in which condominium business isn’t on the agenda. We’ve forged our own neighborhood of four households.

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The regrettable loss of design democratizers

Since trouble in the housing market initiated our current economic slide, it’s no surprise that shelter magazines are among the latest casualties of the recession. House & Garden started the dismal parade when it folded in November 2007. Since then In Style Home, Blueprint, Home, Cottage Living, O at Home, Country Home, and Domino have closed their doors.

Historically, mainstream shelter magazines served a market hungry for design advice, but which often lacked the resources to retain architects. That’s a large readership when you consider that at least 95% of new homes in the U.S. don’t involve architects. The colorful, photo-rich pages of many shelter magazines were great design democratizers, offering tips and inspiration to do-it-yourselfers and those working directly with builders and designers (or even architects). Over time, T.V. and the internet stepped in to meet growing demand, providing different but often complimentary material. Despite what eventually may have become an oversaturated category, it seems it was lack of advertising dollars, not lack of readership, which ultimately starved so many publications.

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Choosing the best path despite ourselves

Two recent articles about the role of human nature in economic decision-making got my attention. The lessons of each could very easily be applied to the residential design process.

“The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors” by John Tierney in The New York Times (Feb. 26, 2008) expounds on our all-too-human desire to preserve our options and limit our exposure to perceived loss, despite the costs.

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Rationalizing the intuitive

“Art for Our Sake” in last Sunday’s Boston Globe touches on one of my favorite subjects. Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland make the case for art education. The authors are researchers at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and they’re college educators elsewhere in Boston. They conducted a year-long study of five visual-arts classes taught at two schools in the Boston area: one public and one private. Their findings? Studying art fosters creative and critical thinking. Bravo. But isn’t that common sense? Well, apparently not.

For better or worse, often what we think we know intuitively requires rational evidence in order to convince others, and perhaps even ourselves, that our intuition is in fact sound. Rationalizing intuition and intuiting the rational is also at the crux of what architects do. We couldn’t do it without

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Focus on long-term architectural utility not short-term dollars and cents

Foremost on the minds of most homeowners about to embark on a residential project, whether it’s a renovation, addition, or new construction, is ‘How much will it cost?’ This is the loaded question that frequently stops a project in its tracks or sends it off in the wrong direction. A better question is: ‘How can value be added?’ or ‘How can intangible costs be avoided?’ Too often homeowners lose track of how a project could positively influence their lives, focusing instead on the dollars and cents spent today. Of course this happens in part because it’s easier to tally short-term financial costs than to tally long-term and non-financial costs or added value. We mustn’t overlook the intangible value that can be added to a project with one course of action, or the intangible cost of pursuing another, just because it’s difficult to measure. First we need to define our terms.

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