Notes from Anna: Hip, Small, and Green -- The Tiny Abode Is All the Rage

A wave of recent articles in print and online touched on the theme of the ideal dwelling. I felt compelled to contribute my two cents to the discussion when I opened this month's issue of Utne magazine, to find a photo of the house that I -- as a child of six -- had conjured up in my imagination: a small, transparent glass cabin, set amidst ferns and green trees. The tiny shelter that I had imagined building one day in the rainforest is pictured on page 64, on a fenced-off plot, neighboring a couple of other houses. The articles "DIY Sanctuary" by Anjula Razdan and Jon Spayde's "A Hut of One's Own," address the question of what is the sufficient minimum that each of us needs in a shelter, before we can happily call it a home. The answer to this question may well be the answer to the challenge of reducing thoughtless and wasteful consumption, while creating a mode of life that is both deeply personally fulfilling and harmonious with the ecosystem.

People imagine dwellings -- sometimes practical, and sometimes surreal, evanescent, and highly individual. Jackie Craven, in an article titled "Dream Houses," refers to Carl Jung's construction of his tower, a labor of love that he described in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Inspired by how her own idea of a perfect habitat changed over the years, Craven conducted an insightful poll among her readers, and shares in the article a variety of imaginary dwellings described by them, from plausible to whimsical and dream-like.

Another intriguing example of dream architecture, envisioned by a non-architect, is a book titled The Invisible Cities, by the Italian author Italo Calvino. Presented in the form of Marco Polo's storytelling to Kublai Khan, a jaded ruler of an empire, the book is a series of descriptions of imaginary cities, each one unique, and one more fascinating than the next. Their literary blueprints are so detailed that the book inspired a variety of artists to try their hand at illustrating this beautiful meditation on people in their environments.

In "A Hut of One's Own," Jon Spayde's extensive references to Japanese traditional culture and architecture are more than fortuitous. Japan has provided both the inspiration and the design tradition to back the recently resurfaced trend for tiny sanctuaries. The trend, exemplified by the work of young agencies like Atelier Bow-Wow is an attempt to encapsulate the feelings that an ideal dwelling would inspire, within a minimal structure, and through the simplest materials. The shelter, in this wabi-sabi approach, is not so much the embodiment of an idea, but an unobtrusive space, where a person can feel free to think, feel, and imagine. The extreme simplicity of such spaces is reminiscent of a silk-worm's cocoon, where, like a meditator in seclusion, the silk-worm undergoes its transformation into a lovely butterfly.

Junichiro Tanizaki wrote, somewhat harshly, in his nevertheless magnificent essay In Praise of Shadows: "The progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot." But lately, we have been learning to "better our lot" by means other than accumulation of goods and opulence. The pursuit of great domestic design is more and more becoming a pursuit of living that infringes least on the environment and the communal resources, while creating literal room for individual freedom and well-being.

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All my best,

Anna

Source: ENN