Follow Us & Network on Facebook and Twitter

By Mark Lundegren

When we look at the trouble and expense that people often go through – as designers, builders, or property owners – to create and maintain modern buildings, one obvious question that comes to mind is – are we simply creating and using too much space?

The decidedly spacious home below, apparently designed to evidence traditional chalet themes, offers a great case in point. The structure obviously cost a small fortune to build and hardly can be seen as a model for sustainable and generalizable modern building.

Buildings Lost In Space

Though striking aesthetically, the building has little alignment with the functional needs and economic constraints of a typical family, or relevancy to the ecological needs and constraints of a society seeking to halt environmental degradation and climate change.

As suggested, one way of bridging this gulf between modern aesthetic expression and our functional requirements is simply to build and use less space.

Though this idea may conjure visions of cramp and forbidding dwellings, or corporate cubicle farms, this of course needn’t be the case – with a bit of ingenuity and some rethinking of the way that we can and might use the space we create.

The 16 Hour Test

To help engender progressive thinking about modern building design and encourage work toward a synthesis of aesthetic, economic, and ecological considerations, I would like to introduce The 16 Hour Test.

Continue reading “Using Too Much Space?”