A machine for living

I've been watching Grand Designs, the British reality show about people self-building.  An English friend says it's known over there as 'grand budgets'. I'm struck by how concerned the builders are about how the rooms look. Aesthetics are important. Architecture can promote happiness, and sometimes even create it, as Alain de Botton has pointed out.

Often, though, the spaces don't work in a practical sense. Oliver Sach's, in An Anthropologist on Mars, describes Temple Grandin's house as 'a machine for living' which exactly conveys what's missing. Some of these grand designs are not efficient machines for living.

If you have five living spaces, you'll spend a lot of time swabbing the decks. If the dining room is on a different floor from the kitchen, the food will arrive cold unless you have a dumb waiter and some really good quality chafing dishes. If you have no storage, you will have get rid of everything you (used to) own to move in. Things like that are important to our everyday experience of our homes.

When we're all striving to make our houses look beautiful like our favourite homewares stores, we may be neglecting this other important aspect of "liveability".

This is post 33 of 43 posts.

Southern Gothic

This is Duke Chapel, at Duke University in North Carolina.  It was our field trip today - yes we had some time off for good behaviour.  Left is the vault a the centre of the nave, and below is a shot of the windows in the main aisle. (All snapped with my iPhone)
While we were there, the organist came in to rehearse.  The chapel has four organs, and he played the big one.  So a group of internationals stood in the middle of the church and sang "Star Spangled Banner" - it seemed fitting somehow, today of all days.  That's what happens when music teachers get together - they make music!

For dinner I had 'pulled pork'.  You barbecue pork until the meat is so tender you can pull it off the bones.  Then you douse it in a special sauce.  Eat with collard greens, and hush puppies, and you have something truly special.  I had cornbread for lunch, so I'm catching up on the local delicacies.  Mmmmm.  Now I just need some pumpkin pie!

As I type, I hear occasional roars of approval and honking of horns.  Downstairs is the party of the Democratic Party in North Carolina.

Already the media are saying Mr Obama will be the next President, unless some anti-miracle happens and he loses California.  I guess we'll know in the morning.  It does seem a positive sign that more citizens turned out to vote than have in a long time.  I think a democracy whose leaders are elected by a majority of the populace is a good thing.