Beauty in the home (part 1)

Introduction

Have you ever judged a restaurant or a cafe by its bathroom? I often do, and find it to be a pretty accurate metric. The thought (or lack thereof) that people put into these spaces that have an otherwise base ‘function’ says a lot about their general regard for the quality of experience their customers or guests will have. Giving dignity to the process of cleansing – or, pardon me, excretion – shows a broader respect for our experience of daily activities and their locales which, in my opinion, we should always strive to make beautiful. Beauty is not some superficial characteristic here. Beauty means quality. I do not believe this is judged subjectively. To a certain degree, perhaps. But there is also something fundamentally common about quality and what it comprises.

Judging by this and my first piece on cloth nappies, you might think I have a singular preoccupation with this least savoury of human bodily functions. In fact, this is not about bathrooms. It is about space in general and, for the sake of brevity, about the home space more particularly. It is about bedrooms and kitchens and hallways as much as it is about bathrooms.

I’m not a designer, nor do I have any formal understanding of design “theory” beyond some casual perusals of Christopher Alexander (which is, in any case, more an exercise in spirit than theory). I also don’t claim, by any means, to have figured it all out – how to consistently achieve beauty in our spaces; how to make the right ‘design choices’. But I’m fascinated with the way spaces affect us, with how certain spaces allow certain kinds of thoughts and feelings; with how beauty and life are supported, or undermined, by architectural choices.

Why does a symbiosis of colour and texture lift our mood?

Why does a lack of clutter enable clarity of mind and purpose?

Why does the right gradation of light make our conversations more authentic?

Why does an adorned ceiling inspire the imagination?

Why does wood have a warming affect? Concrete, a cooling affect? (both physically and emotionally)

I think these questions should concern us all, not only the designers among us. They are, after all, questions of human and humane living.

They concern me, constantly. Whether or not I enact the consideration, I am always thinking about how a space can be made more alive, more beautiful – whether it’s a corner in my home, or a restaurant, or a bus stop.

Without much recourse to canonised principles, I have begun to collate a number of general elements that seem to me to have the desired affect – the affect of enlivening and beautifying. I’d like to focus on the home space. Of course, every space is unique and every context demands specialised treatment. At the same time, there must be some basic values, some basic truths about space and its structure. This was no doubt what Alexander dedicated much of his career to, discovering and articulating these truths.

I am still working slowly and rather inconsistently through Alexander’s canon, because his ideas on beautiful spaces seem to align with what I already feel to be true. But I find it even more interesting to figure things out on my own – to take a corner of my home, and ask myself, why does it feel heavy? Or dark? Or uninspiring? Or perhaps just shy of “right”? And what can I do to change that? We only have ears for what we already know from experience – Nietzsche was right about this. No amount of design theory will make proper sense to us until we have understood and experienced its affect in a real space.

This series will detail my preliminary musings on the home space, and on what has worked to create beauty and life in our home in particular. Each article on the topic will speak to a new design ‘element’ (not the kind from design textbooks, but ones I’ve roughly described myself), and will include images that give a little more insight into my observations.

I expect the series to take some time to emerge in all its parts, as I gather my own thoughts and as we settle, after several years of travel and mobility, into our current home space and attend to what it needs to maximise its beauty and our quality of life within it.

Having said that, here is my working table of contents, for what is to come in the series (not necessarily in this order):

1. Light

2. The human touch

3. Bringing the outside, in

4. Homes within homes

5. Points of focus and points of intrigue

6. Colour

7. Organic regularity

The first piece is finished and will follow shortly. It will focus on Light and its crucial and transformative capacity.

I hope you enjoy reading and working through these considerations of space with me. I find them to be as important to our quality of life as good food and human connection, but not as often discussed because we who are not designers feel we have no right to opine about them. But in reality, choices about interior space, domestic space in particular, do not need specialised or technical expertise. They need simply an attentive human presence.

---