Interesting site. As a long-time 'slow food' advocate (although I never knew it had a name) I can relate. I'm not a big fan of 'fast' anything, especially at the expense of quality or functionality. As a life long tool maker, I'm used to taking my time and doing things right, whether it's cooking dinner, or designing and building a house.

Jay - There is a Slow Food convivium in Upstate. This is definitely one of the things I plan to get involved in when we relocate.

Toolmakers, "rocket scientists", yup, slow & careful is the way to go. (grin)

Here is a link that might be useful: Slow Food Upstate

This sounds like another name for sustainable living.

I think there is a little more to it than that. There are 3 precepts:

"SIMPLE is about designing an effective way to inhabit the spaces in your home."

"LIGHT is about designing an efficient way to live with a smaller environmental impact."

"OPEN is about designing an elegant spatial organization in your home."

SIMPLE really intrigues me, because he goes on to talk about thinking of the home not as a series of rooms with names, but as a place to do activities such as eat, sleep, entertain, etc. This was what I was trying to do when I put together the pitch on how we wanted our house to function for the architect. I think I was on the right track, but may not have presented the idea in an acceptable way.

I think one might argue that one could have a sustainable design (LIGHT) which doesn't account for SIMPLE and OPEN, thereby making it a less desirable place to live than if all three precepts were incorporated in the design.

Personally, I know that I am not totally onboard with OPEN. I want my everyday living spaces such as kitchen, breakfast nook and keeping room to be open since I will do the majority of my living there. However, I still want to have a formal dining room and great room (with no TV) separated from the other rooms for "grownup" entertaining. Therefore, I'm going to come up short on LIGHT because I know I am using more space and a bigger footprint than I really need. I think I'm OK with this, but ....

Jo Ann

Here is a link that might be useful: Simple, Light, Open

I could really go on and on about this topic. Everyone has different ideas about what 'Simple, Light, and Open' mean to them. I agree; SIMPLE is the way to go, on many levels. I'm also on board with LIGHT, although that would be one area where people's opinions would diverge. I'm thinking 1200 square feet for two people is neither extravagant nor spartan; your mileage may vary. I, too have trouble with OPEN, since my wife and I are fairly 'private' people, both every day, and with guests. I guess we've become spoiled in the US by everyone having there own space. I like to read, and I like it to be quiet when I do. So I 'need' a place to read that's away from the TV, stereo, kitchen noises, or whatever.

I keep going back to the house we are in now, and applying what I have learned along the way. When it comes to room usage, it boils down to master bedroom, kitchen, and a den, which is actually a small bedroom. The living room, dining room, and family room are pretty much waste space for the majority of the year. Could I live comfortably in the three rooms? Not really. We need storage space beyond what those rooms provide. We also need a bigger space from time to time to entertain.

Our bedroom is actually much bigger than it needs to be at 12X17 feet. Although I spend a good chunk of my time there, I'm ASLEEP! The room could be smaller, and the closet bigger. I'm in favor of making the kitchen and dining area one big room. It's good to have another public room for guests, so they don't have to sit and ponder the dirty dishes after a dinner party.

I've spent more time and graph paper than I care to admit trying to distill my wants and needs into a small house design. My so-called 'perfect' design (this week) seems great on paper, until I calculated that some 12% of the floor area is hallways! And that doesn't include the space given up for stairs. Stairs have been my single biggest frustration in designing a small house. Our lot is ideal for a walk-out basement, and I wouldn't save much by going to a crawl space, so stairs to the basement are a necessary evil. Another fault in my design is that there is 20% more linear feet of outside walls than if I fit it all into a cube of the same square footage.

Designing anything, be it a rocket, a tool, or a house is a series of compromises- function, cost, complexity, legal hurdles, and even aesthetics all have to be juggled to come up with a workable final product. I thought I did a pretty good job of integrating all the features I wanted into a small home, but under the harsh glare of unbiased criticism, I realize I'm not there yet. Ultimately, I will have to weight the variables- Do I have a more expensive house to obtain A, B, and C? Do I build a more wasteful house to obtain D, E, and F? To be continued....

Any relation to the famous Slower Talkers of America?

Oh great...now I am hooked on yet another website. I just spent an hour there. Since it's taking so long for our house to sell, I guess you'd say our new house is definitely "slow!" Actually the wait has forced our plan to evolve and with each passing day it gets closer and closer to being exactly the way we want to live. The only problem I have is fighting my husband on the "but I want to build it with resale in mind" attitude which I think is pretty silly considering every house we have built we lived in at least 10 years. Though you can't blame him since the current one has sat on the market for 14 months.

Worthy: I enjoyed your clip.

flgargoyle - I totally feel your pain on the trickiness of designing a small home. It can be so much harder to fit everything you want into a small home. We want a house (for 4 of us) less than 1500 sq ft, efficient to build, efficient to heat, passive solar, minimum of hallways....... I think we may have it figured out though.