Designing For People Before Possessions

The bigger the house, the bigger the rooms, the more we feel the need to fill them with possessions that own us more than we own them. That’s one reason I want to design smaller homes. I don’t want to create more space just so there’s somewhere to put more stuff.

I think of that Fight Club line about working jobs we hate to buy stuff we don’t need or want. To me, that’s part of the appeal of the minimalist movement. The stuff you own starts asking something of you: somewhere to keep it, time to clean it up, and room in your life to deal with it.

When a house becomes difficult to keep up with, I want to ask how much of it is serving the people who live there and how much is serving their possessions.

I believe a smaller house, better designed for people rather than goods and stuff, can make for a better life. Reducing square footage is part of what I’m aiming for with these designs: less house to build and less space to furnish.

I love the limit a smaller home puts on accumulating things. You can’t keep filling rooms when there’s nowhere else for the stuff to go. I want the people to come first when we design a home.