DESIGN Archives - Reinventing Home

The Kitchenless Home

With childcare, cooking, and laundry demanding so much time, the question arises, Aren’t there more efficient ways to design the home? This radical idea was first suggested back in 1888: Science fiction author Edward Bellamy described a utopian community with public kitchens and rapid delivery services for food and laundry. Housework of all kinds was centralized and labor kept to a minimum.

Ten years later, feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman championed a kitchenless home that would give women the leisure to engage in more intellectual pursuits

Modern Housing

When millions were displaced by the Dust Bowl and job loss during the Great Depression, the federal government made housing a priority. The Roosevelt Administration enlisted leading thinkers, collectively known as “housers.” These architects, designers and social scientists challenged barriers to housing for all.

Mythology of the Man Cave

On the surface, the comfortable escapes inhabited by 21st century men seem worlds apart from the dark, stoney initiation chambers fashioned by their ancient brothers. The carpeted contemporary cave and the jagged cleft in the earth, however, share common foundations in the male psyche.

Creating Sanctuary

Sanctuary is hard to find these days. Even home, that timeless refuge from the world’s travails and upheavals, offers little escape from the social unrest that’s raging around the globe. Now more than ever we need a safe harbor, a haven that can soothe and calm us, and be a bulwark against the problems of the outside world.

Living Color vs. Minimalism

We regard any change in the home—whether it’s downsizing, renovating or reorganizing—as a rite of passage, a fresh start that comes with a built-in guarantee of happiness like finding a new career or falling in love. Yet these activities are fluid, rich, expansive, and our approach to the home has grown perfectionistic and restrictive.

Design With Nature

For years I have been teaching people how to look at nature and how to use its basic principles to create an inspired home. Here are a few tips that will make your house feel like it’s part of a living landscape. These stem from 3.8 billion years of evolution, or the earth’s own R&D.

Seascrapers and Earthscrapers

Our new skyscrapers will head in the opposite direction—down into the oceans like strands of kelp and into the earth like searching roots.

High-rise Forests

Green buildings are a growing presence on city skylines, making the temperatures more comfortable and the air easier to breathe. The skin of the building is covered with such dense plantings it appears to be wholly organic.

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