--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com From: "ama-gi ISPI" <offshore@email.msn.com> To: <Undisclosed.Recipients@majordomo.pobox.com> Subject: IP: ISPI Clips 4.21:New Up-Scale Home Designs Reflect Privacy Concerns Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 00:35:26 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Sender: owner-ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com Precedence: list Reply-To: "ama-gi ISPI" <offshore@email.msn.com> ISPI Clips 4.21: New Up-Scale Home Designs Reflect Privacy Concerns News & Info from the Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI) Monday September 7, 1998 ISPI4Privacy@ama-gi.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This From: The Washington Post, Saturday, September 5, 1998; Page E03 http://www.washingtonpost.com The Neo-Fortress Home: Can the Concept Be Defended? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-09/05/070l-090598-idx.html By Roger K. Lewis "A House for the New Millennium" was the headline on a recent Wall Street Journal article about residential design trends. It should have read, "A House for the New Millionaires," or perhaps, "A House for Fearful Millionaires." With a full-color, bird's-eye view illustration and a tabulation of what's in and what's out, writer June Fletcher predicts that homes of the future will "look more like medieval fortresses than futuristic bubbles." Picture what Fletcher calls the Neo-Fortress Movement: towers and turrets; walled yards; locked gates; and tall, narrow windows. And most of the examples she cites have fortress-like price tags. At the low end were subdivision houses in Arizona ranging from $382,000 to $639,000. More typical were $950,000 homes in California; $1 million homes in Kentucky and Pennsylvania; a 10,000-square-foot, $3.3 million spec home in New Jersey; and a 14,000-square-foot, $8 million home in Florida. "The neo-fortress style reflects end-of-the-century anxieties about privacy and security," according to the article, along with diminishing home owner interest in the "showy houses of the '80s, with their soaring ceilings, open floor plans and huge windows that invite passersby to peer in and check out the furniture." On the article's "out" list: Palladian windows, Greek columns, grand entries, two-story plans, big lawns, common areas, great rooms and computer nooks in kitchens. On the "in" list: motor courts, walled courtyards, single-story plans, numerous defined rooms, 10-foot ceilings, two home offices and turrets. Turrets, California architect Barry Berkus told the Journal, "connote fortification and strength." Indeed, Berkus suggests that people are attracted to turrets because they evoke lonely, romantic symbols such as lighthouses and silos. By the time I reached the end of the article, I was wondering what the average American homeowner or home buyer might make of all this, not to mention architects and builders who create houses that buck or ignore this fortification trend. In 2001, would those of us whose homes sport large windows, vaulted ceilings and lack medievally inspired towers feel vulnerable and defenseless as well as out of fashion? There is nothing intrinsically wrong, either aesthetically or functionally, with most of the trendy features mentioned in the article. Walled-in courtyards, towers and narrow windows have been around for thousands of years. Constructing homes with discrete, functionally differentiated rooms is an established tradition. In most cultures, visually separating spaces for private, domestic use from public spaces is a standard and desirable practice. But these design elements and strategies for shaping a house should be employed when they fit the circumstances and context pertaining to the house, its location and site, its occupants and its occupants' budget. Thus the courtyard house, which evolved as the dominant residential building type in ancient Mediterranean, African, southern European and Asian cultures, is well suited for mild climates where inhabitants can spend much of the year outdoors in the courtyard, and where they don't have to cope with snow and ice -- places such as Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. But courtyard houses usually make little sense in New England, upstate New York, Appalachia, the upper Midwest or the foothills of the Rockies. One-level courtyard homes fit poorly on sites that aren't reasonably flat or on tight, awkwardly shaped lots. Given their introverted nature, they are rarely the logical choice for lots with dramatic views. Generally, the one-level courtyard house configuration is among the more expensive ways to build a home. It is much less compact than other building types, especially the two- or three-story, cubicly shaped house with basement and attic. It entails more roof area and perimeter wall surface to enclose a given amount of interior space, resulting in not only increased construction costs but also increased heating, cooling and maintenance costs. Some could read the Wall Street Journal article and mistakenly infer that the neo-fortress style may be perfectly okay for anyone, anywhere. Clearly it is not. But there's something more disturbing than the potential for readers to draw incorrect inferences about architectural styling. The report implies that Americans' perceptions, attitudes and behavior are increasingly shaped by security concerns. Segregation and isolation, not integration and connection, seem to preoccupy more and more citizens who want to live not only in gated communities, but also in gated homes. Referring to the $8 million home in Florida with a pair of turrets, Fletcher reports that the turret near the garage houses a platform accessed by a circular stair and a fireman's pole. "The client," noted the builder, "thought it would be great for his grandchildren to be able to shoot their BB guns out the window, then slide down the pole." Before arriving at this Florida bastion, perhaps visitors should know more about the prospective BB gun targets as well as the rest of the home arsenal -- what about crossbows and boiling oil? The $1 million builder's house in Kentucky encompasses 10,000 square feet and has a three-story, outdoor media room, according to Fletcher, including a shower, hot tub, fireplace, gazebo with built-in television and kitchenette, bar, small pool and waterfall. The owners boast that, when fireworks are flying in distant Cincinnati, they can sit in their outdoor media room and watch the fireworks live and on television at the same time, experiencing the real and the virtual simultaneously. Could this be the ultimate suburban house, a house connected only electronically to the rest of the world, a house you never would have to leave? Courtyard homes can be wonderful in their place, their virtues being spatial amenity, not defendability. They should be built not to escape the communal world outside, but rather to heighten enjoyment of the familial world inside. As for turrets, man's home may be his castle, but it doesn't have to look like one. © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company --------------------------------NOTICE:------------------------------ ISPI Clips are news & opinion articles on privacy issues from all points of view; they are clipped from local, national and international newspapers, journals and magazines, etc. Inclusion as an ISPI Clip does not necessarily reflect an endorsement of the content or opinion by ISPI. In compliance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed free without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISPI Clips is a FREE e-mail service from the "Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues" (ISPI). 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It will not be sold, lent or given away to any third party. ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo@majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer ********************************************** --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'