Thursday, May 14, 2009

Honey, I shrunk the house

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Small is in. Beauty is optional.

The Church of Environmentalism is dead keen on making everything micro. A foot that prints less carbon. Energy efficient. Keeping down with the Joneses. And, best of all from the standpoint of meager-is-better environmentalists, literally downsizing everything means we can accommodate lots more overpopulation. Bring on the next batch of serial-pregnancy immigrants. You know small houses are trendy when there's a coffee table book dedicated to them, from Rizzoli, publishers to the arty rich. The Los Angeles Times, in the city that's always ready for the next next next thing, has a photo gallery of pictures from Tiny Houses, by Mimi Zeiger.

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"Lucky Drops," designed by Atelier Tekuto. In the spirit of a Gothic cathedral, or alternatively, a pregnant ironing board for those clothes hanging out to dry next door.

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Located in New Orleans, with a special hurricane viewing veranda. Fits right in with the neighborhood architectural tradition, too.

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Described as "a prefabricated flat-pack structure that yields a 500-square-foot interior," this environmentally sound dream home will turn your too-cool-for-their-world friends green, or Green, with envy. Just hope nobody mistakes it for a dumpster while you're enjoying a mini-cup of tuberose tea inside.

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Sustainable living in Oslo. When not occupied while Dad is away on the herring boat and Mom is teaching Pilates classes, the dwelling does ancillary duty as a railroad-siding crash barrier.

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Bet you thought the object to the left was the house, didn't you? Ha! The SmartHouse gets 344 miles to the litre and moves on wheels for maximum sunlight exposure. Optional luggage rack/clothes closet available.

Consider the effect of your 4 br, 2.5 ba mansionette on the environment and think shrink. Little things mean a lot.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The people who could live in these houses don't have a genuinely environmentalist lifestyle at all. It takes some space and equipment to, for instance, cook for yourself, do repairs, etc. I assume the ideal inhabitant of this type of house would eat at restaurants, spend a lot of time at work or on the road, etc. Due to the lack of storage, things get thrown out instead of repaired. The obvious internal contradiction won't ever occur to the people who live in those places, because they're conformists. Oh, an added bonus is that people who live in those things can't possibly have (white) children.

IlĂ­on said...

Such hideous little things.

And, of course, hideous is currently in with the (herdish) wannabes as the means to prove they're risen above the herd.

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