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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.

(c) Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company


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-----------------
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'