Your Custom Text Here
It was great fun to chat with Patrick McCombe of Fine Homebuilding about becoming an architect, the role of architects, and more. Here, too, is the link from the Fine Homebuilding podcast website.
Thanks for your interest, Patrick!
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
Find a recent interview with me on Bontena. Fun to be featured.
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
The KHS Manchester Garage/Garden Room
I learned of the German word "fernweh" last month on NPR. It translates as "farsickness" or "a longing for a place you've never been." Apparently, many folks have this feeling for a place that relates to their ancestry. I certainly do. For me, the place is Norway. One of my great grandmothers came to the U.S. from Norway, or was it my great-great grandmother? In any case, I grew up enjoying a tradition of Norwegian holiday baking. But I've never been to Norway or been told much about it.
Yet somehow I seem to be hardwired to design buildings with a hint of Norwegian influence. Take the little outbuilding in the photo above. You may recognize it from the KHS website, or (back in the day) from Cottage Living, or perhaps from my book The New Small House. Now that I'm more actively pursuing photos of Norwegian vernacular architecture on Instagram and such, I'm noticing that it almost looks as if I floated this little building over from Lofoten to Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Yet I only recently learned of Lofoten, more than ten years after designing the Manchester Garage/Garden Room.
And my taste for Norwegian and Scandinavian design doesn't stop at the vernacular, it includes the more modern, too. Just today I spotted this post from @Nordicwall on Instagram, and it momentarily took my breath away. So what is this about? Is the Norwegian/Scandinavian aesthetic in my DNA? Or am I subconsciously (and now consciously) absorbing Norwegian/Scandinavian influence to reinforce what I know of my heritage? It's one of the delightful mysteries of being human: why and how do we connect with the world, not just the world we know but the world we feel we know, if only in our imaginings.
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
Why is it that shortly after you a learn a new word, you bump into that new word everywhere -- in conversation, on the radio, on T.V.? Or say you discover a new actor, next you notice that actor hiding in plain sight on the cast of shows or movies you've watched a number of times. Well, I've recently been focused on community -- not just virtual community, but brick-and-mortar community -- and now I'm realizing many other folks are focused on all aspects of community, too. I suppose my heightened awareness of community is, in part, due to the fact that I'm living in a community that's new to me. Like a new word or newly recognized actor, notions of community have migrated from my subconscious to my conscious mind.
Yesterday, at my new-to-me local coffee shop, The Coffee Depot, I dashed off to the restroom before continuing on with my Saturday, and noticed an unusual poster affixed to the restroom wall. Not an all-employees-must-wash-their-hands kind of poster (though there may have been one of those), but a poster titled How To Build Community published by Syracuse Cultural Workers.
It lists forty-four simple actions you or anyone can take to build community.
Here's what it says:
We’ve just moved for the first time in eleven years. So we’ve spent the last month re-acquainting ourselves with the contents of our home. First: sorting, recycling, donating, shredding, selling, and packing. Then: unpacking, sorting, recycling, inheriting, purchasing, and placing. Granted, most find step two a lot more fun than step one. But a rigorous edit of your belongings in step one, can be nearly as satisfying. The real payoff is more room to breathe in your next home.
To me, the space in the photo above, taken in our new place during the home inspection, is ripe with possibility. The few pieces of furniture in the shot belong to the previous owner. This southwest-facing corner is washed with daylight on sunny days. The challenge is to outfit it so as to maximize its intrinsic appeal – daylight from two directions through paired, generous, two-over-one lite, double-hung windows; warm hardwood floors; a relatively tall ceiling; a pleasing neutral paint palette, and well-crafted trim. To do such a space justice, while personalizing it, every piece of furniture, every furnishing and fixture within it needs to be carefully considered. A good editor (of a text or a home) knows when to cut, when to re-arrange, and when to augment.
As I outfit this space to reflect the lives we aspire to live in it, it helps me to look back at this photo of it (nearly) empty, to remind myself of its essence. Alain de Botton wrote in The Architecture of Happiness, “We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced.” Same goes for our interiors: we owe it to our houses that our interiors will not be the inferiors of the bare spaces they have replaced.
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
