Small is Beautiful
(This piece has been adapted from the original published in RHome Magazine, 2009)
In his 1973 volume of essays, Small is Beautiful, Economics as if People Mattered, British economist E.F. Schumacher expounded on the virtues of “enoughness” while decrying the vices of the “bigger is better” mindset. Since then, the median size of the American home has ballooned from about 1,500 to roughly 2,400 square feet while household size has shrunk by over 20%. Without a doubt, the modern age has been defined by the lure and power of bigness — big money, big business, big ideas, big personalities — and big homes.
Over the past couple of decades or so, however, the pendulum has begun to swing back toward old ways but within a new paradigm for dwelling in America. A hundred years ago, “small-and-simple” was primarily a manifestation of fiscal constraint; today, the impetus has become multi-dimensional. While, for some Americans, financial prudence has returned in earnest due to recent economic challenges, the collective mindset has also begun to respond to the fact that this is truly a small world after all (and only getting smaller) and, for the first time ever there is mainstream awareness of the environmental and social impacts associated with construction and operation of our buildings. How much does size matter anyway? As it turns out, a great deal…the conventional American home of recent years demands the felling of 1.5 acres of forest (while the average single family lot size is about 0.2 acres) and consumes 40% more energy than the average car. On a global scale, over 40% of the annual drawdown of natural capital is directly attributable to the demands of the built environment.
Schumacher’s tome surely sounded a clarion call that is more relevant than ever, particularly in his declaration, “Today we suffer from an almost universal idolatry of giantism. It is therefore necessary to insist on the virtues of smallness where this applies.” Regardless of whether one’s view is through an economic, environmental or cultural lens, the merits of downsizing are universal as well. In one of my favorite George Carlin rants, the late comedian - - famous for his unabashed social commentary — observed that “our houses basically boxes to keep our s**t, so the bigger the box, the more s**t we need!” Who among us has not yearned for less stuff? Well, the corollary of smaller homes is that they temper our sense of need, which underlies the core virtue of smallness and is a sensibility that is woven through the tapestry of a simpler, healthier lifestyle. Once we have decided that we need less, we can build less which means we have less to manage in terms of debt, maintenance, energy and water consumption, all of which translates to more comfort and freedom as well as a smaller ecological footprint, which might extend to the behavioral dimension by inducing daily “acts of smallness” such as using the sun to dry our clothes, turning off lights, biking and walking, gardening, etc.
Smallness is also relative, which is implicit in the title of Sarah Susanka’s 1998 book, The Not So Big House. In her best seller, the architect was one of the first to espouse the notion that quality should supersede quantity, meaning that the measure of a home should not be a matter of square footage, but what we are doing within the cubic footage. This implies that focus should be on good design, building only what we need as efficiently as possible and doing it with a high degree of quality and craftsmanship. At PFA, regardless of whether a home weighs in at 2,000 square feet or 10,000, we work closely with clients in producing designs that “live small” as a result of serious and deep consideration of questions around need vs want and the wise use of resources (money being one of them) — which also captures the fundamental tenet of “green” building in that it matters not so much what’s put into our buildings, but what is left out.
For our part, the mission is a counterpoise to “The Age of the McMansion”, continuing to encourage a transition akin to that of digital technology where a system that originally filled an entire room has been gradually reduced to fit snugly in the palm of our hands — all in the interest of convenience, performance, economy, expediency and, more recently, the biosphere, the cost of money and the attendant entwinements thereof. When it comes to domestic space, we will always push the notion that there is an appropriate scale for every activity that yields the very same benefits in addition to enhancing comfort, quality and long term value. After all, as Winston Churchill observed, “we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape our lives”. And this is the beauty of smallness.
