tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201207866891064896.post538150560447337654..comments2023-04-26T16:14:38.493+01:00Comments on Stories From The Diogenes Club: The Not So Simple LifeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201207866891064896.post-23269983407685065482007-07-31T05:22:00.000+01:002007-07-31T05:22:00.000+01:00, .. a timetable free rhythm Isn't it strange soci..., .. a timetable free rhythm <BR/><BR/>Isn't it strange society will not leave you alone to contemplate a solitary lifestyle without gross interference. There is no shortage of lifestyle advice on changing your life for the better by buying or even building a personal escape from the world. I have a library of about a dozen contemporary books on the subject, never mind Thoreau. Whilst a wife, mother or girlfriend is often excluded from the male preserve of a shed, they are not, usually, from such relatively modern lifestyle inventions as a home -office or beach hut. <BR/>If that is not enough, television programmes abound with suggestions. HomeFront and Wish Yau Were here have done the local beach hut scene and Changing Rooms tried to get a foot in the door, but there were, probably wisely, no takers. A hut is a private space. It should be immune from the camera lens.<BR/>Then there are the other property programmes that tell us how to live a little, Location Location, Location; Selling Houses, House Doctor, A Place in the Sun, Grand Designs and Hot Property. <BR/>The colour supplements regard beach huts for example as a perennial subject, at least since 1990 (when it all seems to have started). Even Big Ben, a German language magazine programme, delighted in filming this Diogenes Club's hinterland, a process that they spun out for several hot and sunny days. They did not want to go back to their office at the weeks-end. But all this coverage and barrage of lifestyle ideas for a hut owner has led to a new fascism of pine clad walls, pale ceilings and floors, mezzanine sleeping platforms and built in cupboards. And with supply failing to meet demand much coverage simply inflates the prices creating a spiral of conceits and deceits until the wealthy corner the market.<BR/>My favourite hut on a local beach, a vernacular log-cabin of ancient vintage and redolent with the simple charms (inside and out) of a bygone age, has been almost erased by the new tide of all today's minimalist or modernist scribblings in the lifestyle sections. <BR/>David Stiles, an expert in cabin design argues a hut is "a sacred place where food and drink always taste better, where music sounds brighter, where evenings with loved ones linger longer into pleasure, where sleep is deep and dawn is fresh with wonders we've forgotten elsewhere". <BR/>So it seems deliberate design is not so essential, it just happens. In the study of temporary dwellings created (and often lost) this century, the book Arcadia for All the authors note .. "all were drawn to live. for a weekend or longer, in simple conditions by the sea. In their little huts the rich played at peasants, the poor at landowners, before all returned to their different worlds on Monday morning". Adults can play at being children and children can play at being adults. <BR/>With play and imagination in the picture. released by an absence of design, it is the place that gives the hut its personality. Stiles says it is no fun being cold and without power, but lose all those mod cons and a hut can give you space to find time. Even a barrel could do if it were big enough.<BR/>It is hard to improve on a basic hut .. something that ideally offers a corner to sleep in, a corner to cook and eat in, a comer to read in and a comer to entertain friends in. Everything else is an embellishment. <BR/>All right, architects can help. There is a paint being developed. that is lighter when the temperature is over 20 degrees centigrade, and darker when it is less .. .ideal to trap or repel heat from the sun. Photoelectric solar cells do well generating almost free energy ... but what for? Anyway, the rudiments of designed-in shade, ventilation and insulation make for stressless environmental comfort. <BR/>But what of the architect-designed futuristic replacement for an old run-down Sandbanks boathouse at Poole that was bought for £800,000. It has already won praise and planning permission recently irrespective of the area only having a lifespan of 25 years because of global warming, a maximum height above sea level of only two metres and no bedrock anywhere nearby. <BR/>The award-winning London architect for this modernist gin-palace, Richard Horden, has already designed the Queen's stand at Epsom Racecourse, and the dramatic Study Gallery for the nearby Poole College. It is there that at a function I observed the principles of excellent design did not extend to the door handles in so far as it was (and still is) not obvious whether one should pull or push. There is such a thing as vernacular design that avoids architect's fees<BR/>In a simple hut you may regain your sanity, but it does not help if you have to live or work elsewhere with bad design which can be so exasperating. Donald A Norman's book, The Psychology of Everyday Things should be compulsory reading for architects and clients alike. His favourite things that are so often designed badly include door handles, and taps. The book's cover illustration, of a teapot with the spout above the handle just about sums it all up. It does not need money to achieve good design, just thought. And slowly that thought, the act of caring about an immediate environment is not just the preserve of the lifestyle sections in the colour supplements. We are being urged to compete with everyone else or to compensate for our busy lives by spending yet more for some fashionable last resort.<BR/>It is all a sham. Don't spend £100 a square foot or a multiple thereof to achieve your dream of splendid isolation. Like Diogenes, go live in a discarded barrel. Or fix up someone else's unwanted shed for your own garden clutter ("buyer must dismantle and collect" means it'll be cheap) and convert your old shed to a private space. Have a shed raising party as in the film "Witness". Become your own freestyle builder/architect and glower at the world and it's minute regulation later as it passes you by.beachhutmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09089124074862689070noreply@blogger.com