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Vision in building and designing our cottages

Just getting started with this blogging thing—well, here goes… 

Breaking the mold—Breaking down barriers—Breaking stereotypes

Tips for thinking little is bigger

Why limit ourselves with objects in a space?

We have grown up thinking that the only way you can define a space is by how many square feet the space occupies. Unfortunately just having a bunch of undefined square footage is really meaningless until we add the furniture, the pictures, and all the coverings. Then we label the space as a kitchen, bedroom or living room and we do certain things in each type of room based on the label we give it. We in essence are labeling space based on the elements we introduce into it which is easily left up to every person’s interpretation. How is that limiting you, you may say? Well it leaves out the need for varying the fixed container or designing the fixed walls, floors, and ceilings as nothing more than the container for holding the objects labeled some such nonsensical label as the “Great Room”! What’s a “Great Room”? Oh you might say it is a really GREAT room, or a nice BIG room, or an RUMPUS room—the room where we make noise…which is all very nice and good, but really it may be just a BIG WASTE of space. That’s like saying, “Oh, I just have to have my hallways 20 feet wide so that I can show people my lovely BIG hallways…what’s the point? It doesn’t have to be the objects we inject into the space that define the space, because that’s so limiting—think more about the design of the container that houses the objects…

Quality design can be the best antidote for making a living space fun!

We tend to attach fun to places like Disneyland or any amusement park and if you want to have fun you must go to those places where you can enjoy real fun. When was the last time we looked at homes as fun places to live? So instead, if we can’t live in “fun” house, like the ones they build at Disneyland, at least we can change the coverings in the rooms of our homes so we don’t bore ourselves to death and then we do our “room makeovers”…whoop-de-doo! So does that mean we should design the containers we live in with “fun” spaces? Could be! Let your imagination run wild—lots of people are installing indoor slides in their homes…that’s kind of fun!

Consider the audience

Who really cares about living in a “fun” space all of the time? Well living in a fun space all the time may not be on your list of top preferences, or maybe when you were younger you would have appreciated fun spaces more than you do now, so maybe your more interested in the function of space like having a wood shop or a crafts room and that’s OK to. You can design function into the container as well, not just labeling another rectangular box the “Sewing Room”.

Defined space

Space is an interesting concept—basically most interior designers would label a space as defined or undefined. If you take all of the objects and remove all the coverings, including carpets, curtains, painted walls, what are you left with? An empty room!