The Human Element

I love reading the real estate ads in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on week-ends, especially those with photos. After so many years as a real estate junkie, I have developed a clear sense of what sings to me and what does not. I am not a big fan of marble everywhere, especially not marble with three word names. I am not a big fan of gilding. I like old floors made of oak and heart pine and chestnut. I like light. The trait I appreciate the most in real estate, however, is human scale.

When I travel to other cities I enjoy the “busman’s holiday” experience of stopping in front of residential real estate brokerages to see what’s on offer. And at brokerage conferences, my favorite activity is always touring properties in whatever location. Recently, a conference took me to Los Angeles where I was once again astonished by the grandiosity of so many of the homes. Did Candy Spelling really need a 3000-square foot-closet? That’s bigger than the apartment in which I happily raised two children! What exactly do you DO with 50,000, or 60,000 or 75,000 square feet? Certainly there is no sense of human scale. The proportions make any sense of coziness almost impossible, as, especially with the mega-mansions of today, do the materials. Stone floors don’t encourage a feeling of intimacy, nor does gilding, both of which are much in evidence in the new huge homes which have sprouted like oversized mushrooms all over America.

The churches of the old world, like its palaces, were specifically built to create awe; the power of God, or the king, or the nobility, were clearly expressed in architecture which was designed to make the lay person feel insignificant. Could that be the case today as well? Am I meant to feel intimidated by the vastness of these endless palaces with pool rooms and screening rooms and beauty salons? Mainly I feel baffled, and a little sick to my stomach at the conspicuous waste of it all: so much stone, so much sheetrock, so much electricity, so much dusting and vacuuming. These houses, whatever their purpose, summon neither a sense of place nor a sense of personal space. 

I am similarly, although contrarily, fascinated by the micro-studio movement which Mayor Bloomberg proposed we borrow from Tokyo. While I know little about the sleeping conditions of our earliest ancestors on the plains of Africa, I personally find little appeal in the notion of going to bed each night feeling like a soldier ant or a slice of prosciutto. Of course, what these two solutions share is money.

The enormous house proclaims economic superiority. It exceeds by some exponential order of magnitude the owner’s actual requirements, serving instead as a palpable, visible marker of financial success. At the other end of the spectrum, the Japanese micro-studio is an acknowledgement of personal insignificance. With room only to sleep and to store a few possessions, the residence allows for few needs other than working and sleeping (eating presumably being done elsewhere.) Neither extreme encourages intimate interaction, and I would argue that each, in its own way, denies basic human longings to be both unfettered and relational. I for one am grateful to be living and transacting somewhere in the middle.