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NOMADICS

                                                March 29, 2012

Brand essentially sings the praises of home
ownership, asserting that you need some people
living in a building who actually own it in
order for it to really adapt.

Consider the way that home-ownership tends to fix
aspects of the owners life in-place: suddenly you're
a slave to a mortgage, suddenly the idea of moving
goes from a big hassle to something nearly unthinkable.

   If the goal is flexibility,
   it's a flexibility of life
   we're after, not a flexibility
   for buildings.

   The lower commitment of being
   a renter has it's advantages.        At least in theory:

                                        The need to deal with
                                        leases and credit checks
                                        make the renters life less
                                        flexible than it might be.

There might be something to say
about the many and various
strategies of renters:

What changes can you get away with
without getting thrown out?

What changes are worth doing,
considering the uncertain length            In our last apartment,
of tenancy?                                 I toyed with the idea
                                            of cutting new entrances
                                            to the attic concealed
   I tend to subdivide the                  inside of closets, and
   volume of high                           perhaps partially finishing
   ceilinged Victorians                     the attic to use as secret
   with plywood and 2x4                     storage rooms.
   lofts that can be
   unbolted and                                 Weirdly enough, I suspect
   transported elsewhere.                       we could've gotten away
                                                with that... but the attic
   The Whole Earth Catalog                      was so full of debris from
   called this "nomadics"                       a sloppy re-roofing job
   at one point:                                that I never wanted to
                                                get into it.
   Furniture designed to
   slot together, breakdown,
   move, and slot together
   elsewhere.

      (These days, it's
       hard to buy furniture
       that *isn't* like that.)




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