Magazine architecture

That was one of the architectural projects that stirred me to go into academia.

It was nearly 20 years ago. I was in practice for myself at the time, so I took any project I can get.

It was a house addition for a client who pretty much wanted everything. So it was an enormous addition. As I recall, the project doubled the square footage of the house, which was already large.

For example, not only did the kitchen get entirely enlarged, they wanted an outdoor kitchen as well -- next to the customized new pool.

The project took shape over many months and many meetings; endless meetings.

At some point during the process, it dawned on me that they were not going to use many of the rooms they were building.

The ever-so-carefully designed rooms and spaces -- fretted over again and again -- were more for display than for use.

It was magazine architecture.

Magazine architecture is driven by something like the same drives that make Playboy Magazine popular:

Pictures of idealized objects that never actually exist in real-life. And if those objects did exist in real-life, to keep them existing in just that way would so warp your sense of what life is about that, well, that it would not be a life worth living.

Magazine architecture:

Shiny expensive new things in polished surfaces in extraordinary rooms arranged ever so nicely. But no one actually inhabits those rooms.

No one ever inhabits those rooms.

Oh for a dwelling that is inhabited!

That was the beginning of my exit out of architectural practice.

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John 14.2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.