The Good House [antikvár]

FOREWORD Interest in the individually designed house, especially the house designed to be a part of everyday life, seems in danger of being obliterated by either an interest in the house as an ingredient in a general trend toward consumerism, or as narrow polemic — the house designed, consciously or not, to be apart from life. The tradition of the house as a central part of architectural practice is long and important — and for good reasons, reasons beyond the obvious essential ones of satisfying particular needs in particular settings. The best reason for the designer may be the way in which the design of a particular house leads to more important realities beyond purely formal intentions, simply because one is working with real people on a real site. When one designs a house, the user is not imagined or removed, but rather real and there, a participant at one's shoulder. In the absence of an identifiable user (much architectural design, especially public or development work, is for an unknown or unknowable user), designers tend to convert real-life problems into surrogate formal problems. In the individually designed house, the presence of the