Evolving family home says much about our perception of ourse
Mar 3, 2016 7:56:40 GMT 9.5
Cullyn Of Cerrmor likes this
Post by Willow on Mar 3, 2016 7:56:40 GMT 9.5
Evolving family home says much about our perception of ourselves
The Australian home is not a fixed institution it is a work-in-progress, it is a plastic, pliable, absorbent facility that shifts and shuffles and bends and contorts to our every whim. Consider the evolution of the Australian home and the influences that have shaped its form and that will shape its trajectory. Ladies and gentlemen of the Australian nation I give you the provenance of and the raison d’etre for the reimagined family home.
Our story starts in the 1950s with the suburban homes of Baby Boomers designed and built for returning soldiers and their young wives. Here is the earliest incarnation of the quarter-acre (1,000 sqm) block and the three-bedroom brick veneer. Here is the house that Baby Boomers knew as kids. Four, perhaps five, or even six kids in bunk-beds across two bedrooms, one bathroom with dad working and mum at home, the queen of her suburban domain.
The house is set back so as to facilitate a formal garden through which an s-shaped path leads visitors to the front porch where they might be greeted and ushered into the lounge room. The lounge room was a then modern incarnation of the Victorian and the Edwardian parlour, a place where guests and suitors could be entertained away from the everyday mess of the household.
The parlour was a place where courting couples might take tea and steal a kiss when a chaperone discretely left the room. The 1950s lounge room might have a sofa and a tea-trolley for tea. A chiffonier or a buffet sideboard might showcase a silver tea-service or fine china or Lladro figurines.
The purpose of the good room, be it parlour or lounge room, was to showcase the wealth and prosperity and the social status of the household to visitors. The rest of the house delivered living functionality to the residents of the household.
Now fast forward to today.
The quarter-acre block has contracted to 500 sqm or less. The home has doubled from 120 sqm to 240 sqm. The number of kids per household has contracted to two, with each having their own bedroom. Both parents work. There are two cars in the garage. There is no corner store. Milk and bread are no longer delivered. There are fewer kids in the street. Houses are empty between 8am and 4pm.
Family members come and go making an average of 10 trips per day to/from the house. The house setback has shortened; the formal garden has disappeared or has been reimagined as a stretch of low-maintenance greenery. The garage has migrated from the rear to the front of the house a necessary development to facilitate all that coming and going.
The layout of the house has changed. Four bedrooms two bathrooms plus a selection of living and lounging space. Suitors stay overnight and share both bedroom and bathroom space. The dining room has all but disappeared. The kitchen has merged with the family room and the TV room.
There is an argument to say that the sofa has merged with the bedroom allowing loungers the option of sitting or lounging while watching television. I suspect that the sofa is also merging with the dining room with in-built sideboards and complementary coffee tables to facilitate eating, lounging and television-watching all within the one space.
The parlour’s tea-trolley has been recreated as a low slung coffee table that holds glasses, cups and dinner plates. The back veranda had been reimagined as a terrace which we now call alfresco. It took Greek and Italian migration to awaken Aussie Anglos to the fact that Australian cities have a Mediterranean as opposed to an English climate.
There are no formal meals times: household members graze at the kitchen’s island bench (replete with bar stools for the purpose) or eat on the sofa or on the alfresco terrace. The family Sunday roast is now more likely to be Friday-night eat-out at the local Thai restaurant.
Mum is still very much the queen of her domain but her job description has changed. She is now flight director at Houston’s mission control as she strides between the marble-topped island bench (keeping an eye on the television news, the kids and the family pet) and bespoke off-white minimalist storage systems that were once known as kitchen cupboards.
Guests are no longer ushered into and entertained within a parlour or a good-room/loungeroom. They are ushered into the very bosom of the home, into the kitchen-cum-family room. There is still the need to showcase the wealth, prosperity and social status of the household but it is done in different ways. Now that guests pass through the house on their way to the kitchen-alfresco-entertaining space the bedrooms need to be glimpse-perfect. This has led to a pillow arms race involving multiple pillows, cushions bollards and throws heaped upon the marital bed so as to suggest eternal order and genteel prosperity through sumptuousness.
In the era following women returning to work, say 1970 to 1990, household wealth was demonstrated through conspicuous consumption. Clutter with knick-knacks showcasing travels, interests, achievements, investments and social standing littered the family home. But all this consumption clutter soon led to a backlash. Wealth and prosperity is no longer showcased through acquisition it is showcased through minimalism. What has cachet today is being so wealthy and so successful that household stuff can be hidden via bespoke storage.
The more engineered the storage the richer the more successful the household. Soft-closing drawers anyone? How about a pullout pantry? If guests are entertained around an island bench — in an oh-so-cosmopolitan Mediterranean way — then the bench top should be waterfall style in dramatic Calacatta marble. And the central basin should be German in engineering and feature a tall gooseneck tap. Tap ware is the new silverware in the modern family home. The purpose of the tap ware is the precisely the same as the purpose of the silver tea-service served in a Victorian parlour: it implies wealth and prosperity.
Busy parents not-quite-on-top-of-things live in cluttered houses. Busy successful parents live in clean and ordered houses where the pillows are perfect and the tap ware glistens. Bench tops are clean and cleared because the actual cooking is done in a butler’s pantry which leads off the kitchen. In the Victorian era guests were restricted to the parlour. Now that guests are led through the house it is necessary for the real living to take place behind the closed doors of a butler’s pantry.
The house of the future will continue to merge the functionality of eating, sleeping and lounging. There will be increased demand for private space and a range of public spaces both indoors and outdoors. And there will be continued demand for ways of showcasing wealth, prosperity and social status which for isolated Australians implies being well-travelled or cosmopolitan in taste and lifestyle. Quinoa anyone? How about some dukkah? I have some in my pull-out-pantry which features the latest in Danish soft-closing design mechanisms.
The evolving family home says so much about who we are, the lifestyles we lead and how we would like to be perceived.
Bernard Salt heads KPMG Demographics and is an adjunct professor at Curtin University Business School; www.bernardsalt.com.au
The Australian home is not a fixed institution it is a work-in-progress, it is a plastic, pliable, absorbent facility that shifts and shuffles and bends and contorts to our every whim. Consider the evolution of the Australian home and the influences that have shaped its form and that will shape its trajectory. Ladies and gentlemen of the Australian nation I give you the provenance of and the raison d’etre for the reimagined family home.
Our story starts in the 1950s with the suburban homes of Baby Boomers designed and built for returning soldiers and their young wives. Here is the earliest incarnation of the quarter-acre (1,000 sqm) block and the three-bedroom brick veneer. Here is the house that Baby Boomers knew as kids. Four, perhaps five, or even six kids in bunk-beds across two bedrooms, one bathroom with dad working and mum at home, the queen of her suburban domain.
The house is set back so as to facilitate a formal garden through which an s-shaped path leads visitors to the front porch where they might be greeted and ushered into the lounge room. The lounge room was a then modern incarnation of the Victorian and the Edwardian parlour, a place where guests and suitors could be entertained away from the everyday mess of the household.
The parlour was a place where courting couples might take tea and steal a kiss when a chaperone discretely left the room. The 1950s lounge room might have a sofa and a tea-trolley for tea. A chiffonier or a buffet sideboard might showcase a silver tea-service or fine china or Lladro figurines.
The purpose of the good room, be it parlour or lounge room, was to showcase the wealth and prosperity and the social status of the household to visitors. The rest of the house delivered living functionality to the residents of the household.
Now fast forward to today.
The quarter-acre block has contracted to 500 sqm or less. The home has doubled from 120 sqm to 240 sqm. The number of kids per household has contracted to two, with each having their own bedroom. Both parents work. There are two cars in the garage. There is no corner store. Milk and bread are no longer delivered. There are fewer kids in the street. Houses are empty between 8am and 4pm.
Family members come and go making an average of 10 trips per day to/from the house. The house setback has shortened; the formal garden has disappeared or has been reimagined as a stretch of low-maintenance greenery. The garage has migrated from the rear to the front of the house a necessary development to facilitate all that coming and going.
The layout of the house has changed. Four bedrooms two bathrooms plus a selection of living and lounging space. Suitors stay overnight and share both bedroom and bathroom space. The dining room has all but disappeared. The kitchen has merged with the family room and the TV room.
There is an argument to say that the sofa has merged with the bedroom allowing loungers the option of sitting or lounging while watching television. I suspect that the sofa is also merging with the dining room with in-built sideboards and complementary coffee tables to facilitate eating, lounging and television-watching all within the one space.
The parlour’s tea-trolley has been recreated as a low slung coffee table that holds glasses, cups and dinner plates. The back veranda had been reimagined as a terrace which we now call alfresco. It took Greek and Italian migration to awaken Aussie Anglos to the fact that Australian cities have a Mediterranean as opposed to an English climate.
There are no formal meals times: household members graze at the kitchen’s island bench (replete with bar stools for the purpose) or eat on the sofa or on the alfresco terrace. The family Sunday roast is now more likely to be Friday-night eat-out at the local Thai restaurant.
Mum is still very much the queen of her domain but her job description has changed. She is now flight director at Houston’s mission control as she strides between the marble-topped island bench (keeping an eye on the television news, the kids and the family pet) and bespoke off-white minimalist storage systems that were once known as kitchen cupboards.
Guests are no longer ushered into and entertained within a parlour or a good-room/loungeroom. They are ushered into the very bosom of the home, into the kitchen-cum-family room. There is still the need to showcase the wealth, prosperity and social status of the household but it is done in different ways. Now that guests pass through the house on their way to the kitchen-alfresco-entertaining space the bedrooms need to be glimpse-perfect. This has led to a pillow arms race involving multiple pillows, cushions bollards and throws heaped upon the marital bed so as to suggest eternal order and genteel prosperity through sumptuousness.
In the era following women returning to work, say 1970 to 1990, household wealth was demonstrated through conspicuous consumption. Clutter with knick-knacks showcasing travels, interests, achievements, investments and social standing littered the family home. But all this consumption clutter soon led to a backlash. Wealth and prosperity is no longer showcased through acquisition it is showcased through minimalism. What has cachet today is being so wealthy and so successful that household stuff can be hidden via bespoke storage.
The more engineered the storage the richer the more successful the household. Soft-closing drawers anyone? How about a pullout pantry? If guests are entertained around an island bench — in an oh-so-cosmopolitan Mediterranean way — then the bench top should be waterfall style in dramatic Calacatta marble. And the central basin should be German in engineering and feature a tall gooseneck tap. Tap ware is the new silverware in the modern family home. The purpose of the tap ware is the precisely the same as the purpose of the silver tea-service served in a Victorian parlour: it implies wealth and prosperity.
Busy parents not-quite-on-top-of-things live in cluttered houses. Busy successful parents live in clean and ordered houses where the pillows are perfect and the tap ware glistens. Bench tops are clean and cleared because the actual cooking is done in a butler’s pantry which leads off the kitchen. In the Victorian era guests were restricted to the parlour. Now that guests are led through the house it is necessary for the real living to take place behind the closed doors of a butler’s pantry.
The house of the future will continue to merge the functionality of eating, sleeping and lounging. There will be increased demand for private space and a range of public spaces both indoors and outdoors. And there will be continued demand for ways of showcasing wealth, prosperity and social status which for isolated Australians implies being well-travelled or cosmopolitan in taste and lifestyle. Quinoa anyone? How about some dukkah? I have some in my pull-out-pantry which features the latest in Danish soft-closing design mechanisms.
The evolving family home says so much about who we are, the lifestyles we lead and how we would like to be perceived.
Bernard Salt heads KPMG Demographics and is an adjunct professor at Curtin University Business School; www.bernardsalt.com.au