Comments on: Little Boxes

By: Dave Shelton

Dave Shelton — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:26:54 +0000

I am now living on my own for the first time. So far it seems like a really fantastic move. But then I am less than 24 hours in. I think the crucial factor will prove to be living close enough to friends that you can still get a decent amount of social contact with only a little effort and organisation (rather than getting a certain amount from your housemates without any effort at all). I’m reasonably well adapted to a fairly insular style of life anyway, so I should be okay I think. You seem to have plenty going on most of the time and get out and do stuff anyway, so you should be okay too. If you can find a suitable place for an affordable price then you should give it a go I reckon.

By: nunovo

nunovo — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:08:56 +0000

Nice post. I think of my own aspirations for domestic buildings and agree about the sameyness of what’s on offer. It’s depressing to think about moving to a place where the houses are basically cookie-cutter copies of each other, where the neighbours are effectively characterised by the kind of street they live on. A friend made this point last night: you are typecast by the street where you live. Even if you do things differently than your neighbours, they set the tone.

Secondly, an old workshop converted is infinitely more interesting than most houses. The best place I’ve lived were big open rooms, workshops partially converted to domestic quarters but whose raw space meant the layout changed from time to time.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:33:50 +0000

Damnit, the guy with the cat in the advert. He’s the bit of the yuppy dream that came into the future with us.

In Oxford, they’re knocking down the old factories and replacing them with purpose-built apartments full of tiny rooms. It’s a miserable shame.

By: focalplane

focalplane — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:41:54 +0000

You have my empathy completely. The interior design of houses in Britain has never been for the people who may live in them but for the benefit of real estate agents – houses are not valued on the square footage (or meterage) as they are in the States but on the number of box-like bedrooms. If you can fit five box rooms in a house it is, for some inexplicable reason, more valuable than the same house with three reasonable sized bedrooms.

The open plan concept is a complete no-no in the hearts and minds of most people in the business. So they tend to be in areas that have yet to make it on the property ladder. Digbeth seems like a possibility (the Jewellery Quarter was there once but has moved on).

In our recent house search we focused on the open plan concept and, because we were only interested in country living, this meant barns. Our final choice had too many doors, so we took them out – doors get in the way. The urban equivalent would be old factories, warehouses, even chapels. I would guess there is quite a lot of choice out there, to buy or to rent. Good luck!