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Earth Whispering

Incomparable

27/3/2022

8 Comments

 
“Ouch!” The carpenter bangs his head on my door.
 
“It’s a very low ceiling," he looks up, marginally horrified.
 
Here we go again. I’ve heard it all before. I roll my eyes hither and feel my diaphragm sink with weary. There are many reasons I just don’t like visitors, so many in fact I could stack them all up on top of each other and create a spiky, impenetrable rampart. But the self-appointed design consultancy has got to come close to the top. Sigh. My house is designed for me. Not you. Not him. Not them. Thus it’s perfectly adapted for anyone around the 1 metre 65 mark, which incidentally is above the average for women worldwide, and depending on which country, men too. In fact the only people it’s not very suitable for is tall Northern Europeans. Why this is considered my problem, I’ve no idea.
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Head-banging.
I suffered the same disparagement about my Mud Home in Turkey of course. I love low ceilings. They provide a wonderful womb-like feel. They are cosy and cutesy and engender happy sensations within me. Sure not everyone likes them, but they can build their own house how they want, can’t they?
 
As I stand and view the raised hackles of the sierra through my new windows, my old mud home rises before me like an earthen genie. I remember throwing down the last row of earthbags all those years ago, when someone had asked, “but what will you do if you get a tall boyfriend?”
 
Slapping the butt of the earthbag, I’d furrowed my brow before piercing them with a long sharp stare. “So I’m supposed to design my 6-metre diameter mud house for an ethereal boyfriend who may or may not be tall, and who will presumably spend the greater part of his time in this house horizontal?”
 
The reply sank into the earthbags and reverberated there. The house snickered to itself while the humans shook their heads at the contrary mud-chitect of round.
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Earthbagging for hobbits.
Of course, this is just how it is when you dare to step over the loveless ruler line gouged into the concrete foundation of modern architecture. Reams of useless opinion are rolled out over and over again like a tired old IKEA carpet. As with everything else, there’s a kind of mass brainwashing regarding architecture’s one-size-fits-all conveyor belt standard. Doors have to be 200 centimetres high. Ceilings have to be 210 centimetres. Bedrooms have to be up, and kitchens have to be down. Windows have to be this or that shape. Stairs have to have steps 18 centimetres apart. And so it goes on in tedious, magnolia monotony. I can hardly keep typing I’m so bored.
 
A word from the hobbit realm
The tyranny of the tall in architecture started with Le Corbusier, the French Swiss architect of the 1930s responsible for so many of the unusable urban spaces in the world today. Unusable by the majority I should say, because contrary to the prevailing world view most of us aren’t six feet tall. By a long shot. But lucky you if you happen not to be vertically (or physically) challenged in any way, because with the exception of air travel, the modern world has been designed for you. The rest of us hobbits simply have to suck it up, pull out the ladders, climb this, hang on that, strain here, and risk injury there. That top kitchen cupboard holding the blender is inaccessible. The “simple” act of changing a light bulb is an endeavour involving a rickety kitchen stool, a gymnast’s balance, and a cricked neck. Even a trip to the supermarket leaves many of us giving up on that top shelf entirely.
 
Door handles, sinks and taps, mirrors, windows, car seat belts, staircases, banisters, kitchen cupboards, curtain rails. The whole lot was designed for a six-footer. And most people don’t think anything of this. It’s perfectly acceptable in the World-At-Large mind that most of us have to climb many times a day to reach things. Yet, if someone has to duck just once in a house visit, it’s the end of the frigging world!
 
I like tall people, honest!
Please hear me out though. I’m not tall-ist. I like tall people as much as short people. Gandalf is as good as Frodo. I don’t think all houses should be designed for elves or that we must cancel Le Corbusier and ban him posthumously from Twitter. I expect the chap had a good idea or two lurking somewhere on his bookshelf, even if most of us have to stand on a beer crate to reach it. No, tall is fine. And the exceptionally tall, the basketball players and seven-footers, have their own height-ist crosses to bear. Mirrors at waist height. Sinks by their knees. Backache replaces knee ache.
 
My point is merely that the overriding joy of building your own house is that you make it how you darn well like. It’s the one space especially for you on this entire planet and thus can cater to your every quirk. It saddens me a little though that this doesn’t prevent many of us owner-builders from submitting to the tenets of the bog standard. Or from feeling inadequate in the face of raised eyebrows. Even a mud queen of truculence like myself will spend a night or two worrying before throwing a comment out of the window.
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Strange shapes.
“It’s so much warmer at the top of my house, so I want to put my living room upstairs,” said a friend of mine who is as introvert as myself.
 
“Yes, I’m doing that. It makes no sense how they do it, sitting in what is essentially a cellar.”
 
“But the architect said no one would step in my house if I did!”
 
We both rolled our eyes in unison. “Oh no, that would be a shame now, wouldn’t it?” I said. We fell about laughing. Not everyone wants to entertain guests. Not everyone is a family with 2.4 kids either. Or a couple. Or mobile. In fact not one human on this planet is standard. Most people have simply learned to adapt to a world not designed for them.
 
Individutecture
So folks! Why not reclaim our world from the standardised, creatively impaired, moronically dysfunctional functionality of the 20th century? We can’t buy everything we read in House and Garden wholesale at the expense of our inner yearning, our instinct, and our inspiration. All those beautiful words start with ‘in’. This is what so much of the Western way has got wrong. The inner is as important and rich as the outer, and it holds the keys to why we even came to planet Earth in the first place.
 
These days I start to realise that one of the “reasons” I came to Earth was to make quirky natural living spaces hand-in-hand with the land. It’s not what I was taught to do. It’s not what anyone told me I should do. Some people even say I do it all wrong. Yet I love it. It makes my heart sing.
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I did it my way.
As I jigsaw my bed platform into strange shapes and build a split level kitchen (“What? You can’t do that!”), I feel the life force inside me rushing to my fingers. My heart flutters. My mind whirrs. It feels so good. I see mud walls and curling couches, and I can touch my ceiling by standing on tiptoe. Everyone except children would have to duck to enter my home, because I left the cow entrance in place. Good. Be present if you enter my world my friend. This is the barn of broken rules.
 
Le Corbusier would turn in his grave of course. My olde worlde restoration is everything he wanted to banish from the face of modern design. But I’m afraid that’s just too bad because you are below ground Le Corbusier, and I am still above. My kitchen is up. My bathroom is down. I’m doing my best to eradicate every straight line I can find. Because the idea there can be a right or wrong in home design needs to die a swift, conclusive death.
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Quirks: The first space I ever create after the fundamentals is a yoga space. I spend a good two hours a day in that spot. More than the bathroom or the kitchen.
Incomparable
People wonder what my name means sometimes. Atulya. It was given to me by a wise swami in Tamil Nadu many moons ago. Atulya, as my Indian readers will know, is Sanskrit for "incomparable". Naturally I love it:)) But these ancient Sanskrit names aren't there for our egos. They refer to basic elements of the human being. We are all incomparable. Thus one person’s home creation can never be compared to anyone else’s. This is individutecture. I mean what’s the point of a home if it doesn’t mirror the needs and loves of its unique inhabitants? Book lovers will have reading niches, gamers will have tech basements, dog owners create whole hound-realms, while film lovers enjoy a movie cave. Some people like hot tubs. Others want a cob oven. Some like hammock swinging, others work online and need a decent chair and a table near a plug socket. Some desire big dining tables, others can’t think of anything worse. And so it goes on. And on.
 
The mistaken resale theory
One reason people shy from indulging in their dream design is this absurd myth they’ve picked up somewhere on the road between Homebase and the estate agent regarding resale value. Personally I can’t think of anything worse than designing my home just to “flip” it to a stranger. I’d lose the will to build. But even if that were a consideration…
 
I gaze out of my new windows. The fat orb of the sun moves higher and the clouds bunch hesitantly behind the hills. The skies may be Atlantic but the rays are Mediterranean this spring. My mind returns to that first mud creation back in Turkey. To a mud home on a hill that was generally met with disdain and disbelief.
 
“What will you do if you want to sell your house?” They had asked. “It’s so small!”
 
“Yeah and it’s made of mud. Who wants a mud house?”
 
“Urgh composting toilet. No one would buy it with that!”
 
Hmm. When the fateful day came that I put my mud home up for sale, it didn’t turn out how anyone had thought. The advert garnered 40,000 views in a week. I sold my house that same week to the first beautiful people to visit. And yes incidentally, they were quite small – did I mention that most of the world is? There was no bargaining or messing around. Five other people were waiting to view it that week. Someone was even coming from Germany.
 
You see it doesn’t work the way they’ve told us. We can't copy a lifestyle, or a house, and expect it to work like someone else's. It won't, because there’s only one right way. It's unique. It's heart-filled. And it’s ours.
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Individutecture.
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8 Comments
Mary
31/3/2022 10:35:52 pm

The building codes are devised to meet the average person but the standard deviation is large. And there's a bunch of safety things built in. If you were building a city or suburban house, then too unique presents problems not to mention it probably would be forbidden by zoning. But that isn't what you are doing. What you are doing meets your needs. The smaller an abode, the more it needs to be designed to meet your personal needs. So many people just can't ever get their minds out of what they want to think that what other people want in their own space is different. News flash, there is a huge variation in humans. I think you are doing an amazing job and will be very happy with it. Is it what I want? Maybe or maybe not but it isn't my house, it's yours and it is what you want. And like in Turkey, if the time comes to sell, it may or may not sell quickly but someone will want it.

Reply
Atulya
3/4/2022 03:27:54 pm

Thank you dear Mary! Sorry to say the codes aren't designed for the average person though. They're mostly still based on Le Corbusiers measurements and aimed at 6 footers. Very true about the smaller the abode, the more carefully you need to design it exactly for your needs.

Reply
Fida
1/4/2022 10:03:20 am

Reading your article I laughed out loud and chuckled all the way to the end. One of our farm mountain huts still has a very low door. For almost 60 years, my father hit his head each spring on it. When neighbours saw him with a hick on his bald head they never failed to mention that he finally should make the entrance higher. No, he said each time. It reminds me of taking things not for granted. Unfortunately, I forget that way too often.

Ah, the building codes! I am fighting right now with authorities. Don’t get me started.

And then people’s expectations and worries! ‘What, only one room?” Argh, bed rooms are overrated. “Where will your visitors sleep?” If anyone must visit - In a tent in the yard, or there’s a hotel in the village!

I love the personality of all your buildings!

Reply
Atulya
3/4/2022 03:29:41 pm

He he, so with you on the curious guest room phenomenon. "If anyone must visit - In a tent in the yard, or there’s a hotel in the village!" Exactly. Ha ha.

Reply
Emma
1/4/2022 12:02:10 pm

Oh how the what if blah blah doesn't suit your future boyfriend as if we should design our lives around attracting and keeping a man who doesn't like the way we live... Heteronomative bollocks for one. Women's hopes and dreams less important than the man she may one day be hopeful enough to meet... Don't get me started!?! You build your happy hobbit home and let everyone else sit conforming to uncomfortable norms! Grrrrr

Reply
Atulya
3/4/2022 03:31:58 pm

:))

Reply
MIKE COOK link
5/5/2022 03:38:30 am

I love your independence.

Reply
Atulya
5/5/2022 01:39:12 pm

Thanks Mike!

Reply



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    Atulya K Bingham

    Author, Lone Off-Gridder, and Natural Builder.

    Books: Ayse's Trail (OBBL winner 2014) Mud Ball and Mud Mountain, Dirt Witch.

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