Mon 26 Feb 2007
That’s what Katherine Salant says in her latest column.
…most new houses today feature a capacious master suite that is often large enough to be characterized as a house within a house, or, as some wags have suggested, a McMansion within a McMansion. The master suite usually includes a sitting area for television viewing or computer work as well as the occasional fireplace and kitchenette. The kids are off in their own bedrooms, often with their own attached bathroom and their own television and computer. After dinner, the family scatters. In many households, a family dinner is a rare event.
In the piece she also quotes Stephanie Brown from U of Michigan, Peter Whybrow from UCLA, and Dan Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence.
There’s certainly something to this. I know in my own case there are many times - like, er, right now - that each person in the household is enganged in their own screen. Occassionally we send each other email or chat messages. Every rare once in a while we’ll yell across the empty living area from whatever room we happen to be in to the other person in another room on the other side of the empty living area.
One Response to “Do Large Houses Isolate Us From Each Other?”
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February 26th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
This is a half-formed thought so take it with a grain of salt. These outsized proportions for homes, with their compartmentalized rather than common areas reminded me of an archive of architectural plans for state buildings in Moscow from the 1930s to the early 50s. Only a totalitarian state would create buildings of such ridiculous proportions so as to minimize the individual. There is no humanity in those buildings.
Katherine Salant’s article about the breakdown of communication in these McMansions reminded me of the complete lack of communication you see in failed totalitarian states. Totalitarian governments and McMansions are about declarations rather than dialogue. Both deplete social capital by isolating the individual.