Mark Ahlheim - Healing Homes.GURU

I have read a dozen or so commentaries post COVID on how our homes will have to adapt to the change in lifestyle that our COVID lockdowns brought on. I am not convinced however that all of the proposed innovations in home designs I am reading will indeed become permanent. I mean touchless appliances and faucets and toilets? Really? What happens when they break down? (And they will break down.) Even more energy-efficient homes? Not sure exactly how a more energy efficient home leads to better health, and in fact I have seen quite the opposite as tighter homes with fewer air exchanges lead to increased air pollution from off-gassing synthetics. One trend I do however think is permanent: Greater attention given to indoor air quality especially given that COVID is a contagious, inflammatory, respiratory disease that spreads through the air. The demise of the completely open floor plan is almost certainly a second. As one obvious for instance, both employers and employees have found during the pandemic that working from home works just fine, thank you very much, at least for part of the week. I think the need to accommodate work from home is here to stay . Finally, I find it almost always true that homes are healthiest and make you happiest when they are built simply—an adage that pops up in Ms. Susanka’s work and is the central theme of another of my favorite architectural books: The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough by Sarah Nettleton. From that book’s inside cover jacket, a couple paragraphs that perfectly sum up both the essence of Ms. Nettleton’s work and my building philosophy as expressed through my Quality Standards: A simple home puts us in touch with the simple pleasures of life: the warmth of winter sunlight, the scent of flowers through an open window, a family meal at a communal table. By learning to appreciate the “luxury of enough,” we can delight in the simple abundance of our homes’ most basic pleasures. [Ultimately] Finding your own simple home reflects the wisdom of good choices, the elimination of non-essentials, and the celebration of restraint. Along the way, you’ll realize that it isn’t so much the things you put in your house that bring you joy as it is the way the house allows you to revel in the simple pleasures of life . [Emphasis mine] SIMPLE IS BETTER

Ms. Nettleton goes on in her work to precisely specify what Simple means to her: