Kevin McCloud’s Principles of Home: Making a Place to Live

INTRODUCTION

This book is something of a manifesto for how we can live. It’s a manifesto for a way of living that, in comparison with life of the last 60 years, could be slower, more enjoyable, gentler and altogether less taxing on the resources of this planet. It calls for a new appreciation of the human effort and energy that go into designing and making everything around us, from a spoon to a car, from a house to a city, from a dam to a cathedral. It calls for a re-evaluation of materials and fuel energy, and it calls for a culture in which we share much more of what we have in order that we don’t squander it.

I think we have lost touch with the made world. We have forgotten how difficult and time consuming it is to make something; how hard it is to make an elegant table out of a tree or a spoon out of metals dug out of the ground and refined. Our sensibilities to craftsmanship have been eroded by high-quality machine manufacturing; our tactile sense has been debased by artificial materials pretending to be something that they are not. Our attention, meanwhile, has been diverted by the virtual built worlds that exist inside screens. The landscapes of gaming and avatar worlds, for instance, are not complicated by the inconvenient messiness of the real world. In them, stuff, narratives, buildings and people are both perfect and disposable.

The real world is not perfect and it’s not disposable. In the real world, things and people age and decompose. The real, tangible world is much harder to make, more difficult to maintain and unpleasant to recycle. Which may explain why so many people seek solace in virtual worlds, even if it’s just by watching a soap opera on TV.

My Big Point is that I find the real world, which man has shaped, layered and renewed over thousands of years, more exciting and energizing – despite its grime – than any 3-D movie effect. Watching the Brooklyn Bridge explode in a computer-animated sequence may be awesome, but it is never as awe-inspiring as standing underneath the real thing and wondering how men managed to make it. Awesome is loud but awe is quiet.

I’m aware that my manifesto is motivated by a passionate love for places, buildings and things, not as objects that I want for myself to keep but as examples of human brilliance and creativity, the experience of which I want to share. I’m also frustrated, having worked as a designer and maker, by how little craftsmanship and the sweat of labour are appreciated nowadays. How we all assume that everything around us is made by machines and computers, whereas the truth is that your dinner plate was probably made by just three people in Portugal who spent four months of their lives producing a range for a high-street retailer; and your mobile phone was assembled by one person over a morning of their life.

So I’m writing out of a passionate love for the built environment and a quiet anger over how it is passed over in pursuit of temporary diversions and virtual pleasures when it can offer some of the greatest pleasures of all. The result goes something along the lines of: What do we want? A much better appreciation of the things around us so that we can cherish them, live a more sustainable life and enjoy a richer relationship with our world. When do we want it? Quite soon, please, and quickly. But not too quickly, because it’s all meant to be about lingering to enjoy the moment, isn’t it?

After the Slow Food movement, maybe it’s time for the Slow Living movement. That sounds dull, doesn’t it? In fact, ‘slow’ is the wrong word. It should be the Take Your Time movement (which is really what the Slow Food movement should be called). Take your time to appreciate what’s around you, to explore your environment, to savour experiences and to develop relationships with the objects around you – be they a car, a vase or a town – as examples of human brilliance and human energy. In fact I do have a name for this softer, richer, more fulfilling experience. I call it New Materialism.

You’ll have noticed that I slipped in that slippery word ‘sustainable’ earlier. It doesn’t occur too often in this book because it’s a term already over-used, so tried on by so many people, institutions and companies that it’s stretched and gone all loose and floppy. Sustainability is now a big baggy sack into which people throw all kinds of old ideas, hot air and dodgy activities in order to be able to greenwash their products and feel good. Politicians speak of sustainable economic growth (this is not necessarily ecologically or socially beneficial), which is not the same thing as growing an economy sustainably.

This book doesn’t deal with the fiscal or legal measures that will get us to a new ‘sustainable’ world, wherever that is. It suggests ways we can change ourselves that can make large differences. It won’t beleaguer you with carbon calculators; it doesn’t list fishing quotas or promote campaigns to save polar bears. You can join WWF or Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace, or subscribe to treehugger.com, if you want up-to-the-minute accounts of campaigns and government initiatives. My job here is to persuade you of something you might have overlooked: that your relationships with your possessions, your home and your street are the starting point for a new, more interesting way of experiencing the world and that the end result of that can be a significant reduction in your individual environmental impact.

It can mean more choice and more interesting choice as well. Let me give you an example, a real hot potato of an example. My company, Hab, builds homes in partnership with housing associations – the organizations who provide social housing – and we try to make our developments as ecological, enjoyable and socially progressive as possible. Hab stands for Happiness, Architecture, Beauty. It does not stand for Hummers, Audis and BMWs; which means, in pursuit of a way of life that is resource meagre and low carbon, we encourage residents to reduce their car use. We only provide one and a half parking spaces for each dwelling, which doesn’t go down well with a lot of people. But in exchange for the one privation of one liberty – the right to park an unlimited number of vehicles wherever they want – residents get appealing alternatives including a car club and an intranet advising them of offers to share car journeys. The choice is limited in one way and enlarged in another. The emphasis is shifted from the personal and acquisitive to the communal and shared. That’s what I mean by New Materialism: offering more choice, set in a different framework of choice.

That framework is composed of the ecological, environmental and social goals that many organizations and people are now working towards, from the social workers of Dharavi in India to the government of California.

It comprises ten goals, which reach far beyond governments’ focus on carbon dioxide emissions, extend into every part of our lives and are based on an analysis of how we consume the world’s resources. They’re also very easy to understand: put simply, we have only one planet to support us, yet if everyone on the globe consumed as much and as fast as we do in the West, we’d need three planets to support us. Three planets of aluminium, forests, fish and fuel. But we have only one. There is no Planet B.

One Planet Living sets zero carbon as an objective and the great challenge of reducing our consumption of raw materials as another. It identifies waste, transport and food as problems. And it places mankind at the centre of its approach as not just the enemy of the environment but also part of that environment. We are not simply the problem; we ourselves are the victims. It is our species’ happy survival that is at stake. So we also need to be the solution. Through technological advance, science, culture change and inventiveness, human energy might just solve the environmental and population problems we face.

ONE PLANET LIVING OBJECTIVES

One Planet Living takes ten areas of our lives where we can creatively change what we do and where those decisions aren’t necessarily restrictive but offer opportunities for an increase in the quality of our lives. If you’re put off by the idea of change, I can reassure you that change means incorporating affordable, meaningful strategies into your life, strategies like deciding to buy food seasonally, growing your own, cutting down on your travel, retrofitting your home to be more comfortable and better insulated. The kinds of changes that can be made even more easily if you live in a sustainable and ecological development – like those that my company, Hab, is building. This book, among other things, explores those strategies. This book puts human beings at the centre.

1. Zero carbon

Making buildings more energy efficient and delivering all energy with renewable technologies.

2. Zero waste

Reducing waste, reusing where possible, and ultimately sending zero waste to landfill.

3. Sustainable transport

Encouraging low carbon modes of transport to reduce emissions, reducing the need to travel.

4. Sustainable materials

Using sustainable products that have a low embodied energy.

5. Local & sustainable food

Choosing low impact, local, seasonal and organic diets and reducing food waste.

6. Sustainable water

Using water more efficiently in buildings and in the products we buy; tackling local flooding and water course pollution.

7. Natural habitats & wildlife

Protecting and expanding old habitats and creating new space for wildlife.

8. Cultural heritage

Reviving local identity and wisdom; support for, and participation in, the arts.

9. Equity, fair trade & local economy

Inclusive, empowering workplaces with equitable pay; support for local communities and fair trade.

10. Health & happiness

Encouraging active, sociable, meaningful lives to promote good health and well being.

(Paul Miller)

Finished houses at The Triangle, the first Hab Housing project in Swindon

PRINCIPLE

01

Demand that your home consumes the minimum of energy yet keeps you warm and comfortable. Demand a healthy environment with fresh, clean air. Demand that your building does not just save energy but produces it. Demand that your home has a minimal environmental footprint and uses our precious resources wisely and sparingly.

(Adam Mork/architect, Hein-Troy Architekten/Arcaid)

Sunlight House, Pressbaum, near Vienna – the first carbon-neutral one-family house in Austria

I hope my book will help you value the material world in a different, fuller way. I hope that as you read it, you’ll begin to wonder how much energy it took to make it; how much time, effort and care were spent by the dozens of people who were involved with it. And I hope that, as well as awakening your curiosity, it will give you the tools for minimizing our detrimental impact on the environment and on other human beings: the tools of wasting less (or wasting nothing), saving fuel energy, exploiting what we have to hand, respecting craftsmanship, reusing the resources and made things that we already have, and sharing them more.

Threading throughout the entire book are the 43 Principles of Home, memorable ideas which I’ve collected or formulated over the past 30 years, drawing inspiration from the best of Le Corbusier, Vitruvius, William Morris and Homer Simpson.