House design reflects our vision and helps shape who we become

By David McElroy · March 1, 2018

As I drove through an upscale suburban Birmingham neighborhood Thursday afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking how much I hated the houses — and how stifling I found the oppressive designs.

I laughed at myself, though, because I knew I was one of the very few people in town who would think such a thing. This neighborhood is popular and desirable. The irony was that I was driving to a $250,000 home which my own realty clients were buying in just a few minutes.

The house is exactly what the couple wanted, particularly the wife. She loves a stately home that’s very traditional two-story in red brick — and this neighborhood has variations of that in abundance. And I was about to be paid a commission for helping them to find and buy a house which they loved — and which I would have considered oppressive and stifling.

Design matters to me. Beauty matters to me. Graceful use of space and light and angles makes my heart soar and gives me peace. (The picture above is a random example of such an interior.) But to the people who love these traditional brick homes — which look as though they’re cold copies of copies of copies to me — my beautiful design represents something frightening.

I can usually tell how well my intellectual and emotional spirit would mesh with a place based on the sort of design which dominates the area. One of the ways I’ve known for years that Birmingham will probably always be too conservative for me — speaking in the intellectual sense, not the political sense — is the dominant feel of its most popular neighborhoods.

It’s very rare to find a local neighborhood where I would feel truly at home. (Mount Laurel is the only one that comes to mind — and that seems to attract oddballs like me who happen to have money.) The neighborhoods that are truly popular — the ones where I show clients and am happy to collect commissions — are filled with bad copies of houses that have been built over and over again.

Don’t misunderstand. I don’t try to steer real estate clients to houses that fit my own intellectual and emotional understanding. I help them buy what they want. But I don’t envy the homes they are proud to call their own when we’re finished.

I know it sounds a bit odd, but cities can have personalities. It’s almost as though the collective spirits of the people who live there form an organism that has a spirit and mind of its own. The people whose spirits collectively form Birmingham don’t reflect who I am, even though I’ll always feel a connection to the place. Unless I go to “weird and artsy” parts of town, the overall spirit is far from who I am.

But I walk a fine line between conservative in lifestyle and liberal in intellect and emotional orientation. It’s hard to find where I fit. It’s hard to find someone who’s more conservative in orientation and values than I am, but something in my mind rejected a conservative intellectual orientation decades ago — and nothing represented my change in that respect as much as my preferences in architecture.

At one time, the houses of these very traditional neighborhoods would have been my preference, too. That’s what I grew up liking. It wasn’t until I was about 30 years old that some switch flipped in my mind. I started changing. I suddenly “got” a lot of incredible modern design that had never clicked for me. Ever since then, I have been like a fish out of water — eager to find a place for myself to fit.

Our homes and neighborhoods don’t just reflect who we are. They also shape who we are. In ways which I can’t understand — but which I’ve seen over and over again — our built environments shape what we value and what we become. If we’re living and working in poorly designed places — places which don’t feed something in our hearts and minds — we end up adopting the values that created those designs. (I’m not going to get into this deeply at the moment, but if you doubt this, think about the correlation between different types of theology and different design philosophies that come with them. The spartan Calvinist mindset creates very different church spaces than the very different traditional Catholic churches, for instance.)

Living in beautiful organic design (such as that represented by the best work of the late architect Frank Lloyd Wright) leads to a very different mindset than the one produced by living in cookie-cutter houses that might as well be made out of Legos.

I couldn’t make a living selling houses in Birmingham of the sort I prefer. This is a very traditional city that likes its architecture to look a certain way. (Even the neighborhood covenants for the place where I sold a house today requires nothing but traditional design.) It’s not what I want. It’s not what I need. But I don’t know where I need to be.

I appreciate my real estate clients. They’re how I hope to make my living, at least for awhile. But I feel a bit like a veggie-hating, steak-loving guy who’s working in a very popular vegetarian restaurant. I know what everybody else likes — but I need to eat elsewhere.

I love beautiful organic design and I hope to build something amazing for my own family one day. (I actually found the perfect architect for me years ago who was with a firm in Minneapolis, and he said he could build anywhere in the country.)

I’m eager to have a home that would be an intellectual, spiritual and emotional refuge for a happy and loving family. The kind of home you choose for such a family can go a long way toward laying the foundation for what kind of group they’re going to become. I hope I find the right woman to understand this in the way that I do — because I just can’t take a permanent life in one of the cookie-cutter homes which are so popular in modern American suburbia.

But in the meantime, I’ll be happy to sell you one of those if you want it in Birmingham.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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