Habitus Magazine | Issue 19

In the last issue I alluded to my travels researching a new book on sustainable houses in South-East Asia – using the term ‘sustainable’ to include environmental, social and cultural sustainability.

I have to say, the things I saw, the people I met and the knowledge I gained was enormously rewarding and, at the same time, humbling. Along the way I started to think about the opposition of materiality and materialism, especially in regard to residential architecture. Materiality, of course, is one of the outstanding features of contemporary residential architecture in South-East Asia and New Zealand – meaning a strong interest in the expressiveness of materials, especially local and natural materials, exemplified in this issue by the Pahi House (p.113) and, in an urban context, by the Inner House (p.98).

This makes for a very grounded architecture, rooted in the culture, the climate and in the local habitat. It is, in short, an architecture embodying the genius loci – the spirit of the place in which and for which it is made. It is at once a response to place, and an expression of the people who live here, what they believe and what matters to them.

In other words, the material reality of the immediate context – the natural world, the materials from which the house is built and how those materials are used and shaped – actually serves to take the people who live in that place beyond the material world and closer to what might be called the spiritual world.

So, if this is materiality, then what is materialism in architecture?

Materialism is a preoccupation with material reality for its own sake. For me, it is a two-dimensional view of the world, in contrast to materiality which is threedimensional. Typically, a ‘materialistic’ house will treat materials according to the impression they make, rather than celebrating their inherent qualities and the relationships they generate with the world around us. Materialistic design is a triumph of style over substance.

Style is about making an impression, but good design – like good art – is about creating a rich relationship between the thing and the people who use it. This is certainly true of a house – check out what Jonathan Poh manages to do with a very ordinary HDB apartment in Singapore on p.155. Yet, a house can be a wonderful home and be ‘badly designed’. This is not to say that good and bad design are simply a matter of opinion, but simply to emphasise that the ultimate value of that house has more to do with what we have invested in it than with any prescription for ‘good design’.

And that is simply another way of saying that what we see as ‘good design’ can be very subject to fashion without us even realising it. The trick is to penetrate beneath the surface and make the connection between who we are and the materials we need to sustain that understanding of who we are.

We see the role of Habitus as contributing to a conversation about these issues. With that in mind we would like you to share your thoughts on Habitus with your fellow readers as we launch a reader’s page in our next issue. Write to us at conversation@habitusmagazine.com and tell us what you think

PAUL MCGILLICK | EDITOR