Weather, farming, beauty, accessibility (to shopping areas,
to education, to airports, to power, to water system, to
major highways, postal service), cost, earthquakes/floods?,
level area for building (with no granite shelf that we'd
need to blast, preferably - cuts down on radon too) (and
look at drainage - we don't want basement flooding if we
have a basement), vegetation, water (nearby hill to provide
water pressure?).(MCS)
How near airport/train/helipad?(MCS)
What services do people need?
i.e. hospital, pharmacy, church (what variety?)
Land
House
Size, common space vs. personal space, cooking space,
pantry/food storage area, how expensive?, what design?,
energy efficiency, wiring, plumbing, insulation,
durability.(MCS)
Do we want to put up a smaller, "temporary" house to
begin with and build the big one later?(MCS)
A "temporary" house would take some of the demands off the larger one.
We'd have a place to live when we first get there, which means that the
real house wouldn't have to be built in stages so that we could have a place
to live. Later, we can use the extra house either as another house to use or
as a building for meetings, etc.(emp)
Probably a "temporary" house would be necessary, but it would be very good
for us, psychologically, to not have the unnecessary stress of an unstable
living space weighing on our shoulders.(ejpm)(2/29/96)
Housing considerations:
Size, cooking space,
pantry/food storage area, how expensive?, what design?,
energy efficiency, wiring, plumbing, insulation,
durability.
Design
As for our house: it seems a modular design would be efficient,
maintainable, and scalable. That is, design some basic sub-unit which
provides the living quarters of a subgroup of people, onto which may be
added or combined further living space as the comunity grows in needs, or
acquires children, or what-not.(ejpm)(2/29/96)
Common Space versus Personal Space
personal space is essential. In addition to personal private space, a
"common" private space might be desireable: a place where anyone could go,
flip a sign on the door, and have instant private space.(ejpm)(2/29/96)
common space is also essential, and has some interesting considersations:
different types of common space are good. E.g., a library, some kind of
pandenominational holy space, a noisy-and-aerobic space for indoor
exercise/games (e.g. ping-pong, billiards, aerobics, raquetball, etc.), a
common lounging space where you might sit and have long interesting
discussions...(ejpm)(2/29/96)
Perhaps some of these room-functions can/should be condensed, combined,
collected, so it's harder for the members of the house to be scattered all
over a huge house in tiny groups. when I walk around ET at night and see
no-one in public spaces and all the private rooms with their doors closed,
it's a bit lonely-feeling. Our house needs to enhance our sense of
community. I suspect that loads of architectural and sociopsychological
research could go into the balancing of all these considerations.(ejpm)(2/29/96)
While I agree that having common space is good, Eric is looking at this on
a different scale than I had been. This isn't necesarily a bad thing, but my
image of the house was as a family home, large enough to deal with more people,
but more of a home nonetheless. I had envisioned a large common room with a
kitchen and living area, with bedrooms and a library and den branching off
of this main room. Cost of houseing needs to be looked into, as I don't know
how feasable even this is.(emp)(3/5/96)