Teroforma

I go back and forth on the idea of prefab housing. On the one hand, it seems inevitable that as more people jockey for less materials, their use in construction will become more tightly regulated. In that same vein, it makes sense to me to be out in front of that regulation – if it is going to be useful, then work to make it beautiful ahead of time. On the other hand, I find most prefab housing to be completely soul-less – the worst type of minimalism that considers warmth and coziness to be expendable excesses. So it was really nice to discover NORD’s Shingle House in Dungeness. While certainly not a statement in excess, The Shingle House is warm and human in both its scale and use of materials. The spareness perfectly reflects the coastal English desert-scape of Dungeness on the Kentish coast. Perhaps then it is the suitability of the minimalist design to a comparatively minimal landscape that makes the concept less jarring? Wonder what Hemingway would have thought.