I was fortunate to visit Home Delivery, a new exhibit on pre-fabricated housing now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York today. It is an engaging history of pre-fab along with a display of five new prototype dwellings that have been built in a parking lot adjacent to MoMA.
Attempts at pre-fabricated housing have been made since the Industrial Revolution with a particularly active period in the early 20th century. Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Edison, Walter Gropius, Moshe Safdie and a host of others – some well known, others not – have tried to use industrial methods to make home construction faster and cheaper. They’ve tried metal, concrete, wood, container cars, trash – an amazing panoply of materials.
But pre-fab housing has never generated great enthusiasm from the public. Perhaps we all want to see our homes as individual even though many of us live in condominium buildings, sub-divisions, planned communities, and other configurations where there is more similar than different between our dwellings and those of our neighbors.
There’s a real divide between those designers who want to see what new materials and processes they can use to bring efficiency to what we think of as a home and those who want to use new materials and processes to reshape what we think of as a home. Edison’s poured concrete houses, some of which can still be found in Union, New Jersey, don’t look pre-fabricated at all while Moshe Safdie’s Habitat ’67 is obviously a construction of identical concrete cubes.
The prototypes displayed outside are particularly fun because you can go inside most of them.
There is the Cellophane House – a steel structure with a clear skin that absorbs solar energy. It’s a three-story, two-bedroom, two-bathroom Modernist dream. There are two balconies and a roof deck. And it’s all hyper-efficient. Next to it is a one-room “shotgun” house designed for post-Katrina housing in New Orleans. It is made of plywood and features gingerbread details reminiscent of the original shotgun houses in the Big Easy. There’s a metal cube that puts a full range of amenities into a space under 80 square meters (just don’t be tall or like to walk around much). Its designer intends this unit for young single people without a lot of possessions.
All of the new prototypes emphasize environmental consciousness and control of the accumulation of physical possessions. It’s a IKEA mentality of simplicity, function, and lack of clutter. I don’t think that these designs will gain great acceptance in the U.S. either except perhaps in areas where they are a superior alternative to a FEMA trailer. We love our space – the average American home has doubled in size over the past 25 or so years – and we love our stuff. There are parts of the world, however, where any of these units would be a vast improvement over what people are living in now. The ingenuity, the innovation with materials and construction, and the commitment to sustainability, however, are all adaptable to homes even Americans could love.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Inflation vs. Imagination
While it is only in the past few months that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has focused on inflation as a threat to our economic well being, it has been obvious for several years that it has been having a detrimental effect on American families. The consumer price index, the most broadly referenced statistic on inflation, has looked benign for a long, long time but the CPI doesn’t take into account costs like healthcare and higher education – both of which have been skyrocketing for more than a decade.
Ask the wage earners you know what they are concerned about and you’ll likely hear about health care costs, saving for retirement (which has a large health care component), and putting the kids through college. These fundamentals have been getting more and more expensive – and increasingly out of reach for even middle-class families. Layer that with the recent inflation in food and energy costs (likely to last five to ten years according to the experts I speak with) and you can see the storm clouds darkening.
Ask those same wage earners if they would trade our system for the European model with higher taxes but universal health care, college tuition, and generous government pension programs and they’ll likely shriek and label you a Commie sympathizer. Better to keep the money for yourself so that your fate is in your own hands.
But of course most people don’t save enough to take care of any of these needs. College is increasingly funded through loans (that’s debt, kids) and the national savings rate is at just about zero.
There are debates about how the savings rate is calculated but, in any event, basic building blocks of economic mobility are becoming less and less attainable for more and more people. The amount of debt being carried by the average family increasing. Half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by unexpected medical expenses.
The underlying issue that I see is that it is increasingly difficult for one to live what I call a “rich poor” life. A rich poor life is what your old English and Math teachers likely lived. They didn’t earn a ton of money but they could afford a house, healthcare came from the job and the deductions weren’t overly burdensome, and retirement was covered through a traditional pension plan. They managed to live interesting lives – traveled, went to the symphony, ate out now and again -- and could do it rather frugally.
That is increasingly difficult to do. First, as mentioned above some of the basics for long-term economic stability are harder to attain. Second, with the expansion of easy credit it has been easy for everything to go upscale. That quaint out of the way inn is now likely a quaint out of the way inn and spa with rooms at $500 a night rather than $50; the little Italian joint is now a fancy trattoria where the pasta is $20 a plate. A cup of coffee has morphed into a $4 latte.
It was in this context that I read about Berea College in today’s New York Times. This college in Kentucky charges no tuition, requires that its students work on campus, and handles almost as many students as prestigious Amherst College. Best of all, those graduates enter the world with no student loans to pay back. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all graduates were as fortunate.
Wouldn’t it be a grand goal to set for ourselves to have every graduate from an accredited college or university leave campus with no financial debt to the institution? Imagine if instead of starting one's working life able to save and invest rather than pay back?
Berea is interesting because they have dared to think differently about how – and why – they provide an education. It is a pretty bare bones place but that is how they make their model work. Imagine if we could spread that imagination both to other educational institutions and also to other facets of our lives.
Imagine if we, as a society, put $2,000 into an interest-bearing retirement account for each child born in the U.S. The principal could be automatically repaid when the child turns 18 but the accrued interest could be the beginning of a retirement fund. Eighteen years of compounded interest can be significant.
Imagine if we thought about optimizing outcomes rather than spending so much time trying to ratify processes through ideological filters that worry about public vs. private.
Imagine.
Ask the wage earners you know what they are concerned about and you’ll likely hear about health care costs, saving for retirement (which has a large health care component), and putting the kids through college. These fundamentals have been getting more and more expensive – and increasingly out of reach for even middle-class families. Layer that with the recent inflation in food and energy costs (likely to last five to ten years according to the experts I speak with) and you can see the storm clouds darkening.
Ask those same wage earners if they would trade our system for the European model with higher taxes but universal health care, college tuition, and generous government pension programs and they’ll likely shriek and label you a Commie sympathizer. Better to keep the money for yourself so that your fate is in your own hands.
But of course most people don’t save enough to take care of any of these needs. College is increasingly funded through loans (that’s debt, kids) and the national savings rate is at just about zero.
“US consumers’ savings rates are among the lowest in the OECD. They always have
been, but the wedge has widened in recent years. Back in the early 1990s, US
consumers saved about 7% of their disposable income. By the latter 1990s that
was down to the 4% level, and in the new millennium the rate sank to 2%. This
dropped further – close to zero – as booming growth continued. Americans spent
nearly all that they earned in the 2005-07 period.”
There are debates about how the savings rate is calculated but, in any event, basic building blocks of economic mobility are becoming less and less attainable for more and more people. The amount of debt being carried by the average family increasing. Half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by unexpected medical expenses.
The underlying issue that I see is that it is increasingly difficult for one to live what I call a “rich poor” life. A rich poor life is what your old English and Math teachers likely lived. They didn’t earn a ton of money but they could afford a house, healthcare came from the job and the deductions weren’t overly burdensome, and retirement was covered through a traditional pension plan. They managed to live interesting lives – traveled, went to the symphony, ate out now and again -- and could do it rather frugally.
That is increasingly difficult to do. First, as mentioned above some of the basics for long-term economic stability are harder to attain. Second, with the expansion of easy credit it has been easy for everything to go upscale. That quaint out of the way inn is now likely a quaint out of the way inn and spa with rooms at $500 a night rather than $50; the little Italian joint is now a fancy trattoria where the pasta is $20 a plate. A cup of coffee has morphed into a $4 latte.
It was in this context that I read about Berea College in today’s New York Times. This college in Kentucky charges no tuition, requires that its students work on campus, and handles almost as many students as prestigious Amherst College. Best of all, those graduates enter the world with no student loans to pay back. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all graduates were as fortunate.
Wouldn’t it be a grand goal to set for ourselves to have every graduate from an accredited college or university leave campus with no financial debt to the institution? Imagine if instead of starting one's working life able to save and invest rather than pay back?
Berea is interesting because they have dared to think differently about how – and why – they provide an education. It is a pretty bare bones place but that is how they make their model work. Imagine if we could spread that imagination both to other educational institutions and also to other facets of our lives.
Imagine if we, as a society, put $2,000 into an interest-bearing retirement account for each child born in the U.S. The principal could be automatically repaid when the child turns 18 but the accrued interest could be the beginning of a retirement fund. Eighteen years of compounded interest can be significant.
Imagine if we thought about optimizing outcomes rather than spending so much time trying to ratify processes through ideological filters that worry about public vs. private.
Imagine.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Muffin Man
Perhaps it is because the economic news is just too depressing -- Fannie, Freddy, and Indy all melting down, inflation is up -- that I've been musing about muffins. Simple, sweet, escape.
A great muffin is wonderful. It's a small indulgence that induces less guilt than cookies or cake. It only costs a couple of bucks (well, getting closer to $3.00 every day) and it is beautifully self-contained. The tactile experience of bottom and top are generally just different enough to make a single muffin feel like a double treat. The top is a bit crunchier and a little less dense; the bottom moister and more compact.
I hold that blueberry is the muffin flavor by which one can best judge a muffin maker. Blueberry may not be your muffin of choice, but like vanilla ice cream it has the privilege of being quintessential. You may prefer corn, cappuccino, or cinnamon but we need a single variety to stand as the yardstick. Blueberry muffins make the grade because they require the baker to balance fruit and dough and there's no hiding behind icing or other gimmicks (and, blogger's prerogative, they are my muffin of choice!).
My favorite blueberry muffins feature whole berries and plenty of them. The muffin should be moist enough not to crumble at the touch. The fruit should be distributed throughout the muffin so that there is some in every bite -- no cheating by dropping berries on top like baubles on an Easter bonnet. New York coffee shops used to feature berries that had been minced and mixed throughout the batter. These weren't bad, especially when grilled, but they can't stand up to a whole berry creation.
Most important, the muffin should be no sweeter than the berries themselves so that the flavor of the fruit dominates. The batter is like a character actor: important, but charged with completing the scene without stealing it. The muffin needn't be large. Too many muffin makers have given in to the urge to supersize their treats and often that means spreading the expensive ingredients -- the fruit -- too thin. About the size of a baseball seems right to me (also making the muffin a potent weapon in a food fight:)).
Another common mistake is to try to compensate for less fruit with more sugar. If your teeth hurt when you bit into the muffin, you know that there has been too heavy a hand with the sweetners.
Too much sweetness is something I find common at places like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts where muffins are often delivered flash frozen to the local establishment; sweetners must keep the muffins feeling fresh long after staleness should have crept in. The compromises made in the name of cost control and supply chain efficiency result in muffins that feel artificial in the mouth. I'm sure that there are other multi-syllabic enhancements that add to the plasticity of these products. That's it these are products, muffin-like products in the way that American cheese slices are "cheese food product," not cheese. The benefits accrue to my waistline as I can't bear to eat muffins at either establishment any more.
Au Bon Pain seems to be able to balance scale with authenticity in its blueberry muffins better than most of the other chains. Their muffins are somewhat inconsistent but I did have a wonderfully fruity one yesterday.
Best of all are homemade muffins or those from stand-alone shops that bake their own. I had a wonderful blueberry corn muffin at a little roadside bakeshop in Wellfleet last weekend that was everything that a muffin should be. As in so many things, it is artisan craft and pride that bring out the best in food. Time and care create great rewards in both the baking and the eating. Ah, I think I hear the oven calling me now...
A great muffin is wonderful. It's a small indulgence that induces less guilt than cookies or cake. It only costs a couple of bucks (well, getting closer to $3.00 every day) and it is beautifully self-contained. The tactile experience of bottom and top are generally just different enough to make a single muffin feel like a double treat. The top is a bit crunchier and a little less dense; the bottom moister and more compact.
I hold that blueberry is the muffin flavor by which one can best judge a muffin maker. Blueberry may not be your muffin of choice, but like vanilla ice cream it has the privilege of being quintessential. You may prefer corn, cappuccino, or cinnamon but we need a single variety to stand as the yardstick. Blueberry muffins make the grade because they require the baker to balance fruit and dough and there's no hiding behind icing or other gimmicks (and, blogger's prerogative, they are my muffin of choice!).
My favorite blueberry muffins feature whole berries and plenty of them. The muffin should be moist enough not to crumble at the touch. The fruit should be distributed throughout the muffin so that there is some in every bite -- no cheating by dropping berries on top like baubles on an Easter bonnet. New York coffee shops used to feature berries that had been minced and mixed throughout the batter. These weren't bad, especially when grilled, but they can't stand up to a whole berry creation.
Most important, the muffin should be no sweeter than the berries themselves so that the flavor of the fruit dominates. The batter is like a character actor: important, but charged with completing the scene without stealing it. The muffin needn't be large. Too many muffin makers have given in to the urge to supersize their treats and often that means spreading the expensive ingredients -- the fruit -- too thin. About the size of a baseball seems right to me (also making the muffin a potent weapon in a food fight:)).
Another common mistake is to try to compensate for less fruit with more sugar. If your teeth hurt when you bit into the muffin, you know that there has been too heavy a hand with the sweetners.
Too much sweetness is something I find common at places like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts where muffins are often delivered flash frozen to the local establishment; sweetners must keep the muffins feeling fresh long after staleness should have crept in. The compromises made in the name of cost control and supply chain efficiency result in muffins that feel artificial in the mouth. I'm sure that there are other multi-syllabic enhancements that add to the plasticity of these products. That's it these are products, muffin-like products in the way that American cheese slices are "cheese food product," not cheese. The benefits accrue to my waistline as I can't bear to eat muffins at either establishment any more.
Au Bon Pain seems to be able to balance scale with authenticity in its blueberry muffins better than most of the other chains. Their muffins are somewhat inconsistent but I did have a wonderfully fruity one yesterday.
Best of all are homemade muffins or those from stand-alone shops that bake their own. I had a wonderful blueberry corn muffin at a little roadside bakeshop in Wellfleet last weekend that was everything that a muffin should be. As in so many things, it is artisan craft and pride that bring out the best in food. Time and care create great rewards in both the baking and the eating. Ah, I think I hear the oven calling me now...
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Sometimes It's Painfully Clear
We have a houseful on the Cape each Fourth of July. This time it was seven adults and five kids spread across three small cottages. The parade, the pancake breakfast, the fireworks were all delightful.
It was a rainy weekend here in the northeast and that means that movies are often substituted for the beach. There was debate across the ages about what to see (the crowd ranged from four to 73 years old). When we had narrowed it down to Wall-E, The Golden Boys, and some other I've now forgotten, we had to decide when to go.
That's when the differences in the generations became oh-so apparent. My mother-in-law asked if anyone had bought a paper, my wife went looking for a phone, and my nephew asked if I'd fire up the laptop.
There, unprompted, were three generations expressing their preferences for retreiving information. The reactions were instantaneous; the arc from printed page to wireless Internet connection hung like a rainbow above us.
The phone was the fastest, the laptop most information-rich, and the newspaper the most diverting (the story about Mabel's prize hydrangea bushes would otherwise never have been seen). As much as I prize efficiency and the ability to find reviews, actors' bios, and the director's previous credits, I have to say that I was sorry that no one had bought a paper. I missed the excuse to page through The Cape Codder marveling at the price of real estate, checking the tides, and reading about hydrangea bushes.
We did get to the movies -- The Golden Boys was the choice as it had been filmed on the Cape. It was awful. I guess that's one more point for the information-rich digital connection.
It was a rainy weekend here in the northeast and that means that movies are often substituted for the beach. There was debate across the ages about what to see (the crowd ranged from four to 73 years old). When we had narrowed it down to Wall-E, The Golden Boys, and some other I've now forgotten, we had to decide when to go.
That's when the differences in the generations became oh-so apparent. My mother-in-law asked if anyone had bought a paper, my wife went looking for a phone, and my nephew asked if I'd fire up the laptop.
There, unprompted, were three generations expressing their preferences for retreiving information. The reactions were instantaneous; the arc from printed page to wireless Internet connection hung like a rainbow above us.
The phone was the fastest, the laptop most information-rich, and the newspaper the most diverting (the story about Mabel's prize hydrangea bushes would otherwise never have been seen). As much as I prize efficiency and the ability to find reviews, actors' bios, and the director's previous credits, I have to say that I was sorry that no one had bought a paper. I missed the excuse to page through The Cape Codder marveling at the price of real estate, checking the tides, and reading about hydrangea bushes.
We did get to the movies -- The Golden Boys was the choice as it had been filmed on the Cape. It was awful. I guess that's one more point for the information-rich digital connection.
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