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Avant-garde architect and designer
Nigel Coates
watches new self-architects
When, in 2006, Peter York’s book on dictators’ homes appeared, he probably knew his readers would use it to justify their own domestic style. Saddam Hussein deserved all he got for such ostentation. And who would want to live like Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena? The no taste of the rich and powerful would make one’s modest efforts seem better, more acceptable.
Powerful homes are news to nobody, but we can thank the life-long learning powers of television for everyone muscling in on this. Year on year, week on week, the number of makeover programmes never abates. The top-ranking ones command primetime viewing slots, while others occupy entire channels, or back-to-back daytime viewing. In part, these programmes are a follow on from the mid-Eighties obsession with fashion. Then it was antiques, then the boom in cooking with the Two Fat Ladies and Jamie Oliver, and into the Noughties it was the home. So TV is not just entertainment. It’s consumer democracy at work.
Since the miserable years of the early Eighties, as we’ve become richer, more opinionated and freer with money, nowhere shows more change than the average home. Now, the home is a barometer of aspiration, stylistic allegiances and lifestyle choices. It’s the very altar of family happiness. But to improve on it we won’t call in the experts – the architects and designers. Most likely we’ll do it ourselves. We’ll do it as they do on the TV. We’ve learnt how to pump up our homes, second or otherwise, as an expression of autonomy and difference, as well as turning our effort into profit.
When it comes to the sorts of gains to be made with property, everybody wants to learn the insider tricks; how to Italian-ise your kitchen, how to ‘get the look’, as the magazines say, and get the maximum impact for as little money and effort as possible.
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