Whenever talk at home turns to the perfect house Anne always mentions Bag End, Bilbo's house from Lord Of The Rings. And you can see her point, it'd be snug and comfortable and probably very sustainable. In fact, if we were still living in Oregon, I can see that we might have been tempted by a place at The Shire. Or end up with somewhere like this fantastic self-built Hobbit style-accommodation in Wales. Personally, as child, I fell in love with the idea of Mole End in The Wind In The Willows:
"directly facing them was Mole's little front door, with`Mole End' painted, in Gothic lettering, over the bell-pull at the side. Mole reached down a lantern from a nail on the wail and lit it, and the Rat, looking round him, saw that they were in a sort of fore-court. A garden-seat stood on one side of the door, and on the other a roller; for the Mole, who was a tidy animal when at home, could not stand having his ground kicked up by other animals into little runs that ended in earth-heaps. On the walls hung wire baskets with ferns in them, alternating with brackets carrying plaster statuary -- Garibaldi, and the infant Samuel, and Queen Victoria, and other heroes of modern Italy. Down on one side of the forecourt ran a skittle-alley, with benches along it and little wooden tables marked with rings that hinted at beer-mugs. In the middle was a small round pond containing gold-fish and surrounded by a cockle-shell border. Out of the centre of the pond rose a fanciful erection clothed in more cockle-shells and topped by a large silvered glass ball that reflected everything all wrong and had a very pleasing effect."
(Who wouldn't want a skittle alley in the house?)
But then, at Disneyland I think I spotted my ideal home - Goofy's House in Toon Town. I know it seems like a deliberately cute, cloyingly affected thing to say, but I just love how it looks. It's captured the essence of 'house' in that unique way that cartoons can do. I know I'm supposed to want to live in some sleek, clean Bauhasy machine for living, but I don't, I want to live somewhere that looks like this, with these sort of details. I want to live somewhere with a sense of humour.
I'm always surprised more architects and designers don't make more of the appeal of these kind of dimensions and aesthetics. They seem happy to use facades and cloaking devices for ordinary interiors but resist the lure of 5/8th's scale, forced perspectives, charm and silliness. I guess the lack of straight-lines doesn't make construction easy. Ikea do some kids furniture which looks a bit like this, and used to sell feet you could add to your tables and chairs, but that's about all I've ever seen. People love Port Merion, people love Disneyland, but no-one ever builds it. Send someone to York Minster and the first things they'll look for are the rude gargoyles.
We went to see Disney's Celebration a few years back, thinking it might be like a version of Toon Town you could live in, but it was more like Poundbury with more flags and more famous architects. There was no sense of fun, nothing playful about the architecture. Very thoughtful, very serious. But surely people are prepared to pay for fun in their houses. So much of these new urban designs are 'false' anyway, fake Georgian, fake thatch, I don't mind that particularly, people like that stuff, but wouldn't they like it more if the faking was done with more charm and humour. That'd be good.