The supramolecular family
OK, I admit it. I watched the launch party of Big Brother last night.
Last year, I found myself watching the show itself more often than I wanted to. As 'train wreck television' it's compulsive: you watch it with the same horrified fascination as you'd view mental patients flinging their own shit at each other. This year's crop of housemates are the usual bunch of one-dimensional freaks: utterly fascinated by themselves, self-important and drunk on their own sliver of celebrity. (The problem affecting the UK's lesser intellects isn't 'low self-esteem'; it's high self-esteem. The reason these people rarely get beyond the sink estates is that their own view of themselves is already so high they honestly believe they can't get any better.)
That said, the mix of housemates is much better than last year. Ages range from teenage to late 30s, so less of the pizza-party atmosphere of 2005. There's the usual couple of costumed extremists - a megaboobed piece of mutton and a hatted Pete Doherty lookalike - tempered by the usual airheaded bimbos, and some really boring people (George the public schoolboy, who defined himself solely by the social status of his relatives.) There's less space for splinter cells to form, more room for individuals to assert themselves.
I'm disappointed with the girls, though. No real eye candy this year, save perhaps (in a pinch) Imogen. Look Endemol, people watch this show in the hope of seeing live housemate-on-housemate action. You need to go much better than scrawny ribcages and breasts like wizened beachballs to make that a must-see.
But with 14 'people' sharing a smaller house, it's going to be an amazing season that'll keep its proletariat audience very happy - although I can already tell, practically to a man, which order they'll be evicted in. (FYI: George and 'Bonnah' early on, Mr Brokeback shortly after, and Doherty-lookalike Pete lasting a long time.)
Also last year I had an incredibly vivid dream that's stayed with me: I woke up in the Big Brother house, one of those hard-edged stories from the shores of sleep that you recall as strongly as any natural memory. I feel I know the house, slumbered in its beds, cavorted in front of its 38 roving cameras. And that's the root of my fascination here: the building itself. One (huge) bedroom, a single kitchen and lounge, plenty of spaces specifically designed for interaction. It's not great art, but the house is valid architecture, fit for purpose. And it's given me an idea.
A prediction: the next household structure will consist of unrelated families living together. Social evolution.
Fifty years ago, every child grew up in a superstructure: a support family of grandparents, godparents, aunts and uncles and siblings. Now, that's died: the main unit twenty years ago was the nuclear family of two adults with their children, and now that's changing further. The most common household today, in London at least, is a single person.
Now we've gone as low as it can go - the one-person household - the trend will swing back upwards. Already, it's perfectly normal for groups of friends to live and buy houses together, remaining roomies a decade beyond the student cut-off age of 22.
A new household structure will now arise: friends who got together and produced children, yet enjoying the lifestyle too much to live apart.
The flatmates thing - a compromise of friendship and funding - will evolve into lifelong group companionship, two or more families living together, sharing the same kitchen and lounge, but with separate sleeping and bathing quarters. And with the funds to buy a house three times as big as normal - three families with six incomes four times mortgageable still buys substantial property even in London - there'll be enough square footage to allow personal space.
Their kids will play together. The mothers will share stories while the fathers share beers. Such households will be wonderful places. Beyond the nuclear family; perhaps the 'supramolecular' family. Countless studies have shown the 'natural' pack animality of humans is for households of extended family in communities of 150 people or less. This new structure bridges the gap between our animal past and our urban present - three families of six adults, each adult with the average 20 friends, brings the extended network very close to ideal.
The house I've been sketching in idle hours for three years - adding and subtracting odd bits until by now it's practically ready to be built - is not a single-family home; I realise now it caters for at least two, an underlying concept that's only just become evident. A double-fronted townhouse, my favourite style of building, the narrow-but deep and tall chunk of architecture that conceals its size with an efficient street frontage and a lot of vertical layers. So my 'dream home' finally becomes conceptually clear. And all because of reality TV.
Last year, I found myself watching the show itself more often than I wanted to. As 'train wreck television' it's compulsive: you watch it with the same horrified fascination as you'd view mental patients flinging their own shit at each other. This year's crop of housemates are the usual bunch of one-dimensional freaks: utterly fascinated by themselves, self-important and drunk on their own sliver of celebrity. (The problem affecting the UK's lesser intellects isn't 'low self-esteem'; it's high self-esteem. The reason these people rarely get beyond the sink estates is that their own view of themselves is already so high they honestly believe they can't get any better.)
That said, the mix of housemates is much better than last year. Ages range from teenage to late 30s, so less of the pizza-party atmosphere of 2005. There's the usual couple of costumed extremists - a megaboobed piece of mutton and a hatted Pete Doherty lookalike - tempered by the usual airheaded bimbos, and some really boring people (George the public schoolboy, who defined himself solely by the social status of his relatives.) There's less space for splinter cells to form, more room for individuals to assert themselves.
I'm disappointed with the girls, though. No real eye candy this year, save perhaps (in a pinch) Imogen. Look Endemol, people watch this show in the hope of seeing live housemate-on-housemate action. You need to go much better than scrawny ribcages and breasts like wizened beachballs to make that a must-see.
But with 14 'people' sharing a smaller house, it's going to be an amazing season that'll keep its proletariat audience very happy - although I can already tell, practically to a man, which order they'll be evicted in. (FYI: George and 'Bonnah' early on, Mr Brokeback shortly after, and Doherty-lookalike Pete lasting a long time.)
Also last year I had an incredibly vivid dream that's stayed with me: I woke up in the Big Brother house, one of those hard-edged stories from the shores of sleep that you recall as strongly as any natural memory. I feel I know the house, slumbered in its beds, cavorted in front of its 38 roving cameras. And that's the root of my fascination here: the building itself. One (huge) bedroom, a single kitchen and lounge, plenty of spaces specifically designed for interaction. It's not great art, but the house is valid architecture, fit for purpose. And it's given me an idea.
A prediction: the next household structure will consist of unrelated families living together. Social evolution.
Fifty years ago, every child grew up in a superstructure: a support family of grandparents, godparents, aunts and uncles and siblings. Now, that's died: the main unit twenty years ago was the nuclear family of two adults with their children, and now that's changing further. The most common household today, in London at least, is a single person.
Now we've gone as low as it can go - the one-person household - the trend will swing back upwards. Already, it's perfectly normal for groups of friends to live and buy houses together, remaining roomies a decade beyond the student cut-off age of 22.
A new household structure will now arise: friends who got together and produced children, yet enjoying the lifestyle too much to live apart.
The flatmates thing - a compromise of friendship and funding - will evolve into lifelong group companionship, two or more families living together, sharing the same kitchen and lounge, but with separate sleeping and bathing quarters. And with the funds to buy a house three times as big as normal - three families with six incomes four times mortgageable still buys substantial property even in London - there'll be enough square footage to allow personal space.
Their kids will play together. The mothers will share stories while the fathers share beers. Such households will be wonderful places. Beyond the nuclear family; perhaps the 'supramolecular' family. Countless studies have shown the 'natural' pack animality of humans is for households of extended family in communities of 150 people or less. This new structure bridges the gap between our animal past and our urban present - three families of six adults, each adult with the average 20 friends, brings the extended network very close to ideal.
The house I've been sketching in idle hours for three years - adding and subtracting odd bits until by now it's practically ready to be built - is not a single-family home; I realise now it caters for at least two, an underlying concept that's only just become evident. A double-fronted townhouse, my favourite style of building, the narrow-but deep and tall chunk of architecture that conceals its size with an efficient street frontage and a lot of vertical layers. So my 'dream home' finally becomes conceptually clear. And all because of reality TV.
posted by chrisworth at 10:49 PM
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