Home Page Radio - HOME talking

WPKN Community Radio

Thursday, February 25, 2021, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org Host: Duo Dickinson Everyone lives somewhere. We all talk about where we live, but more, we think about it. A lot. Especially when we have been under House Arrest lo this entire year. There are two worlds that we go to to consider our options in creating our own home. One is everywhere, especially now in a Connecticut Covid Bounce that has seen prices jump 20%, the Real Estate world. It is a world of marketing, dumbing down everything to a “Style” or “the latest trend”. Whether HOUZZ or Home Depot, our home love is seen a Profit Center Opportunity, and the language of “Buy Now And Save” is the same as that for selling anything, hype over insight, let alone listening to our fondest dreams. The second world of those you can talk to about your biggest asset and risk, where you live, are the designers, builders, architects who make the homes you are thinking about everyday. But a different hype happens. Rather than feign sentimental intimacy of Your “special” needs, architects and designers pose as oracles of cool, hiding their preconceptions in language that you do not understand, but, they hope, will confer wisdom, insight and value. Rooms are “Zones”. Windows and doors are “Openings” or worse,”Fenestration”. Trim becomes “Datum”. Walls become “Planes” and doorways become “Voids”. Seeing outside becomes “Transparency” and spending less on heat is “Sustainable”. Why can’t architect’s just talk the walk of homemaking? Today on HOME PAGE we ask that question of three who have dealt with how we communicate in design in ways that. Give them exceptional insights. Peter Chapman has worked at The Taunton Press for over 30 years and is currently executive editor for Taunton Books. Peter has had a hand in most of the home design books that Taunton has published since 1998, including two from our host, Duo (Staying Put and The House You Build), as well as Sarah Susanka’s best-selling Not So Big House series. In earlier lives, Peter worked as a house painter (church steeples a specialty), educational test compiler, and apple picker.” Gina Calabro is the Executive Director/CEO of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA Connecticut). AIA Connecticut serves as a resource to architects and the public. Its membership of over 1,500 is comprised of architects, professionals working towards licensure, architectural students, and business professionals in affiliated fields. Prior to joining AIA Connecticut, she has worked with or lead trade associations as the CEO for the Home Builders and Remodelers Association (HBRA) of Fairfield County, and as the Division Director of Membership and Marketing for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Kurt Andersen is a writer. His latest book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America (2020) about how U.S. society was re-engineered during the last quarter of the 20th century to serve big business and the well-to-do at the expense of everyone else. It was a New York Times bestseller, like its companion volume Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire (2017), Andersen’s prize-winning history of America’s weakness for exciting untruths. In addition, he’s the author of four critically acclaimed, bestselling novels –– You Can’t Spell America Without Me (2017), True Believers (2012), Heyday (2007) and Turn of the Century (1999). Andersen also writes for television and the stage, appears regularly on MSNBC and contributes to the New York Times. He co-created and hosted the Peabody Award-winning weekly public radio program Studio 360, co-founded Spy magazine, and was a columnist and design critic for The New Yorker, New York and Time, as well as editor-in-chief of New York. Born and raised in Omaha, he graduated from Harvard College and lives with his wife Anne Kreamer in Brooklyn