A Slow Home is SIMPLE, LIGHT, and OPEN. It is simple to use and fits the way you want to live. It is light on the environment and your finances and has open, flexible spaces that have a strong connection with the outdoors.
SIMPLE is about designing an effective way to inhabit the spaces in your home. This means thinking about how you want to live and then organizing your home to make these primary activities easier and more joyful to accomplish. Instead of thinking of you home as a series of room names on a floor plan think of it as a composition of places for entrance, cooking, eating, resting, reading, working and entertaining, bathing, and sleeping as well as any other specific activities you might have. Simple means designing the layout of your furniture and objects to articulate each of these places within the house you already have.
LIGHT is about designing an efficient way to live with a smaller environmental impact. This means reducing your green house gas emissions by living in a walkable neighborhood with shops, schools, and other amenities and in closer proximity to your work. It also means choosing an existing home that is smaller and denser in order to minimize your embodied energy footprint and then upgrading it to reduce your operating energy footprint. Finally, Light means choosing to live in a home that you can afford because the stress of living beyond your means will prevents you from having a slow way of life.
OPEN is about designing an elegant spatial organization in your home. This starts by choosing a home that is the right size for your needs without any wasted space or unnecessary features. It also means choosing a home that responds to its climate and orientation in order to maximize daylight and natural ventilation. Finally, open means improving the quality of the spaces in your house by designing the changes to its layout that will clarify the organization, create a strong visual and physical connection with the outdoors, and combine the living, dining, and cooking activities into one flexible open space.
