Nouveau Western

Is there such a thing as a stupid house? That’s probably unfair to bricks and mortar  — but there are certainly houses built by stupid people. And people who choose to live in them for some very stupid reasons.

You see a lot of this some parts of Asia: houses built for the luxury market —  which means expatriates, plus nouveau riche locals* who want an ‘international lifestyle’ and can afford to pay for it.

What they often get is expensive, tacky, uncomfortable and impractical. Their style is often weirdly incongruous  —  multi-storey French Provincial or mock Tudor in the tropics  —  but they’re usually built in self-contained compounds so from the outside, at least, they may fit in.

But living in them is another story.

The biggest problem is that they’re built in a way that just doesn’t work in local conditions.

In Southeast Asia, where the climate is generally very hot and very humid, traditional homes are often built in one of two ways:

Single-storey houses with overhanging eaves to shade the windows, and louvered blinds which allow air to circulate throughout the house. They’re usually shaded by trees and thick tropical foliage.

Tall, thin, vertical townhouses of several storeys, with a central air-well and an opening at the top, allowing warm air to rise and escape.

Both use ceiling fans, and the houses stay reasonably cool without constant air conditioning. To help keep indoor heat to a minimum, the kitchen is in an isolated part of the house, or even against an outside wall in a sort of lean-to.

There are lots more examples all over Asia, and anywhere else with extreme climatic conditions. What they have in common is that they’ve evolved over the ages to cope with those conditions —  heat, cold, humidity, earthquakes, monsoons, typhoons, whatever  —  in the simplest, most sensible (and sustainable) way.

By contrast, imagine a house of two or three storeys (because that’s the “western” way), with lots of big glass windows everywhere that catch the morning and afternoon sun. The surrounding “garden” is a neatly mown lawn with a few shrubs: not much shade there.

There’s an open-plan kitchen (because that’s what Westerners have), and a large stairwell which efficiently conducts heat and cooking smells upward and thoughout the entire house.

And, of course, there’s air conditioning. Sometimes there are ceiling fans, too, because they’re decorative…and hey, this is Asia, after all.

So first thing in the morning the sun hits those windows and continues to shine in one side of the house or the other pretty much all day long. If you live here, you need to keep the air conditioning running at all times. (And it’s nothing like as efficient as the system you’re used to back in Manhattan or Miami.)

Before cooking a meal, you or the maid will need to run up two or three flights of stairs and open all the windows to let out the cooking smells and the heat. Of course, while they’re open, the air conditioning won’t work properly. The poor girl will then have to cook dinner in the nifty open-plan kitchen in full view of you, your family and your guests, sweating profusely (and you will be, too).

And as soon as you’ve eaten, someone will need to run upstairs again and close all the windows to get the aircon functioning again.

There are other anomalies. In the bathrooms, the gleaming fixtures, probably imported, will have cost a fortune. But the fittings  — shelves, hooks, towel rails, etc. – are probably cheaper locally-made versions which will eventually bend, rust, break, fall apart, and come off the wall. At great expense, the décor may also include two or three kinds of marble plus ornamental tiles in several different patterns, some gilded. In extreme cases, they’ll clash horribly with the sloppily painted ceiling. The master bath may even may feature marble floors and spa baths, together with messy grouting and rusting pipes.

You’ll pay a small fortune to rent one of these houses. And there might even be an electricity surcharge in your particular district (because that’s where the rich people live, right?) So your bills will be astronomical, because of course you’re constantly running the air conditioning.

Does any of this make sense? Possibly, if prestige is all you’re looking for. But as a way of life it’s impractical, uncomfortable and expensive.

So if you’re relocating to another country, take time to study the  traditional style, and to understand why it works in local conditions. If you can resist looking for a replica of what you had back home, you’ll almost certainly find houses that are dignified, beautiful and lovely to live in. 

They have an authentic elegance of their own. Much better than a borrowed one. (I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, “Be yourself. Everybody else is already taken.” Good advice, even if you’re a house.)

You’ll save money, you’ll be more comfortable  — and you’ll probably have more interesting neighbours.

*Money can’t buy taste. We were guests in one of these houses a few years ago ago, and the local family who lived next door — father, mother and two children — employed three maids, two cooks, a nanny and three drivers.