John Arnold: preference

Transcript context

…Now, you live in an Alexander Gorlin-designed modernist house. He once said in an interview, and I quote, “To live in a modern space requires discipline. If one or two things are out of place, it just destroys the whole balance.” Then someone said, “Well, this is why people don’t want to live in modernist homes, because they’re messy.” Then he said, “Not all lives are messy.” How do you feel about this, living in one of his houses? It takes a little bit of work, for sure. It takes a lot of work. I love it. My wife loves it. Our kids, I think, would prefer the messy house and would prefer things not to feel like you can’t touch them. We have parts of the house that are more formal and parts of the house that are more informal. I do think there is a component to that of if a house looks worn in, if a modernist house looks worn in, it starts to degrade quickly, and the aesthetic value of it starts to degrade much quicker than a normal house, and so it just requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep. Can you do Houston hurricane protection with the modernist house? Is that a contradiction, or it just works?…

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