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Johnathon Little (husband) and Zoe Little (wife) recently launched a new housing concept out of the UK called Koto, which is supposedly Finnish for “cozy at home.”
(Before Koto, Johnathon worked for Snohetta in Oslo.)
The goal of the company is to create beautiful, small, and prefabricated houses and cabins that allow people to connect with nature.
It is inspired by the Nordic concept Friluftsliv. The literal translation is “open air living” but, more specifically, it is about the benefits of nature on our mental and personal wellbeing.
Their small cabin has a footprint of 15 square meters and their large cabin has a footprint of 40 square meters. Base prices run from about £33,500 to £63,500. A bathroom is optional.
The most obvious use case for me is that of a bunkie. For more on Koto, check out their website and Instagram.
Photos: Koto
A condo developer friend of mine once told me something along the lines of this: “Brandon, I have generally learned over the years that if I like something, it probably means the general public [our purchasers] isn’t going to like it. And that’s because if I like it, there’s probably something unique or quirky about it.”
Summer time starts this weekend, at least in this part of the world. Africa and Asia generally don’t observe daylight savings time (DST), so if you just switched your clocks forward an hour, know that you are in the global minority.
The whole point of DST is that it gives us an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings during the summer months. The trade-off is a later sunrise, but since the days are longer to begin with, it’s something we have clearly come to accept.
Here is a graph showing the impact of daylight savings time on sunrise and sunset times in Greenwich. It’s from Wikipedia and it’s the clearest diagram I could find that quickly explains the change.
Johnathon Little (husband) and Zoe Little (wife) recently launched a new housing concept out of the UK called Koto, which is supposedly Finnish for “cozy at home.”
(Before Koto, Johnathon worked for Snohetta in Oslo.)
The goal of the company is to create beautiful, small, and prefabricated houses and cabins that allow people to connect with nature.
It is inspired by the Nordic concept Friluftsliv. The literal translation is “open air living” but, more specifically, it is about the benefits of nature on our mental and personal wellbeing.
Their small cabin has a footprint of 15 square meters and their large cabin has a footprint of 40 square meters. Base prices run from about £33,500 to £63,500. A bathroom is optional.
The most obvious use case for me is that of a bunkie. For more on Koto, check out their website and Instagram.
Photos: Koto
A condo developer friend of mine once told me something along the lines of this: “Brandon, I have generally learned over the years that if I like something, it probably means the general public [our purchasers] isn’t going to like it. And that’s because if I like it, there’s probably something unique or quirky about it.”
Summer time starts this weekend, at least in this part of the world. Africa and Asia generally don’t observe daylight savings time (DST), so if you just switched your clocks forward an hour, know that you are in the global minority.
The whole point of DST is that it gives us an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings during the summer months. The trade-off is a later sunrise, but since the days are longer to begin with, it’s something we have clearly come to accept.
Here is a graph showing the impact of daylight savings time on sunrise and sunset times in Greenwich. It’s from Wikipedia and it’s the clearest diagram I could find that quickly explains the change.
When he told me this it made perfect sense to me, because there’s a well documented taste divide that seems to exist between architects and design-types and non-architects and non-design-types (whatever this latter categorization means).
A few years ago The Architects’ Journal published an article referencing a 1987 study that took a group of students – some architecture students and some non-architecture students – and asked them to rate the attractiveness of a series of photos containing both unfamiliar people and buildings.
What they discovered was that most people had similar views on the attractiveness of the people. I guess hotness is somewhat universal. But when it came to the buildings, the viewpoints were completely opposite. The architecture students’ favorite buildings were what everyone else disliked the most.
The conclusion in the article: “Professionals are, empirically, the very worst judges available of what people want or like in the built environment.”
Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash
There’s a lot of debate around whether or not DST should be abolished or if we should simply adopt summer time, permanently. A bill is currently being reviewed that would allow Florida to observe DST year-round.
Some groups, like retailers, seem to benefit from daylight savings time. More evening sunshine hours means we’re more likely to shop. But it has a negative impact on other things such as drive-ins. (Do people still go to drive-ins?)
There are also arguments that it causes a decrease in economic output and an increase in traffic accidents – apparently we’re all groggy and accident-prone after having our sleep routines disrupted.
So what would be your recommendation?
1) Do nothing – status quo
2) Abolish daylight savings time
3) Observe daylight savings time year-round
When he told me this it made perfect sense to me, because there’s a well documented taste divide that seems to exist between architects and design-types and non-architects and non-design-types (whatever this latter categorization means).
A few years ago The Architects’ Journal published an article referencing a 1987 study that took a group of students – some architecture students and some non-architecture students – and asked them to rate the attractiveness of a series of photos containing both unfamiliar people and buildings.
What they discovered was that most people had similar views on the attractiveness of the people. I guess hotness is somewhat universal. But when it came to the buildings, the viewpoints were completely opposite. The architecture students’ favorite buildings were what everyone else disliked the most.
The conclusion in the article: “Professionals are, empirically, the very worst judges available of what people want or like in the built environment.”
Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash
There’s a lot of debate around whether or not DST should be abolished or if we should simply adopt summer time, permanently. A bill is currently being reviewed that would allow Florida to observe DST year-round.
Some groups, like retailers, seem to benefit from daylight savings time. More evening sunshine hours means we’re more likely to shop. But it has a negative impact on other things such as drive-ins. (Do people still go to drive-ins?)
There are also arguments that it causes a decrease in economic output and an increase in traffic accidents – apparently we’re all groggy and accident-prone after having our sleep routines disrupted.
So what would be your recommendation?
1) Do nothing – status quo
2) Abolish daylight savings time
3) Observe daylight savings time year-round
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