Flow of Space

"Our external masonry is clumsier and more self-conscious than our internal masonry, which we have to carry around with us. We ask it to accommodate not only our real needs, but also our social aspirations and the possessions accumulated through a lifetime, maybe including heirlooms which have never been useful to us but which we take on with a sense of duty and familial identity. Houses often do much more than meet our need for practical and effective shelter, and it is the excess that enables most of us to pass as respectable citizens. If we were all to produce our won shell and accumulate nothing, living like diogenes, then no status would accrue from buildings and possessions, we would have no mortgages, and the social order that we know in the West would never have emerged. Our social order is driven by consumption and desire, and most of us live on the edge of one kind of desperation or another, so as to maximize the good things that life might offer. Some people give a higher priority to possessions, some to freedom, some to pleasure, some to social status"

Ballantyne, A., & Smith, C. L. (Eds.). (2012). Architecture in the Space of Flows. Routledge.p4