Big v. Small

I was reading this evening about the All Terrain Cabin by BARK, which is part of a trend within architecture to explore small dwellings.

And as I was reading about the benefits of “small”, I grew curious as to the current obesity statistics in the US:

In 2003-04, 17.1% of children and adolescents 2-19 years of age (over 12 and a half million) were overweight, and 32.2% of adults (over 66 million) were obese. Almost 5% of adults were extremely obese. [National Center for Health Statistics]

So what’s the connection? Why am I posting a picture of a building on a blog about food?

Well, as obesity levels increase, waistlines expand as well. Small houses are a great concept to explore, but the reality is that unless people literally become smaller, the market for small living quarters is not going to, uh, grow.

The question then becomes, who manages this problem? Architects are experts at designing buildings, but I wouldn’t appeal to them for nutritional advice. And what does the nutritionist care about the design of buildings?

Ultimately, if architects design for people’s current needs, we’re going to have a lot of large buildings, because that’s where the trends are going: bigger and bigger. And if we want to design for the future, that is to say design small dwellings to account for reduced land availability and/or resource footprints, then how is society going to reach that future in proper form?