links for 2010-06-04

"Blinghouses may not necessarily be smart houses, but they are certainly very very excited ones. They emerge during the run-up to the Christmas season each year, as their owners channel their own festive enthusiasm through the medium of various massive neon and electrical lights whcih cover the house.....

Criticisms of blinghouses often focus on environmental damage, tackiness (and class by association), or one dressed up as the other. For all of this, I am still hugely fond of them: I love the sheer disco exuberance of them, of using the entire structure of your house to create a massive Christmas ornament to send light out into the darkest winter*. The lack of functionality is also fascinating: even at its most overexcited and musical housebling is about being, not doing, in a completely personalised way. Blinghouses are the antithesis of smart homes, whose purpose and design centre on function and practice."