The Difference Between "Fixed Catalogs" and "Thinking from Scratch"

What People Who Don't Lose Out on Home Building Do, Vol. 5

When you visit a housing exhibition, the term "standard specifications" appears inside the model houses.

This kitchen is from this series, this flooring is this type, this window is this size. There is a catalog, there are options, and you choose a "home that is uniquely yours" from those combinations. That is how that type of home building proceeds.

I don't mean to deny this. However, "choosing" and "thinking" are similar, yet they are completely different actions.

Choosing from a catalog

Building a home by choosing from a catalog is like a meal with a menu. You combine your preferences from dozens of choices. There is plenty of room to be indecisive, but you cannot order anything that is not on the menu.

"I want to insert a half-story space between the first and second floors," "I want to design the entrance and the garden as a single, continuous outdoor space," "I want to turn the elevation difference of this land into a richness for daily life"—these ideas exist outside the catalog.

If you keep choosing within standard specifications, at some point, you may get the feeling that "somehow, this has become a house I've seen somewhere before." It may not be that your way of choosing was bad, but that the person's true way of living existed outside the range of choices.

Thinking from scratch

Building a home with an architect is like a meal without a menu. It starts with, "What would you like to eat?"

The first question is not about the floor plan. It is, "How do you want to live?"

Where do you want to wake up in the morning? Where is the place where the family naturally gathers? When you want to be alone, what kind of place do you want to go to? From where do you want the light to enter? How do you want the relationship between the garden and the interior to be?

After carefully facing these questions, a floor plan is born. While deciphering the shape and orientation of the land, as well as legal restrictions, a single blueprint unique to that site and that family is drawn up.

"Thinking" home building takes time. The answer does not come immediately. However, during that time, you may gradually see what you are truly looking for.

"Freedom" is a matter of quality, not quantity

People sometimes say, "If you hire an architect, the degree of freedom is high." However, the content of that freedom is not about having a "large number of choices."

Housing manufacturers have dozens of options. In an architect's design, there is no "number" of choices. What exists is "the process of deriving the answer most appropriate for that family's life."

It might be more accurate to rephrase it as: it is not the amount of freedom, but the quality of freedom that is different.

Which one is right for you?

Home building by choosing from a catalog is suitable for those who want to make decisions quickly, those who are satisfied with a certain level of specifications, and those who prioritize location and asset value over the house itself. This is a rational choice.

Building a home from scratch is suitable for those who value the feeling that something "just doesn't feel right," those who want to be particular about the details of their daily life, and those whose land or family circumstances are not typical.

Neither approach is the "correct" one. However, if you proceed without knowing which one suits you better, you may find yourself feeling that things are "not what I expected" halfway through the process.

People who avoid losses in home building start by considering "which type of home building do I want to do?" from the very beginning.