I was watching an architecture show yesterday where a rich artist couple were re-purposing a barn as a house. It was a strange building for living in. Unconvent

I was watching an architecture show yesterday where a rich artist couple were re-purposing a barn as a house. It was a strange building for living in. Unconventional and contrary. The show follows people through the build and visits them after they've moved in. At various point they seemed to be obsessed with concepts like rooms and how important they are for dividing up a house or walls and how useful they are for putting furniture against, directional lighting in the kitchen, etc. All these obvious things that come standard with a standard house and most people don't think about were discoveries to them. They started by rejecting everything until they begrudgingly let some of the things in or found workarounds. The result was pretty cool. We end up with big lists of rules about things, whether we are aware of them or not. You can call them rules of thumbs or call them cargo cults. Either way, there is value to be had from rejecting standards and then rediscovering for yourself the ones that demand to be discovered. It's like a cleanup process.