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          This article in the New York Times talks about a British interior design couple who bought an abandoned 69 foot water tower and converted it into their home. The water tower is located in Brandenburg, Germany, on the outskirts of a nature preserve. The couple had spent a while searching for their own home, deciding on this project because they wanted “something with environmental value and more meaning to society.” The tower is a historic landmark, so they had to apply to the building council of Barnim County for permission to renovate the tower into a home. In order to provide incentive for their approval, the couple incorporated a tourist viewing attraction where visitors could climb next to the tower to view the preserve from above. Permission was granted and they renovated the water tower into a home with multiple stories, their offices on the first and second floors, bedroom on the third, guest room on the fourth, kitchen and dining on the fifth, and the top devoted to a living room surrounded by windows on all sides. It is now a 1500 square apartment called Biorama, incorporating modern design with environmental awareness and recycling of materials.

             This brings up the question about what constitutes home. According to The Working Landscape, home constitutes a place where one feels a familiarity and security and a sense of control. It reflects a sense of one’s self. According to Iris Marion Young, it is “permanent and hence reassuring to man, who sees frailty in himself and change and flux everywhere.” It requires a core of personal space under control of its inhabitants. Taking an old abandoned water tower may not be the most traditional home, but the fact that they took it and refurbished it according to their own personal tastes made it such. The photographs of their new home reflect modern but not sterile interior tastes, and the integration of environmental aspects is very interesting and obviously important to them. However, the public observatory that they built is very close to their home. From the top, you can see directly into their living room. Does this take away the privacy of their personal space? Does this mean that it is not under their control and therefore not a home as Young sees it? They don’t seem to mind the public tower, but, being public, can be accessed by anyone. It’s like allowing anyone, any stranger, into your home without taking your personal considerations into account at all. Perhaps they have control of visiting hours, but even then they can’t monitor the types of people that come to view their home and the nature preserve. Does this violate a sense of home and private control?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/greathomesanddestinations/09gh-location.html