Offbeat Homes

The Offbeat Homes Million Dollar Question

by Jennifer Chait on January 6th, 2008

When I get e-mails about Offbeat Homes it’s never anyone asking me for advice.

That’s strange, because if you hadn’t noticed, Offbeat Homes belongs to the b5media Lifestyles Channel. A channel known for being helpful in all things life and home related. In fact, part of our channel tag-line states, “Find advice, information, and observations on exciting beginnings and everyday journeys of families and relationships.” Hmmm, advice.

Offbeat’s not so much known for it’s stellar ability to get you out of a fix. I can’t save you money, I don’t discuss how to organize your desk drawer. No one asks, “How do you make Chicken Marengo?” or, “Help me understand my thyroid & reproductive health.” And not once has someone e-mailed me for advice about marriage fitness or if embroidered monogrammed cards are a swell idea.

Offbeat can offer advice too!:

In an attempt to be more like my helpful peers here at the Lifestyles Channel, I’m going to answer the only question anyone ever asks me. That question is, “How do you find all these wacky homes?”

Well…

Offbeat is easier than you think. Easy, but multi-layered. Following is where I find all these wacky homes.

Bad method one, other bloggers: See my extremely long blogroll to the side. I relentlessly stalk other architect and design blogs. Mainly, because I love them. Also, because I’ll sometimes find stuff and snatch it away for Offbeat. This is the worst method of finding material though. I’m not the best thief. I feel guilty. Thus I can only show a snippet and then send readers off to that other blog. It’s not an effective way to gather ideas for full posts.

Ideal lazy method, blogging friends: Friends who know I blog here send me lots of ideas. People send me news clips and websites of kooky stuff. This is my favorite way to find new structures because I don’t have to work at all. Lazy method but efficient.

The sure thing, pestering architects: Yes I stalk poor unsuspecting architects. I email and ask them to send me a heads up when something new is in the works. This is a great method because you hear about new projects early on. Plus when I’m extra lucky, architects email me (no pestering involved). Nice. I also talk with a lot of random artists — because you never know what they’ve got planned.

The second sure thing, press releases: I get good ideas from PR deals but the problem with this is that if I got a PR, you can be sure that every other house blogger in town did as well. Not always that unique.

Old school method, books: I know it’s the internet age and all, but there are lots of great architects books out there. I love them all and get lots of ideas from all kinds of building and design books and to a lesser extent magazines.

Finally, the number one way I find Offbeat post material…

The random brain method: This is the method I use most of all. My little old brain. Well, my brain and a decent web search. I ponder a lot. I think, “I wonder if there was ever a house made to look like a peanut? Or one with purple polka dots, or maybe something with triangle windows?” Then I type my idea into a search and off I go. The cons of this, of course, is it doesn’t always work out. No one ever built a banana house, no matter how good that idea sounds to me.

We can do it right now. Let’s see. One of my favorite random searches is to put best before something. Like, “Best Dream House” — I’ll look it up.

Here’s what I found:

Barbie’s dream house (not exactly right). Although, it does get me thinking about cool offbeat toy homes. Or pink homes that won’t sell.

Then I found this — egad! This is a dream house? See, now I would not use this as a dream house, but maybe a post on super lame designs or bad paint colors. Possibly beach McMansions.

Ah, jackpot! The folks at PC World New Zealand mainly blog tech but I find a post about a favorite dream home; this structure. An amazing Waterworld-like resort that will be set in a quarry.

If I dig a little more I find that this is actually an award winning design from Atkins. Atkins Design Studios leads me to all kinds of other cool structures and on it goes. So with one random search and three web pages I found what I could technically turn into a week’s worth (or more) of posts. Good stuff. Random searches are the best.

This now concludes our Offbeat advice series. Since no one asks me anything else I’m pretty sure this won’t be a weekly column. To find ongoing, even daily, life-helpful advice be sure to check out the rest of my blogging pals here at the Lifestyles Channel.

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POSTED IN: Architect News, Lifestyles Channel, Link Love, Offbeat Advice