Dear Arne Jacobsen. Dear Charles and Ray Eames. Dear Le Corbusier. I’m leaving you. Goodbye.

Though I appreciate your looks, hell, everybody down at the reproduction shop does anyway; I’m tired of being your publicist. What do I mean? Well, you’re famous, you’re gorgeous, and yep, I know, get out of your shot. You look better on your own. My house is just a gallery and you’re the permanent exhibition.

Now, I have no doubt this obsession of mine with minimalism may in part have come about because I wanted to unclutter your space so you could just stand there, basking in the dappled light of an empty white room. And by empty, I mean without even me in it. Well, fuck you Mark Newson.

I’ve decided I may not need furniture at all. Or at least not furniture that likes to stand on its own. I’m talking built-ins.  And not just indoors, outdoor too! (Is built-in outdoor furniture a contradiction? Probably. Well who cares. I want it.)

I had this epiphany about furniture a few years ago. It was while I was moving house. The removalists had arrived with all my gear in the back of a truck and a burly bloke was asking me where I wanted to put everything. I was hopelessly undecided and a bit intimidated so I told him to just put it all in the middle of the room and I’d sort it out later. I still haven’t. Yes, things have found their place, but they’re always temporary places. I move them about a lot because they just don’t seem to look right wherever they are. Not just because they don’t belong there, but also because they don’t belong there together.

Today I tend to sit in just one chair and look at the others. And the rest of the time I lounge about in different corners of my house, wherever the sun is in winter or wherever the shade is in summer, often on benches, sometimes on the floor. I often think that if a designer could watch me as part of some animal behavior study, they might just build me pads to sit or lie on in places I most often came to rest. The challenge would be to do that accurately and aesthetically.

I imagine it might look a bit like the next house I’ll add to my design brief:

The Stadium House

Introducing John Lin’s House for all Seasons. I call it the stadium house, because apart from the sustainable cleverness and softly lit courtyard-style rooms it possesses behind that epic breeze block façade, on top it has this awesome stadium-like roof with built-in concrete bleachers. A great place to sun bake and grow pot plants during the day and a nice space to party on at night under the stars.

Hellooo, Hamilton! We’ll just be dancing on the roof for about the next three hours. I hope you like new wave hits of the Eighties.