Robert J Morton

The Hythe Project - Shelter

Activity Model of The Home

The purpose of the shelter we call our home is to provide a secure and supportive environment or container for each of a specific set of familiar and well defined human activities.

The fundamental element of human society is the family unit. A family is made up of one or more human beings who live in a close group. It is the smallest complete socio-economic unit. This can be viewed as an integrated set of basic activities.

Some of these activities are performed by an individual alone. Others are done by many individuals working cooperatively. Ideally, a family microeconomy operates as follows.

1. generates as much of its own internal needs as possible from its natural environment through a sustainable cycle.
2. produces its own specialisms to exchange for other needed specialisms via a free market

The family's specialisms can be services provided by the special skills of its members or products made by applying those skills to available raw materials.

Each activity requires an environment to contain, facilitate and protect it. This is normally a room in which all its required facilities are readily available. The rooms required to support all the activities within a family socio-economic unit should ideally be integrated into a single building, or closely connected set of buildings, called a house.

A house is essentially a set of environments to accommodate, protect and sustain all these interrelated activities.

Unfortunately today, those activities associated with the production side of a family's socio-economic process have been amputated from the family home and crammed together with countless others into office blocks and factories.