"Buildings with nothing to say"

I love this comment from Tony Watkins from Owner-Builder magazine:

    One person will travel the world and arrive home with nothing to say. Another person walks down to the corner dairy and comes back with a story.
    When Gaylene Preston, herself a wonderful weaver of stories, made this comment, she might well have been talking about buildings.
    A building may be designed by a world-famous architect. It may be documented with hundreds of sheets of drawings. It may meet the most stringent requirements of the most demanding building inspector ever cloned. It may comply with every known regulation and planning scheme. It may use the most lavish of rare marbles. The building may be flawless in every other respect, and yet have nothing to say.
    It would be better if such a building had never been built. You cannot hear yourself speak for the deafening noise of buildings which only shout. They contribute nothing to civilisation or culture.
    In contrast a tree-house built by a child from trash may have the most wonderful stories to tell. Owner-built homes are seldom "frozen music". Dreams and drama are the stuff of which they are made.  [Read on here.]