I heard an interesting arts and architecture piece on NPR recently titled “Is it Goodbye to Architectural Excess?” That show, which you can listen to in full, here, explored how the current economic crash has brought a decade of lavish “icon”-building (read: Guggenheim Bilbao, Frank Gehry) to a halt, and is making room for architecture of “relevance” (as in the Kutamba AIDS Orphans School, built by Architecture For Humanity).

On a grand scale, simplicity is replacing flourish. Energy-efficient is replacing waste. And the public architecture being planned and constructed today is starting to reflect a more sober world view – one where function is equal to form, space is used wisely, and sustainability is at its core.

Now, back to your house, and mine. What does all that have to do with your new kitchen, or my new deck? How do our human-scale 2- and 3-bedroom homes fit into this picture, when they are a fraction of the cost (and use a fraction of the energy) of these monumental museums, office buildings and concert halls?

Well, as we all “hunker down” and get back to basics, the environment that has the biggest effect on our lives is the one in which we live (and pay for). We still want our homes to be beautiful – in fact, we might want that even more, since part of “hunkering down,” by definition, is to stay at home.

But not only can many of us not afford our own architectural excesses these days, we increasingly have other choices that are beautiful and practical, have form and function, are more relevant and earth-friendly. And these choices – the appliances, floorings, windows and paints of today's modern world – can do quite a lot our wallets, while, in aggregate, doing a lot for our planet, too.

Excess is no longer a measure of our success – what we do for planet, our communities and our wonderful, hunkered-down homes, is.