at home-among other things

I'm reading Bill Bryson's book, At Home. It is an illuminating and disturbing experience, which is his intent. As an architect, I take many things for granted, but I'm occasionally responsible for explaining why things should be done in a certain way to clients, contractors, and other designers. Usually, these explanations don't go to the heart of the matter--like why do we need formal rooms in houses when we never use them? (Thorstein Veblen can explain that one better than any architect)

The history of domesticity makes me grateful for the way we live now, and I am allowing myself to be optimistic about some future state when we have shed some disturbing habits, or at least, replaced them with less wasteful and disturbing ones.

This is one of the most ridiculous private homes ever designed and built. By an Englishman, of course.