L'accumulo incontenibile

Abstract

In the process of moving to a smaller home, Toni, a sardonic Illinois resident in her eighties told me, ‘the first thing to know about attics is that they are filled up because they are there’. Perhaps it is the space that comes first, an architectural category that seems to be in a dangerous process of collective expansion, as walk-in closets become de rigueur and rental storage units have been the fastest growing category of real estate for decades. Could it be our increased capacity for storage that is enabling the collective amassment of useless stuff?