On Christmas Day 2023 George Smart and Tom Guild of USModernist Radio had Toby on for an hour-long episode. They enjoyed a conversation about Toby’s book Supersizing Bliss as well as music by Michael Sinatra and Peter Lamb and the Wolves.

Episode #332 : Holiday Show: Author Toby Witte + Musical Guest Michael Sinatra + Musical Guests Peter Lamb and the Wolves

Listen to it on your favorite platform:

Some Excerpts

George: “In your book Supersizing Bliss, you talk about how there's an ocean of heartless, uninspired houses out there.”

Toby: “Yes […] I am sorry if I am offending anybody by saying that. But it's not unreasonable to say most of us have not had the pleasure to live in truly inspiring homes - or just places, just spaces that […] have a richness to them - that have the capacity to lift us up - that can bring happiness to us. Most of the houses we get to choose from are created from an industrial apparatus. Fast builders. Money at interest. They're producing thousands of homes every year. […] They don't have, necessarily, the homeowners at heart or in their interest. So those are the homes that we get to choose from. Those are really the sort of pieces that fall off at the end of a production line. And we're trying to make a home out of them. And so as far as I'm concerned, they are heartless. I think in the book, I call them carcasses of industrial thrift. And for the most part, I think that's what they are.”

“It's not unreasonable to say most of us have not had the pleasure to live in truly inspiring homes.”

George: “What's the biggest mistake people make when designing a house or thinking about designing a house?”

Toby: “The biggest mistake, I think, is that they're asking the wrong questions. We're […] conditioned to ask about the square foot price, for instance. We are conditioned to ask for more square feet, as if that brings us happiness or enriches our life. And what I'm trying to allow my clients to ask - is for the qualities that they might yearn for - that might enrich their living environment - the spaces they spend their time in […].

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For instance, I try to find very specific aspects about architecture that I think have a great effect on how we experience our surroundings. One is just the quality of space. One is the quality and the expression of the structure […]. I talk about texture of the materials around us and then also about light and shadow. I think those things are elements that we can actually address and change and play with. […] We are literally affected by this space that we find ourselves in.”

George: “So how quickly do you get a prospective client inside your house or one of the other modernist houses you've designed? Because I think that just getting both spouses in there at the same time would be critical, since typically one is a little more modernist than the other, yeah?”

Toby: “Well, I I'll find myself to be a a marriage counselor every now and then. […] I certainly have to listen to both parties or anybody that is going to live in there. I need to allow them to talk individually and sometimes even separately from each other and have them share what they're thinking - and find a middle ground where everybody is happy. To find the bliss.”

George: “You do like that word.”

Toby: “Yeah, I do. […] If we can't be happy - if the homes we live don't provide the opportunity for us to be truly inspired and feel happy - then what are we doing this for, right? […] That’s my mindset.

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There is a sense for some people out there that modern is very cold and uninviting. And for me, of course, it's far from it. […] It's my job to share how the sense of home, bliss, happiness can be found in it - if you just use the right kind of materials, play with light, and play with the structure, and play with the spaces and the quality of them all.”