Thermal Delight
I am reading Thermal Delight in Architecture by Lisa Heschog.
It reminds me of our time living in a rural farmhouse in Wisconsin, near Mount Horeb and Madison (built in the 1880s by a Norwegian family - Tollefsen). During the cold winter days and nights, we spent nearly all our time in the large kitchen - the central part of the house. We fired the woodstove, baked bread, and were warm and content. We let the rest of the house stay cold as we did not need it for other than occasional use. This strategy - insipired by the design of the house (kitchen as focal point) preserved energy, and gave us hightened awareness of the joys of warmth from wood fire and freshly baked bread.
This is in stark contrast to some bland and boring modern designs where all parts of a building is equally heated... dulling our senses and awareness of our surroundings.