first you need to ask jack....and once you're in jack's house.....

Because the client pays you to design a perfect house for them, but they don't even know what that perfect house is and yet they expect you to read their mind and get the product to them.

right but besides the client, i mean what issues does the house suggest? if any at all

meaning can you design a house in such a way as to affect the person and change say a deteriorating neighborhood into a flourishing city. can a single house and the idea behind its design have that kind of influence?

a dwelling is probably one of the most basic and fundamental structures in human existence.

There's far more of it than any other building type.

and - it's the only building type that we are all familiar with in some way, therefore easier for you, as the architecture student, to understand and to build your knowledge from.

before the gallery installations by architects, abstract drawings, so called avant garde essays etc, the single family dwelling was the most obtainable and smallest unit of architecture where architect could test and realize his and her (mostly his) ideas and ideals. SFD was also a complex enough program with a real presence in the real topography, plot, economy, pursuit of happiness and shelter to name a few.
sheltering aspect made it a necessity.
it gave the owners a personal identity and made them fulfill their desires of success in capitalist dream. it was a real engine of american industry, way of living and signifier of consumerist target group; a family unit.

the question you are posing above is hard to answer without knowing the specifics of the locale and economic demographics. but, sure, doesn't each time (if any) a new house built in a depreciating neighborhood would at least interest the other developers and speculators to say, "hmmm.. are we not seeing the picture here?"
also, when empty plots were widely available in developing post war cities in united states, this model impact of a SFD was more of a reality. nowadays, empty lots within cities mostly gone, the significance of architectural presence has less of an impact in a larger picture of mass housing. i think bigger projects with civic interests have more of a significance than SFD's.
I wish it wasn't since my business is depend on it.

i can go on but i rather not.., it is/i am getting more and more vague.

Is it not now housing, rather than the house, that is a significant problem in architecture?

I would suggest that both share a set of economic and social factors and constraints - land and ownership issues, the end-user, the validity of building at all in some cases where there is so much antiquated and unde-rutilised stock in western civilisation.

to Orhan Ayyüce, Thats completely my thoughts as well, I just found another thread on this site you might have seen it : Kazuyo Sejima at the Biennale 2010. It just reminded me of this social responsibility we as architects have vs. those architects that work where the money will be good.

I know money is always an issue but as architects I think we should be more concerned about the social issues (which in modern society, are plentiful).
The house is one of these issues, if we look at the house in the 60's or earlier in the 40's in comparison to today and the way communities have formed i think that many architects would turn to resolving the house. In the 60's and 40's (well that time of our grand parents) society seemed more connected vs today when it is centralized about the individual more.

I think your question has more to do with the economics of neighborhood development rather than the physical form of "the house." You're in danger of heading into historicist new urbanism land if you only focus on things like density, form, and spatial layout. it's an important question, but it's a difficult thing for architects to grapple with because it involves things at a cultural, political, and global scale - something we aren't equipped to handle.

It's significant from an environmental perspective as well. Of our entire built environment, 55% of it's energy usage comes from residential buildings. This alone should be cause for rethinking housing.

the house is no more than a definition of our personal limitations; formal, social, and economical. we have not set ourselves up very well to fight this war. but i like your enthusiasm.

-Because it is easily the largest and most common yet most overlooked building type
-Because the market remains in the stranglehold of contractors & realtors
-Because it has the greatest environmental impact
-Because residential designers have not maintained pace with evolving living patterns
-Because it is the only discipline anymore the architect can realistically perform as "master builder"
-Because of McMansion/ faux chateau and the people who idealize them
-Because of gentrification, today's urban equivalent of suburban tract
-Because of gated golf course communities
-Because of inefficient commutes & wasted time/ fuel

This could go on forever. Homes, 'Hoods & Housing affect everything....

-Because the great recession just showed you why

@spacefraud i like your definition of the house, definitely parameters that have a serious effect. unfortunately the individuals buying the house do not have as much control over what they buy because every house looks so damn similar.

@vado retro love the song, metaphorically it almost shows the pain the house experiences today as this type of mediocre "that'll do" structure

@beekay31 that is an epic list that unfortunately is true. in response to the whole list and ultimately to the whole thread I think it is amazing that, having witnessed here obviously the problem with the house in modern society, Architects do not work on this problem as much in today's world.

Skyscrapers are great and Dubai is all fun for testing new ideas but that game has been played and overplayed. Most of competitions today are for large projects such as skyscrapers but very few if any address the idea of a new housing format and the idea of the house.
A few months ago i saw a competition for college students that asked them to design a prison......
That seems weird but in a way it deals with a different type of house and address' the question I set in the beginning, can a house affect and ultimately change the person living in it in such a way that say a prison inmate would become a better person and after release go and help communities around the world (hypothetically speaking of-course)

This is a difficult question.....the other problem may be is the thought process of modern builders and architects when designing a house. There needs to be more enthusiasm....

Also just wanted to thank all of you for commenting and thinking a bit with me on this topic :)

I see plenty of enthusiasm around designing houses; as Orhan said it's a small lab for testing ideas.

But houses/Dubai skyscrapers isn't an either/or relationship for architects, it's and/too. We can apply ideas across all scales, while specializing our own expertise and practice in one area (for me, right now, that's houses).

as orhan alluded to, in order to truly understand the current state of "housing" and to move forward with this typology you need to look primarily at our patterns of consumption.

otherwise you'll only be testing formal, tectonic, and building systems ideas - and taking superficial stabs at things like sustainability and environmental psychology - which are still definitely very fruitful areas of study (and what most of us focus on), but you won't come up with any groundbreaking changes in our understanding of "dwelling" or in neighborhood development unless you think bigger.

I'm not sure your questions are as large, though - it seems you're mostly focused on the psychological effects of space and form - which is great - not enough people think about this either...

you have to remember that most of the people who buy and live in houses have no fucking concept about architecture and couldn't care less. worse case they want shelter best case they need enough storage to house all accumulated bullshit of their consumer lifestyles. ie three car garages and closets.

1) Cheap
2) (reliably) Climatically-controlled
3) Cheap

And none of these necessarily have anything to do with design.

well that's the thing if the people buying the houses don't care then architects should. Society is investigating how to make cars that get more mpg cant architects do the same with housing?? there is definitely a way to make low cost good design (ye i know its not a new idea and that its been on the mind of some), heck there is a firm in Germany i think it is that makes really nice prefab homes. and nice in a way that the end result don't look prefab. its actually good design.

so as my professor questioned in my project "what is the quality of that space?" I think that architects should start with changing the quality of the space in which we sleep, eat and relax.

in studio we worked on a unhouse this semester and it was actually a really good project because instead of thinking about a house traditionally the way we see them, we where forced to think about houses as simple spaces for 2 individuals and then how to change the quality of the spaces to imply either laying down or sitting or standing.
now is this not in essence what a house is and what people really need? (the average person not the billionares)

are you guys doing someones homework again?

@creativity expert - haha no no-one's doing anyones homework, i was just curious about other people's thoughts on the subject. get a different perspective other then the everyday school

don't you know social engineering is dead.

A house is comprised of two parts: a structure and a familiar unit.

In this most basic definition, almost all buildings are houses.

Is a factory not a house for a computer, machine and process? Is an office building not a house for a company? Is a police station not a house for a security force?

All of these things have a familiar unit whether they be corporations, bureaucracies, artificial autonomy or even nuclear families.

Perhaps, the relation between 20th-century faux-historical nostalgia and the thought that the house could be constructed as something other than the basis of sustenance and maintenance is where we have a problem with what constitutes a house.

despite the turbulence, a house and home ain't the same thing, steve.

"The house is a topic that is focused upon a-lot in my studio at school and a professor for an elective course agrees that it is significant issue except never stopped asking why. Was curious about everyone's else thoughts." opening post

Home residential planning is the most complicated problem, just take a look around your neighborhood, your studio, there is an endless variation on the residential family plan. Designing any other type building floor plan is less complicated. I don't want to even start talking about the 'green architecture movement", but will say that Architects simply joined that LEED bandwagon, and neglected to focus on making a good building floor plan, mainly because it is too time consuming and hard for a project to make a profit, if you focus too much on making it a good building. To day people want it done yesterday. Computer programs have created this false impression that things get done instantly, but that is another thread.

I recommend you get a copy of the wasmuth porfolio, Frank L. Wright's floor plans are drawn there in great detail, from his Prairie Style period. I'm not saying you should copy him or anyone else, just use it as research. Of course there are others you can research, I wouldn't recommend contemporary ones though.

Obviously.

A home is something that can only be built by the people living in it. The concept of home is entirely subjective: comfort, security, safety et cetera. It is made by will and perseverance.

However, the definition of house is synonymous with building if we include legal and artificial beings as units of 'families.'

There is no absolute need to focus on homes. Hospitals, offices and museums are where the money and rosewood is at, yo.

@creaitivity expert - thanks for the recommendation will certainly buy it, that if the problem with society that bothers me; wanting everything now and not taking the time to make it good. But one thing i learned from my school is that if you struggle to figure something out in the beginning then it goes easier later on, so if architects could resolve just one good plan for each condition then we could work from that "blueprint". a sort of trace paper thing


@turd burglar - no doubt that bigger projects bring in more money, but like I have said before, society needs architects that are concerned about problems like the home.

"so if architects could resolve just one good plan for each condition then we could work from that "blueprint". a sort of trace paper thing"

since you are still in school ill let u off easy and say that you cant have a blue print for each and every project, you could have a set of values, the problem is that each and every project is different, in many ways, which you will find out when you go work for about 5 to 8 years.

The first thing you will notice is the there are economic forces, that are beyond any Architects control, with some luck maybe they can be guided, but never controlled.

Most architects spend a lifetime trying to come up with just one good building, let alone coming up with one good building for each and every type of project, but don't let that stop, ok my short lesson is over good luck with your homework.

Most building projects are "significant". I think you can find your way into the city from, a doorknob, or a staircase at any rate.
Also the aforementioned economic forces (often extremely violent, speaking as one living in a distasteful part of Ontario), are commonly not so bad on smaller projects-less to fight over.

The house signifies a subject that your teacher can talk about and for which you will pay money to listen.