it would be a great site to direct naive or less sophisticated clients to in order to help educate them (brainwash!) in the ideas and process of modern arch.
the houses featured look to be anything but affordable to most amerikans. these are custom homes for wealthy people with taste that appeals to this website.
i guess what intrigues me is that John Brown, the editor, is an architect, and a realtor. I've seen him lecture before and it's interesting how he has uses this medium to not only bring design and architecture to those who wouldn't otherwise be exposed to it, but also to get a lot of commisions too. sure, most of the houses on the website are high end, but i think the common/everyday dialogue he is trying to achieve about design and architecture is good for the profession (arch) as a whole.
I find the slowhome tv clips also a good way to put a friendly face to architecture. we don't all wear black on black!
love it. I'm a big traditionalist as far as my style goes, but I think this concept can easily be used across the board.
Glad this is out there.
I think it can be applied to lower end housing, too. I'll have to think on that for a day or two, but I'm sure it's possible. I'd hate to completely discount the idea just because they feature nicer homes.
I am the editor of slowhome. Thanks to njp for starting the discussion - or I wouldn't have known about this site. After this response I am going to take some time and have a good look around at what you are all doing.
I appreciate everyone's comments - we are trying to make a publicly oriented site and raise the level of design awareness and the benefits of using an architect.
To answer rationalist, the public response to date has been great and as far as we can tell, most of the traffic is from non-architects. We get a lot of hits from Northern Europe, Australia, and the U.S. I have received quite a few emails from middle America suburbanites who are intrigued and glad to learn that there is another option. People really seem to respond to the video clip interviews - and the fact that it puts a human face on the profession. We all have some work to do correcting the mis-perceptions about who architects are and what we can do for people in the residential realm.
To answer vado retro and the others who talk about the high end nature of a lot of the work - it is true, unfortunately, at the moment but we are working on it. We just put up the work of Onion Flats in Philadelphia and QB3, Reigo and Bauer and other young firms are doing more modest work. If anyone knows of other interesting less expensive work I would love to promote it. I know it is out there but can be difficult to find. We are trying to provide an outlet for people that don't get noticed in the normal design journal culture - but we had to start somewhere.
I would appreciate any suggestions anyone might have for making the site better - particularly with respect to public access.
John, welcome. I just spent some time listening to a few of the interviews and its great to see the commitment that the featured architects show toward thoughtful and hopefully affordable design. i don't want to appear flippant when i talk about costs but many of the expenses built into custom residential, whether it be modern or in a traditionalist vein, From finishes to engineering and construction costs, all but a select few are left behind. Therefore, we get the builder gothic look, the symbolically reduced pastiche of architectural elements that allow the "average suburban family" (ie most of amerika), to identify with the idea of home on a superficial level.
I don't know if any one is seriously studying the american family in relation to architecture beyond the marketing aspect. Is there a sense of place or do people just want a place. Do people ( besides the choir that we are speaking to here) give a damn about it? My first hand experience is that price,square footage, closet space and a dramatic two story entry seem to sway people more than quality of construction and details.
And I see this as an issue that will only continue as the collective memory of the american homebuyer has a decreasing recollection of any quality space and place. how important is the quality of physical space to the average suburban american? does it even register? we sit in traffic talking our cell phones or else we are in front of computers. nature is golf. home is a place to store our stuff not to create memories.
Vado, Thanks for the thoughtful response. I have a more optimistic view of the public, I think. It comes from my ten years of running our practice, housebrand in Calgary in which we have found, what I think, is an untapped potential for architects to work with the typical homeowner (middle to upper middle class I suppose, but that is still a huge number of people and not a group that uses architects at all).
From my academic research into why architects aren't more involved with houses in North America I developed this new kind of firm that restructured the way in which an architect interfaces with their client base. housebrand is a vertically integrated service that provides real estate (we help people buy the right property), design -architecture and interiors (to help them tailor the property as either a new build or renovation to their needs), construction (to realize the design in a comprehensive cost effective way), retail sales (we carry a couple lines of good, simple, well built furniture that is a good price point), and limited run manufacturing (to manufacture the things we can't find in the marketplace). We do about 100 hundred projects/year - all in the inner city - and most as renovations to existing houses/condo's etc. The demand that has come at us is such that we could easily do 300 a year, but that would change the nature of our company too much.
Less than 5% of our clients came to us because we are architects (and they were looking for the 'architectural experience of designing a home"). Everyone else just wants a good place to live that they could afford. The comprehensive nature of our service means that we start with their budget and work out the combination of property (land or land plus house) plus upgrades (as architecture and furniture) that best suits their way of living. I have found that all of these people care deeply about where and how they live but have not had the opportunity to express it (or perhaps even articulate a thought about it beyond a general sense of displeasure at production houses). Almost all of them are moving from new suburban communities. They are singles, young couples, families and empty nesters.
Most importantly, we have discovered that once they see what good design and careful construction can do for the quality of their lives they develop a real interest in design. Many people come in to our office with a pretty limited agenda in mind and the process ends up changing their whole way of life.We take the time to teach our clients about visual culture, etc. through the design process and in the fall/winter I run free design lectures to the public one Saturday afternoon per month. There are always at least 20 people there.
Our experience has been interesting but it is still a microcosm. We do 100 projects in the context of 4,500 house sales and 1,300 new suburban home starts in Calgary. What we do is a drop in a big ocean. How deep the vein is that we have found, however, is a very good question. My sense is that while it certainly won't appeal to everyone, the nature of the people we work with suggests that it is probably pretty substantial. Certainly large enough for lots of young architects to build successful careers helping people, and perhaps enough to make a dent in the rather depressing state of so much of our cities.
On the other hand, maybe I am just a hopeless romantic...
My first hand experience is that price,square footage, closet space and a dramatic two story entry seem to sway people more than quality of construction and details.
You know Vado, here in Lubbock our Parade of Homes is a pretty good indicator that people are starting to wake up. 10+ Years ago anyone with tall ceilings, big closets, and catwalks overlooking the living room would win the People's Choice Award by default. But the market has finally started trending toward quality over gimmicks. Craftsmanship and attention to detail have been winning the People's Choice. It gives me hope and helps me build a little more trust and respect for the general public each year.
That's not to say that the starter home market and the "Accounting Crowd" (as I like to call them) aren't still impressed with the "great deals" offered by national mass builders and their poorly proportioned homes that are designed to be built in 3 months. In that market, you're absolutely right. Squeeze about 2000+ square feet in, make the master closet bigger than a typical bedroom, and give them a two-story entry, and they'll buy it as soon as they can get into a sub-prime loan. It's sad to watch. I've begun equating it to purchasing your first trailer house. It really sets me off when the Realtor takes that same crappy house and says "Loaded with cutting edge architectural features" because of the two story entry.
But regardless of the mass builders, I must restate that I have increased hope.
I've actually been doing a rather unscientific survery on another board where I sometimes post, which is totally unrelated to architecture. I posted the ten points from SlowHome, and asked people what they thought of them. I'd suspected that the public would look at these and say "you're crazy, why should I listen?" and wanted to find out if that were the case. Some of the more thoughtful and telling responses were....
"4. You're making me feel guilty, here, but I just can't bring myself to live in the city."
"8. Hogwash. If I prefer a home built in, say, the Arts and Crafts style, why should I not build it?" *****this one was seconded by several people, and Victorian was another style which got a bit of mention
[i]"I think only Howard Roark... ...could possibly care about most of those points"
"I personally like the idea and its something I would consider were I to be buying a home. I cant tell you how many appraisals of new homes I looked at and thought they were expensive and boring"
"people seem to like the idea of the slap togethers built by well known builders"[i/]
The overall impression I got was a)some people like this idea a lot, and agree completely, but they are in the minority: b)many people could really care less where/how they live as long as they can afford it and it doesn't take much work on their part: c)lots of people hate modernism. I was severely tempted to engage them on WHY recreating historical styles is dishonest and stupid, but I resisted because I didn't want to taint the survey or start an architecture arguement with people who frankly have no interest. And d)they like their suburbs. They feel safe there and trust those "well known builders" to provide a quality home better than licensed architects.
I am really glad you started this thread and that I found it! I very much appreciate the thoughtful comments. They will help us build the site. The issue of style is a good one and ususally makes for an interesting conversation over a beer. I agree that lots of people may not realize that there is a problem with suburbia but I also remember (yikes) a time when people didn't think smoking was a problem and, more recently, fast food. We thought the analogy of a suburban monster home to a supersized fries would be something that might give people pause to consider that all might not be right in their world. In my conversations with people there seems to be at least some awareness of how fast food is not only bad for you but culture and the environment. I usually at least get a nod when I say that fast homes cause the same problems - even people still like the 'taste'.
As I read all of the comments I wonder whether adding a section of video interviews with the people who hired the archtiects might be a good idea. They could talk about why they did it and what the good and bad parts of living in a well designed space. For that matter, it doesn't even have to by interviews with clients - just people who have found a creative way to live outside of the suburbs. Finding them might be a bit of a trick I guess...
i don't think that historicism is a crime. i for one like chair rails and crown molding. i like rafter tails and half round copper gutters and downspouts. if it done right the results can be beautiful. like anything it is a question of scale and material. i have worked on a few arts and crafts homes that were extremely well done. but that is because the architects new what the hell they were doing. i also don't necessarily think that people hate modernism, it is more a matter of exposure and the idea or the symbolism of home that they are responding to.
I agree with you at some level, particularly about so called 'arts and crafts'. If the expression comes from a genuine exploration of materials and details then it is great. My problem is with the 'details to go' at the local big box store.
i agree with most of the slowhome idea, but am fairly certain my family, my mother, my late father, and even my brother who knows something about design, would not be interested in many of the ideas expressed on the site. Some of it is mildly condescending, even to my ears (especially the ideas that one style is more valid than another), but more than that the problem is one of expense and culture.
I grew up close to downtown in early 50's suburb, very tightly spaced and walking distance to everything, a new urbanist experience through and through...also an experience of poverty that my parents (and i to a certain extent) have not forgotten. They like the suburbs now because they KNOW from experience that living in homes in the city centre is for poor people, that there is far too much crime and that their kids are gonna be exposed to way too much drugs, sex and violence (certainly true for my brother and i, though we knew enough to avoid it, and thankfully we were not in really big city).
Unfortunately the perception of close dense life in the city is still not a great one. Conversely the status attached to a new mcmansion is not inconsiderable. I see this reality with my friends and family back home in canada (and, ironically, in calgary particularly) all the time. I would not live in their homes, but i am pretty sure they would not like to live in mine in tokyo either. Fair enough.
The idea is nice, and the work is great, but am not sure the public needs to be educated about why their tastes are all wrong. Why suburban life can be correlated to global warming is worth talking about, but the solution to that particualr problem is not one to be solved by style, and maybe not even by density.
kay, that is my prairie boy redkneck grown up to be an architect in tokyo view of things.
of course in larger cities the working poor are being forced to the burbs cuz all the new construction and condo remodels are not affordable to families makin less than 80k a year.
jump - The idea of expense as a justification of the suburbs is something I hear from developers all of the time. But I find their argument to be misleading. I did an informal review of house size and cost in new suburban communities in Calgary and found that only about 20% of current new builds are what one would call the 'afffordable' level. The rest are, in varying shades, big expensive properties on greenfield lots. For the same amount of money these people could afford to purchase a new or renovated home on a brownfield site in an established community (not directly downtown).
If our current system can only muster more affordable home ownership in a suburban context then it is sad but something I can understand. But to continue to use up so many precious resources, and contribute to all of the social problems of sprawl, by building oversized expensive houses on a greenfield site is a problem.
I believe that one of the reasons people don't consider another option to a new home on a new lot is that there is no easily available alternative. Suburban development companies only work on greenfield sites. If you want to do something in an established community then you are on your own. I believe that this is something that the architectural profession can help people with.
in downtown indianapolis you can get yourself a one bedroom in this building of about 870 sf for 175,000 bucks that unit is on the first floor there is a garage and a community(why the hell would you want to share) roof deck.
ah, but mr. brown what you say is exactly the point.
suburbia is based on class structure and designed to keep people of the wrong sort out. that is not right from my perspective, but it is a very real condition of homeownership in north america. blatant racial segregation is pretty hard to do now but economic segregation is still in full force. how is that to be overcome with arguments for modernism over faux-victorian (which is in my opinion perfectly fine if it turns your crank: pop culture is not the architects natural realm and takes a very open mind for it to become so...architects may be liberal but we aren't very open minded ;-) )?
the conditions for sustainability do not require density. they really really don't. that is a correlation people with another agenda are pushing. It can be done with density, but doesn't have to be ( i would direct anyone interested in this discussion to the very good series of books on urban research by Mike Jencks, et al).
Now the bit where things get weird in my view is that dense urban life is in fact much more expensive than suburban. I lived in London and in Tokyo, fantastic liveable cities where cars are not necessary, but the reason most middle class families here live 2 hours from their place of work is land cost. How to get around that issue I am not so sure, but it is worth remembering that the only reason Paris' middle class remained in the centre while london was building suburbia is because they had a benevolent dictatorship going on in the partnership of haussman and napoleon III to see that it was possible. Without political will on that level the entire proposition gets sort of soppy. AND the result in any case was to move the poor into suburbia instead of the wealthy. So what exactly is different?
Because I am an optimist I do believe there is a solution, and i applaud your work for trying (i find most of the architecture quite good and the concept of broadening appeal is very nice). Still, if the goal is actually to improve standard of living and improving the environment, well it may be that more creative effort is required than repeating the mantra about density and then try to tie that to issues of style. Even Duany has stopped doing that.
Maybe the key is to get more specific about what you mean about material honesty: instead of saying that re-creating historical styles is bad, what if you said that the stucco covered foam trim and material waste used to re-create historical styles is irresponsible, and you and your design team should give consideration to reducing excess material use by employing materials in an honest and open manner, regardless of how you wish your home to look....?
actually the suburbs are very diverse. people with less money to burn live there. the new americans have the same misconceptions about living the american dream as anyone else. for example, there was a horrible story that unfolded in the west suburban(of chicago) town of oswego. some asshole killed his family and then shot himself in the arm to make it look like someone else did it. well, guess what they arrested him (do people really think that they can do this and get away with it???) anyway they had the camera crew out at the suburban neighborhood and they interviewed two people about the family. one guy was a fiftyish east indian or pakistani and the other person was a hispanic woman. so the suburbs really aint about white flight anymore. the white flight is moving back to the city in the guise of the young professional or empty nester etc. 150k can get you quite a bit of house out in whispering meadows/hidden ponds/oak manors of the world.
I don't know if I can add much to the discussion, but you're reading this anyway, so here goes.
My best friend and his wife recently moved into a house they had built for them in the suburbs just north of my hometown. Which just happens to be similar to their previous home, also north of the city in a suburb, but perhaps in a less desirable area than the new home. Honestly, I can't tell the difference. But I've never lived in a suburb, so I guess I wouldn't.
What I can tell you is that when somebody's proud of their new home, which they've had built and will be paying off for the next 25 years, even if it's your best friend in the whole world, you can't really question that decision. I wanted to! But that would make me an asshole.
For some people, including my best friend, larger issues surrounding new developments, suburbs, infrastructure, et cetera, simply don't EVER appear on the radar. My friend would look at me like I'm nuts if I even brought up the subject, which I'm quite sure he's never even heard of. I love the guy, but like his new neighbours, I suppose he finds it easier to stick his head in the sand and go on with life. That's his right. I just wish that more people could be made aware - and actually listen to - some of the issues, options and solutions before simply finding the biggest place with the most square footage in the cleanest neighbourhood.
(As an aside, during the housewarming party last night, a neighbour actually called the POLICE because one of the guests DARED to park her car in the middle of the cul-de-sac. At 11pm. Who the hell would WANT neighbours like that, anyway?)
As somebody who's getting read to move to another province in just a month, I'm looking for places, both to rent and buy. What I've found is that in Winnipeg, a city of about 700,000, it's actually cheaper to live downtown than it is on the outskirts of town... at least in some areas (where I am also looking). For this reason and others, developers and non-profits are buying up old and unused buildings downtown (for cheap) and refurbishing them... some into condos, of course, but also rental units and even live/work/art spaces. Nobody's wanted to live downtown in a long time, something that I've experienced in other Canadian cities (Hamilton and London), so that's actually turning into a benefit for the downtown, thanks to the people and companies willing to take a chance on redevelopment of the downtown core.
Although I've said many times that I've never really loved living downtown, I am a big fan of adaptive reuse. It's certainly an option worth exploring.
supposedly white flight was always a bit of a myth. there are lots of books on it lately, and about race relations as result/ impetus of suburbia. my favorite of the recent group is "the new suburban history", edited by kevin kruse and tom sugrue.
the idea that suburbs do not have lots of different groups living in them was never quite true. the idea that suburbs are based on segregation, either racial or economic is still valid...and a whole subject of specilisation in itself. david rusk uses it as excuse/rationalisation for encouraging annexation of suburbs by cities, while others think he is full of it. i have no idea cuz he seems convincing, but so do his detractors.
thing about that particular problem though is that it has nothing to do with style, nor with with architecture, and is mostly about politics and culture...resolving the issue at the same time as we improve our environment is very hard, but it is inevitably included in the discussion. perhaps rightly so. perhaps not. either way, it is impt that we recognise the problem while we try to deal with others, and not conflate the two...
style and its validity i find more troubling. when the early american settlers drew stone in stucco over brick base was it fake, or a new valid style? if fake then why is it now part of historical style that we are trying to preserve? such things are a very slippery slope with no reasonable resolution other than to declare a preference...which is more than enough...mixing morality with decoration is scary for me though. we have many more much more important things to worry about...i think...
In response to Slantsix's story about his friend, I think that you are right about the issues not being on the radar.
Baba Dioum, a Senegalese environmental activist says that "We will preserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we have been taught".
Although the context of the quote is a little different I think the basic premise applies here. The basic education curriculum in North America is totally lacking in any kind of design literacy and so most people don't understand what the problems with non designed supersized homes and repetitive mono-culture single family house communities are. Like the environmental crisis that Dioum is referring to, however, this does not mean that the problem doesn't exist. More importantly, it means that we as a profession have an obligation to address the issue and raise awareness.
This does not mean telling people that they are wrong, or trying to push some stylistic, high brow architecture agenda.
I wish everyone found a need to hire and architect to design their abode. I would be happy to see all the eclectic styles tossed out there if they were designed by architects, just as long as it was done in and Architectural Manner. I must however be frank. I was recently in a neighborhood of small homes some architectural some crap, and along came an almost star architect and dropped his own home a 21st Century Modern, and it did look just like a pimple on a princess. This guy gets to lecture at places like Harvard and I assume other universities around the country. I wonder how close cropped are his photos to exclude what pre dates his project. Nice but not so nice for the neighborhood....this is the problem with 21 st Century Modern.
"The basic education curriculum in North America is totally lacking in any kind of design literacy and so most people don't understand what the problems with non designed supersized homes and repetitive mono-culture single family house communities are"
no, they are not. will a re-education in the inherent bad-ness of faux grecian urn buildings turn people into proper urban folk? Are designed supersized homes alright?
More to point, early critics of suburbia in london said mono-culture single-family rowhouses on edge of city centre were bad for english culture and a sure sign of dementia and all the rest, but now are viewed as environmentally sustainable models. still mono-culture and repetitive blocks (and to me still slightly mind-numbing). but now models for the good. what happened? attitudes change, even if buildings don't. so my question is what is the issue? is it style, the environment, energy use, or something else? When all thrown together it becomes very hard to take it seriously cuz whatever the intention the feeling from low-culture brats like myself is that someone is taking a digg at my lifestyle and attaching the rationale to something that is actually important like the environment. good architecture is not always good culture.
sorry for sounding preachy, cuz the site is very cool. just that i have this conversation all the time with my family back home and this is more or less what they tell me. and they remind me that not being educated does not mean they are stupid. they just have different priorities based on different knowledge set...and if we really want to plug into the mainstream we are gonna have to acknowledge that alternate approach to life.
"sorry for sounding preachy, cuz the site is very cool. just that i have this conversation all the time with my family back home and this is more or less what they tell me. and they remind me that not being educated does not mean they are stupid. they just have different priorities based on different knowledge set...and if we really want to plug into the mainstream we are gonna have to acknowledge that alternate approach to life."
I think there is a difference between not knowing about something and being so called stupid. If someone is not aware about the relationship between the layout of suburban neighborhoods and obesity that does not mean that there is anything wrong with them or that they are a bad person. It does mean that there might be some things to learn about that are important to them and their family. What I don't understand is the knee jerk reaction that you describe as if there is some kind of threat from knowledge. It doesn't happen in other fields, why design?
fair enough. i am too critical on this topic. that is side effect of recent pressure of phd research (topic is suburbia and compact city). My professors are very sharp and it has made me cynical ;-)
i don't think it is knee-jerk reaction to knowledge though, more a suspicion that something is being sold with an ulterior motive.
case in point...the connection between obesity and suburbia is, as you likely know, not certain. The central argument against the idea is that the causal relationship is not clear. That fat people live in suburbia does not mean that suburbia creates fat people. It might, but it might not too. There are other possibilities (my guess is all those potato chips)...either way, the comment sounds like someone complaining that hippie communes cause people to grow long hair and smoke pot.
Another example is rationalist's pick up above about material honesty. She offered a reason tied to environmental concerns for why a material might be bad. Which is fair enough, but i gotta wonder, shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean here we have a smart person looking for a reason to decide that fake trim is bad. The starting point is that fake trim is bad, not that we should improve the environment...talk about spin. Regular folk pick up on that and react.
My mum never finished high school but she is bright and very well informed about the world she lives in. She worries that her ex-urban lifestyle is not sustainable and understands the alternatives laid out before her, but she is not willing to live in the city again just the same. And it is the approach which decides an outcome (density) and then finds the problem (suburbia) which gives her reason to doubt. She wouldn't put it that way, but that is pretty much it.
Mike Jencks went so far as to say that there is now so much research for and against the compact city that you can prove the position either way depending on which information you choose to use as supporting evidence. His response to this problem was to suggest we have another look at suburbia and the city and see what is REALLY there, and maybe re-define the problem so it isn't so easy to manipulate.
What i really appreciate about your site is that it is about DOING, not studying. Still, if the desire is to convince masses of people that we need to live more densely and make good architecture in the process i am not so sure it will happen by suggesting they give up their attachment to doric columns...it works for the choir (including me! I don't like suburbia, don't have a car, and don't want one), but for folk like my mum in small-town manitoba? i don't think it does much for them.
I boil it down to this: from what I understand, there are convincing arguments to live densely.
Knowing this full well, I still don't want to EVER live in a high-rise building again. I like living in the city (in older, 'semi-dense' neighbourhoods) and my girlfriend is, as I type this, looking at apartments for us in Osborne village in Winnipeg, where I'll be working (she's also attending U of M, btw).
Even as a person who's semi-cognizant (and maybe semi-ignorant) of density and design and ecological issues, you still can't convince me that living in a condo in downtown Toronto, for example, is good for the MIND and SOUL.
Most people don't want to feel like sardines packed in a tin. I don't. But I also don't want to move to the suburbs, perhaps for some of the opposite reasons. And that's what we need to figure out - not some new architectural style that's going to save the day, because it's not. I'm a big proponent of design in all varieties, but that is not the same as a style, which is prone to fads, manipulation, and bad copying. Design, on the other hand, is wholistic. To focus on one area much more than another won't take us very far.
"What i really appreciate about your site is that it is about DOING, not studying. Still, if the desire is to convince masses of people that we need to live more densely and make good architecture in the process i am not so sure it will happen by suggesting they give up their attachment to doric columns...it works for the choir (including me! I don't like suburbia, don't have a car, and don't want one), but for folk like my mum in small-town manitoba? i don't think it does much for them.
kay, will get off soapbox."
I appreciate your argument. You are one of the few architects I have met who hasn't just jumped on the architectural bandwagon leaving the rest behind. I appreciate and respect the fact that you are truly concerned about the relevance to the 'average suburbanite' of what the profession is doing and saying about their homes.
I don't think the answer is as simple as just living more densely, or in the city, I also think that there are many more than one answer, and that each area, region, culture, street, person, may actually need/ have their own answer. Or maybe the whole idea of an 'answer' is wrong.
What I am interested in is bringing some design literacy to the public in a somewhat entertaining way so that more people can at least start to look at their surroundings more clearly. I don't have a problem with someone deciding, in a more informed way, that they like doric columns. I do mind them having them just because some slick marketing brochure sold them on them as an "idea of home". For me that is too shallow and disrespectful to the person living there. Homes are too important and too expensive to be sold as a marketing proxy.
If you look at the slow food movement, Petrini doesn't espouse a particular type of food. He says that slow food is good, clean and fair in the way in which it is produced, prepared, and enjoyed at the table. That means many different things to many different cultures, and all of them are 'answers' or responses, or critical resistances to the homogenization of processed, industrialized food.
I would like to think that the same debate, movement could be said with housing. I define a fast house as something that is first and foremost an instrument of capitalist production, created by an industrialized process and sold through a sophisticated marketing program. They are poorly designed (not an aesthetic argument but environmental, functional, etc.) and carelessly made. It is a product that is designed to be consumed without resonance, consequence, or preparation, to quote Albart Borgmann.
Like a Big Mac, they therefore starts to fracture the dense and deep set of relationships between us and our surroundings. Food is about more than the ingestion of nutrients and fast food reduces the engagement of preparing food and the culture of eating as part of a larger social event into a ninety second grab and dash. In fast houses we are disconnected from how our houses are made and their form affects our social relationships. (It can be hard to know your neighbor when there are no sidewalks, no front porches, and no public spaces.
"In fast houses we are disconnected from how our houses are made and their form affects our social relationships. (It can be hard to know your neighbor when there are no sidewalks, no front porches, and no public spaces."
What I get out of this is that it's less about architecture, and more about planning.
When I look around me, modern and new housing tend not to have porches at all. The old houses do, nearly all of them. But is this addressed in the slow home manifesto? I see no mention of any of these concerns (sidewalks, porches, public spaces) in the Seven Principles. That's not a jab at you or this movement or the principles, but at least from where I'm standing, architecture is but just one of many key areas that can help with your goals.
Maybe a better name might be 'slow communities.'
By the way, I read "SLOW" (the original book) and while some of it was a bit much, I've taken a lot of it to heart. But then, I've never been TYPE A, anyway ;)
the trading off of variation and density in favor of economy and sterility is the essence of many suburbs. Though part of the problem is a design problem, i think it is unfortunately only a tiny fraction of the real problem. It is the nature of every species on earth to grow and expand, pushing its resources to the brink, testing the limits of its population, until finally, its ceiling is reached and its population crashes.
In the modern world there is no real difference. Perhaps we, though conscious and able to stop our often tragic ascent, are not that disimilar from the rest of life as we would like to believe.
This is a very fatalistic statement and i dont mean to say that we are not capable of drastically changing course unless being forced to, but it is hard to deny that it does look like this is as much a human trait as it is animal.
I feel like the trick to developing a more sustainable development pattern comes from altering the sets of priorities that people have discussed above. If we are willing to correlate suburban sprawl with other willfully degrading behaviors like fast food and smoking, perhaps the time is coming that we push for similar reactions, and instead of looking to change peoples minds, force them too. Just as the cig companies have been forced to do, make it mandatory that the ecological cost of that house, that yard, that driveway, that mile long cul-de-saq, that arterial road, that million sq ft shopping mall, be explained and shown. Like the fast food restaurants have been forced to do, present the studies linking car-centric living and serious health issues to all interested in joining in this life style, because in essence, everything is a business.
Developers could care less about any of the issues were discussing as long as people keep buying and building. Subdivisions are businesses; Cities are businesses; and we all know that often what the market dictates (fast food, big cars, filtered cigarettes) are not best.
this might seem drastic, and honestly, im not sure i even support this vein of thought... its just what came to my mind reading these responses. keep it up, this is a great thread
in addition, the vertically integrated system John Brown discusses seems to be a move in that changing of minds direction. The markets that drive unsustainable suburban growth can be altered even if they seem to have unstoppable momentum. I guess im going back on my fatalistic view when i say that though it would be a long long process. its possible that people will change their courses before the apocalypse if the motivation is the right kind.
"It is the nature of every species on earth to grow and expand, pushing its resources to the brink, testing the limits of its population, until finally, its ceiling is reached and its population crashes."
Pardon me?
This might be true for humans, but if you can cite one other animal OR plant for which this statement is true, I'll eat my shorts.
The way we live, as humans, isn't sustainable. Yet gorillas, dolphins, ants, elm trees and slugs seem to be able to do it. There's no wasted energy in nature, as they say. Only a change of state. Other living things don't "push their resources to the brink" and I'm not sure where you got that idea.
This is a great discussion, and I think some great responses have been made. I haven't seen everything on the site yet, but so far it looks smart and engaging. I think it is valuable for making architects realize their own power in changing the tide of development in smaller scale steps. As in the movements it is compared to, such as those against global warming or fast food, its value lies in educating the average person and helping them see that there are options, that their choices make a difference. The intense marketing campaigns of the homebuilder cartels make most people think these are the only alternatives they have. Some might still choose sprawl after learning its effects, but if they are at least making an informed decision, I think we will see a change in buying habits rather than everyone just moving into the biggest subdivision house for which they can land a mortgage.
Having been interested in this subject for a while, I just finished Suburban Nation, and I think that it is particularly relevant to some of the issues raised here by jump and others. One of those that comes to mind while reading this discussion seems to be an idea that the only alternative to suburban sprawl is dense city development. That, to me, is an understandable concern, but can also be a misleading argument that could derail the whole thing. Density isn't the only option; smart development is the key at any density. The problem with suburban sprawl isn't solely its lack of density. It is the fact that it consumes ravenous amounts of greenfield, of which a large percentage is paved for large amounts of roads that end up chaining the residents, not freeing them.
With traditional neighborhoods and development, streets are smaller, more regular, and include mixed uses within walking distance. Sprawl contributes to obesity and global warming not by virtue of the density of development alone, but also because that development is regimented to separate uses, unsafe or impassable areas for pedestrians, and pave enormous amounts of public space to cater to the almighty automobile. This means economic hardship on everyone, as each family essentially is forced to own a car for every licensed family member. Every trip requires an automobile, as even if you want a tube of toothpaste, there is no local store to which you can walk, and the Wal-Mart behind your subdivision, though only a few hundred yards away, is separated by berms and ditches required by the zoning laws.
Thoughtful home and neighborhood development doesn't mean one has to live in a condo in the inner city. While we do need more dense, compact, well-designed urban areas, we also need well-designed small cities, towns, villages, and rural areas based on the traditional models that worked for centuries before the birth of the extreme form of sprawl from which we suffer today.
While I am personally a devotee of modern architecture, I understand that it is unlikely (or at least a long way off) for the general public to embrace it in a large scale - much as it frustrates me at times. Whether that is appropriate or not is another discussion. However, we all have to be concerned about the problems of sprawl and the dangerous communities being built by developers all over the country. I live in a city in which it is necessary to own a car to get almost anywhere; public transit is very weak with no sign of improvement on the near horizon, at least. If I have my way, I will move to a larger, denser city where I can walk or bike or ride the train, and probably just rent a car for weekend trips. My brother, given the choice, would live in a cabin in the center of a twenty-acre wooded lot, drive to work every day in his pickup truck, and maybe go to town for groceries and other supplies a few times a month. There should be room for both of us to live as we like, as well as those in between, but continued sprawl development could eliminate both of those types of living environments if it continues unabated.
species will maximize their populations until their doing so negatively affects the ability for that species to survive. for many species, the change in population is a seasonal variation. Rabbits numbers swell in the spring and summer while resources are plentiful and then decrease in the winter when resources are to scarce to support the spring population boom. i didnt realize this was an off the wall idea
the way deer populations explode when the weather is particularly good and there is fresh green everywhere isnt a sustainable growth pattern either, but the only reason its considered normal is because they dont have the potential to bring about the destruction of the planet.
there, i named one... send me a picture of the shorts eating pretty please? haha just teasing... i think what your describing as a change of state, im calling the point at which a population adjusts back to what its context can support
sorry, i've joined the discussion late... and though i also have views regarding the density/sustainability issue...
and i think you could definately debate the fast food/cig/alchohol analogy... though i think that it would be difficult to make evident certain detrimental side effects from living in the burbs/city etc. however, there was one thing that caught my eye, that actually addresses the disconnect between us and them... and that's this:
"From my academic research into why architects aren't more involved with houses in North America I developed this new kind of firm that restructured the way in which an architect interfaces with their client base. housebrand is a vertically integrated service that provides real estate (we help people buy the right property), design -architecture and interiors (to help them tailor the property as either a new build or renovation to their needs), construction (to realize the design in a comprehensive cost effective way), retail sales (we carry a couple lines of good, simple, well built furniture that is a good price point), and limited run manufacturing (to manufacture the things we can't find in the marketplace). We do about 100 hundred projects/year..."
i think this is the most important way to deal with ANY problem. This kind of consultation, attention, sensitivity....is the real missing link. Not many attempt to bridge our worlds. Certainly, the type of architecture I do is "hands off" by comparison. It's fairly disgusting in a lot of respects. People have priorities, people champion certain ideas, a look, the fact that they bought 50 solar thermal panels and need to stick them on a building (this is happening on a project that needs about 2-3)...
anyway, by providing more attention and care to any givin problem you are going to have a better solution... sustainability in all respects, (bills, energy, happiness, lifestyle)... i think that's a strong message that we could/should impress upon our clients... i think the idea that you sink a little more in an architects/planner/thinking, may give you something valuable... something worth more than the extra square feet a developer can offer. perhaps i'm not in touch with the average home buyer, but i think it could happen... just compare home buying to egagement ring shopping... (which i'm almost done with, but i'm investing a lot of money in something that i need to live with the rest of my life, so i sit down with a few professionals, the give me some advice, i custom design a ring, and have a wax cut so i can see it, then get it made)...
i don't know, i guess i agree with mr. brown on a bunch of points, it's the awareness of value (tangible and otherwise). i disagree, or perhaps i don't subscribe to some of the 10 points, etc, in which a solution to a given problem falls into that mold... (even though I agree with the points in most instances, but i think this advice happens once you evaluate the given problem)
all right, i'm done, i'm starting to not make sense
slowhome
some interesting concepts and commentary at this new site focused on making modern residential architecture more accessible.
www.slowhome.com
discuss!
oops.
www.theslowhome.com
I think it pretty much embodies what most architects believe in.... but I'm curious as to how the public would react to it.
it would be a great site to direct naive or less sophisticated clients to in order to help educate them (brainwash!) in the ideas and process of modern arch.
i was just gonna mention http://www.slowfood.com/ but see that this was the inspiration for slow home...will have to read up on it
for many Americans, fast food (and fast homes) are all that they can afford
the houses featured look to be anything but affordable to most amerikans. these are custom homes for wealthy people with taste that appeals to this website.
yep
I like eating fancy food
quality aint cheap
Did Tyler Durden write the essay on the front page?
i guess what intrigues me is that John Brown, the editor, is an architect, and a realtor. I've seen him lecture before and it's interesting how he has uses this medium to not only bring design and architecture to those who wouldn't otherwise be exposed to it, but also to get a lot of commisions too. sure, most of the houses on the website are high end, but i think the common/everyday dialogue he is trying to achieve about design and architecture is good for the profession (arch) as a whole.
I find the slowhome tv clips also a good way to put a friendly face to architecture. we don't all wear black on black!
love it. I'm a big traditionalist as far as my style goes, but I think this concept can easily be used across the board.
Glad this is out there.
I think it can be applied to lower end housing, too. I'll have to think on that for a day or two, but I'm sure it's possible. I'd hate to completely discount the idea just because they feature nicer homes.
its a slowhome alright when you got those steel beam lead times to consider.
Or if you want a custom front door that the owner can't make a decision on until the house is already sheetrocked.
I am the editor of slowhome. Thanks to njp for starting the discussion - or I wouldn't have known about this site. After this response I am going to take some time and have a good look around at what you are all doing.
I appreciate everyone's comments - we are trying to make a publicly oriented site and raise the level of design awareness and the benefits of using an architect.
To answer rationalist, the public response to date has been great and as far as we can tell, most of the traffic is from non-architects. We get a lot of hits from Northern Europe, Australia, and the U.S. I have received quite a few emails from middle America suburbanites who are intrigued and glad to learn that there is another option. People really seem to respond to the video clip interviews - and the fact that it puts a human face on the profession. We all have some work to do correcting the mis-perceptions about who architects are and what we can do for people in the residential realm.
To answer vado retro and the others who talk about the high end nature of a lot of the work - it is true, unfortunately, at the moment but we are working on it. We just put up the work of Onion Flats in Philadelphia and QB3, Reigo and Bauer and other young firms are doing more modest work. If anyone knows of other interesting less expensive work I would love to promote it. I know it is out there but can be difficult to find. We are trying to provide an outlet for people that don't get noticed in the normal design journal culture - but we had to start somewhere.
I would appreciate any suggestions anyone might have for making the site better - particularly with respect to public access.
John, welcome. I just spent some time listening to a few of the interviews and its great to see the commitment that the featured architects show toward thoughtful and hopefully affordable design. i don't want to appear flippant when i talk about costs but many of the expenses built into custom residential, whether it be modern or in a traditionalist vein, From finishes to engineering and construction costs, all but a select few are left behind. Therefore, we get the builder gothic look, the symbolically reduced pastiche of architectural elements that allow the "average suburban family" (ie most of amerika), to identify with the idea of home on a superficial level.
I don't know if any one is seriously studying the american family in relation to architecture beyond the marketing aspect. Is there a sense of place or do people just want a place. Do people ( besides the choir that we are speaking to here) give a damn about it? My first hand experience is that price,square footage, closet space and a dramatic two story entry seem to sway people more than quality of construction and details.
And I see this as an issue that will only continue as the collective memory of the american homebuyer has a decreasing recollection of any quality space and place. how important is the quality of physical space to the average suburban american? does it even register? we sit in traffic talking our cell phones or else we are in front of computers. nature is golf. home is a place to store our stuff not to create memories.
Vado, Thanks for the thoughtful response. I have a more optimistic view of the public, I think. It comes from my ten years of running our practice, housebrand in Calgary in which we have found, what I think, is an untapped potential for architects to work with the typical homeowner (middle to upper middle class I suppose, but that is still a huge number of people and not a group that uses architects at all).
From my academic research into why architects aren't more involved with houses in North America I developed this new kind of firm that restructured the way in which an architect interfaces with their client base. housebrand is a vertically integrated service that provides real estate (we help people buy the right property), design -architecture and interiors (to help them tailor the property as either a new build or renovation to their needs), construction (to realize the design in a comprehensive cost effective way), retail sales (we carry a couple lines of good, simple, well built furniture that is a good price point), and limited run manufacturing (to manufacture the things we can't find in the marketplace). We do about 100 hundred projects/year - all in the inner city - and most as renovations to existing houses/condo's etc. The demand that has come at us is such that we could easily do 300 a year, but that would change the nature of our company too much.
Less than 5% of our clients came to us because we are architects (and they were looking for the 'architectural experience of designing a home"). Everyone else just wants a good place to live that they could afford. The comprehensive nature of our service means that we start with their budget and work out the combination of property (land or land plus house) plus upgrades (as architecture and furniture) that best suits their way of living. I have found that all of these people care deeply about where and how they live but have not had the opportunity to express it (or perhaps even articulate a thought about it beyond a general sense of displeasure at production houses). Almost all of them are moving from new suburban communities. They are singles, young couples, families and empty nesters.
Most importantly, we have discovered that once they see what good design and careful construction can do for the quality of their lives they develop a real interest in design. Many people come in to our office with a pretty limited agenda in mind and the process ends up changing their whole way of life.We take the time to teach our clients about visual culture, etc. through the design process and in the fall/winter I run free design lectures to the public one Saturday afternoon per month. There are always at least 20 people there.
Our experience has been interesting but it is still a microcosm. We do 100 projects in the context of 4,500 house sales and 1,300 new suburban home starts in Calgary. What we do is a drop in a big ocean. How deep the vein is that we have found, however, is a very good question. My sense is that while it certainly won't appeal to everyone, the nature of the people we work with suggests that it is probably pretty substantial. Certainly large enough for lots of young architects to build successful careers helping people, and perhaps enough to make a dent in the rather depressing state of so much of our cities.
On the other hand, maybe I am just a hopeless romantic...
one hundred projects is a hell of a lot of projects. it doesn't sound like the harper's ferry analogy applies to you john.
You know Vado, here in Lubbock our Parade of Homes is a pretty good indicator that people are starting to wake up. 10+ Years ago anyone with tall ceilings, big closets, and catwalks overlooking the living room would win the People's Choice Award by default. But the market has finally started trending toward quality over gimmicks. Craftsmanship and attention to detail have been winning the People's Choice. It gives me hope and helps me build a little more trust and respect for the general public each year.
That's not to say that the starter home market and the "Accounting Crowd" (as I like to call them) aren't still impressed with the "great deals" offered by national mass builders and their poorly proportioned homes that are designed to be built in 3 months. In that market, you're absolutely right. Squeeze about 2000+ square feet in, make the master closet bigger than a typical bedroom, and give them a two-story entry, and they'll buy it as soon as they can get into a sub-prime loan. It's sad to watch. I've begun equating it to purchasing your first trailer house. It really sets me off when the Realtor takes that same crappy house and says "Loaded with cutting edge architectural features" because of the two story entry.
But regardless of the mass builders, I must restate that I have increased hope.
I've actually been doing a rather unscientific survery on another board where I sometimes post, which is totally unrelated to architecture. I posted the ten points from SlowHome, and asked people what they thought of them. I'd suspected that the public would look at these and say "you're crazy, why should I listen?" and wanted to find out if that were the case. Some of the more thoughtful and telling responses were....
"4. You're making me feel guilty, here, but I just can't bring myself to live in the city."
"8. Hogwash. If I prefer a home built in, say, the Arts and Crafts style, why should I not build it?" *****this one was seconded by several people, and Victorian was another style which got a bit of mention
[i]"I think only Howard Roark... ...could possibly care about most of those points"
"I personally like the idea and its something I would consider were I to be buying a home. I cant tell you how many appraisals of new homes I looked at and thought they were expensive and boring"
"people seem to like the idea of the slap togethers built by well known builders"[i/]
The overall impression I got was a)some people like this idea a lot, and agree completely, but they are in the minority: b)many people could really care less where/how they live as long as they can afford it and it doesn't take much work on their part: c)lots of people hate modernism. I was severely tempted to engage them on WHY recreating historical styles is dishonest and stupid, but I resisted because I didn't want to taint the survey or start an architecture arguement with people who frankly have no interest. And d)they like their suburbs. They feel safe there and trust those "well known builders" to provide a quality home better than licensed architects.
This is a great thread. The Ten Steps at the slowhome site are spot on. Is this a manifesto? Where do I sign?
I am really glad you started this thread and that I found it! I very much appreciate the thoughtful comments. They will help us build the site. The issue of style is a good one and ususally makes for an interesting conversation over a beer. I agree that lots of people may not realize that there is a problem with suburbia but I also remember (yikes) a time when people didn't think smoking was a problem and, more recently, fast food. We thought the analogy of a suburban monster home to a supersized fries would be something that might give people pause to consider that all might not be right in their world. In my conversations with people there seems to be at least some awareness of how fast food is not only bad for you but culture and the environment. I usually at least get a nod when I say that fast homes cause the same problems - even people still like the 'taste'.
As I read all of the comments I wonder whether adding a section of video interviews with the people who hired the archtiects might be a good idea. They could talk about why they did it and what the good and bad parts of living in a well designed space. For that matter, it doesn't even have to by interviews with clients - just people who have found a creative way to live outside of the suburbs. Finding them might be a bit of a trick I guess...
Any thoughts?
i don't think that historicism is a crime. i for one like chair rails and crown molding. i like rafter tails and half round copper gutters and downspouts. if it done right the results can be beautiful. like anything it is a question of scale and material. i have worked on a few arts and crafts homes that were extremely well done. but that is because the architects new what the hell they were doing. i also don't necessarily think that people hate modernism, it is more a matter of exposure and the idea or the symbolism of home that they are responding to.
I agree with you at some level, particularly about so called 'arts and crafts'. If the expression comes from a genuine exploration of materials and details then it is great. My problem is with the 'details to go' at the local big box store.
i agree with most of the slowhome idea, but am fairly certain my family, my mother, my late father, and even my brother who knows something about design, would not be interested in many of the ideas expressed on the site. Some of it is mildly condescending, even to my ears (especially the ideas that one style is more valid than another), but more than that the problem is one of expense and culture.
I grew up close to downtown in early 50's suburb, very tightly spaced and walking distance to everything, a new urbanist experience through and through...also an experience of poverty that my parents (and i to a certain extent) have not forgotten. They like the suburbs now because they KNOW from experience that living in homes in the city centre is for poor people, that there is far too much crime and that their kids are gonna be exposed to way too much drugs, sex and violence (certainly true for my brother and i, though we knew enough to avoid it, and thankfully we were not in really big city).
Unfortunately the perception of close dense life in the city is still not a great one. Conversely the status attached to a new mcmansion is not inconsiderable. I see this reality with my friends and family back home in canada (and, ironically, in calgary particularly) all the time. I would not live in their homes, but i am pretty sure they would not like to live in mine in tokyo either. Fair enough.
The idea is nice, and the work is great, but am not sure the public needs to be educated about why their tastes are all wrong. Why suburban life can be correlated to global warming is worth talking about, but the solution to that particualr problem is not one to be solved by style, and maybe not even by density.
kay, that is my prairie boy redkneck grown up to be an architect in tokyo view of things.
of course in larger cities the working poor are being forced to the burbs cuz all the new construction and condo remodels are not affordable to families makin less than 80k a year.
jump - The idea of expense as a justification of the suburbs is something I hear from developers all of the time. But I find their argument to be misleading. I did an informal review of house size and cost in new suburban communities in Calgary and found that only about 20% of current new builds are what one would call the 'afffordable' level. The rest are, in varying shades, big expensive properties on greenfield lots. For the same amount of money these people could afford to purchase a new or renovated home on a brownfield site in an established community (not directly downtown).
If our current system can only muster more affordable home ownership in a suburban context then it is sad but something I can understand. But to continue to use up so many precious resources, and contribute to all of the social problems of sprawl, by building oversized expensive houses on a greenfield site is a problem.
I believe that one of the reasons people don't consider another option to a new home on a new lot is that there is no easily available alternative. Suburban development companies only work on greenfield sites. If you want to do something in an established community then you are on your own. I believe that this is something that the architectural profession can help people with.
in downtown indianapolis you can get yourself a one bedroom in this building of about 870 sf for 175,000 bucks that unit is on the first floor there is a garage and a community(why the hell would you want to share) roof deck.
ah, but mr. brown what you say is exactly the point.
suburbia is based on class structure and designed to keep people of the wrong sort out. that is not right from my perspective, but it is a very real condition of homeownership in north america. blatant racial segregation is pretty hard to do now but economic segregation is still in full force. how is that to be overcome with arguments for modernism over faux-victorian (which is in my opinion perfectly fine if it turns your crank: pop culture is not the architects natural realm and takes a very open mind for it to become so...architects may be liberal but we aren't very open minded ;-) )?
the conditions for sustainability do not require density. they really really don't. that is a correlation people with another agenda are pushing. It can be done with density, but doesn't have to be ( i would direct anyone interested in this discussion to the very good series of books on urban research by Mike Jencks, et al).
Now the bit where things get weird in my view is that dense urban life is in fact much more expensive than suburban. I lived in London and in Tokyo, fantastic liveable cities where cars are not necessary, but the reason most middle class families here live 2 hours from their place of work is land cost. How to get around that issue I am not so sure, but it is worth remembering that the only reason Paris' middle class remained in the centre while london was building suburbia is because they had a benevolent dictatorship going on in the partnership of haussman and napoleon III to see that it was possible. Without political will on that level the entire proposition gets sort of soppy. AND the result in any case was to move the poor into suburbia instead of the wealthy. So what exactly is different?
Because I am an optimist I do believe there is a solution, and i applaud your work for trying (i find most of the architecture quite good and the concept of broadening appeal is very nice). Still, if the goal is actually to improve standard of living and improving the environment, well it may be that more creative effort is required than repeating the mantra about density and then try to tie that to issues of style. Even Duany has stopped doing that.
Maybe the key is to get more specific about what you mean about material honesty: instead of saying that re-creating historical styles is bad, what if you said that the stucco covered foam trim and material waste used to re-create historical styles is irresponsible, and you and your design team should give consideration to reducing excess material use by employing materials in an honest and open manner, regardless of how you wish your home to look....?
actually the suburbs are very diverse. people with less money to burn live there. the new americans have the same misconceptions about living the american dream as anyone else. for example, there was a horrible story that unfolded in the west suburban(of chicago) town of oswego. some asshole killed his family and then shot himself in the arm to make it look like someone else did it. well, guess what they arrested him (do people really think that they can do this and get away with it???) anyway they had the camera crew out at the suburban neighborhood and they interviewed two people about the family. one guy was a fiftyish east indian or pakistani and the other person was a hispanic woman. so the suburbs really aint about white flight anymore. the white flight is moving back to the city in the guise of the young professional or empty nester etc. 150k can get you quite a bit of house out in whispering meadows/hidden ponds/oak manors of the world.
I don't know if I can add much to the discussion, but you're reading this anyway, so here goes.
My best friend and his wife recently moved into a house they had built for them in the suburbs just north of my hometown. Which just happens to be similar to their previous home, also north of the city in a suburb, but perhaps in a less desirable area than the new home. Honestly, I can't tell the difference. But I've never lived in a suburb, so I guess I wouldn't.
What I can tell you is that when somebody's proud of their new home, which they've had built and will be paying off for the next 25 years, even if it's your best friend in the whole world, you can't really question that decision. I wanted to! But that would make me an asshole.
For some people, including my best friend, larger issues surrounding new developments, suburbs, infrastructure, et cetera, simply don't EVER appear on the radar. My friend would look at me like I'm nuts if I even brought up the subject, which I'm quite sure he's never even heard of. I love the guy, but like his new neighbours, I suppose he finds it easier to stick his head in the sand and go on with life. That's his right. I just wish that more people could be made aware - and actually listen to - some of the issues, options and solutions before simply finding the biggest place with the most square footage in the cleanest neighbourhood.
(As an aside, during the housewarming party last night, a neighbour actually called the POLICE because one of the guests DARED to park her car in the middle of the cul-de-sac. At 11pm. Who the hell would WANT neighbours like that, anyway?)
As somebody who's getting read to move to another province in just a month, I'm looking for places, both to rent and buy. What I've found is that in Winnipeg, a city of about 700,000, it's actually cheaper to live downtown than it is on the outskirts of town... at least in some areas (where I am also looking). For this reason and others, developers and non-profits are buying up old and unused buildings downtown (for cheap) and refurbishing them... some into condos, of course, but also rental units and even live/work/art spaces. Nobody's wanted to live downtown in a long time, something that I've experienced in other Canadian cities (Hamilton and London), so that's actually turning into a benefit for the downtown, thanks to the people and companies willing to take a chance on redevelopment of the downtown core.
Although I've said many times that I've never really loved living downtown, I am a big fan of adaptive reuse. It's certainly an option worth exploring.
supposedly white flight was always a bit of a myth. there are lots of books on it lately, and about race relations as result/ impetus of suburbia. my favorite of the recent group is "the new suburban history", edited by kevin kruse and tom sugrue.
the idea that suburbs do not have lots of different groups living in them was never quite true. the idea that suburbs are based on segregation, either racial or economic is still valid...and a whole subject of specilisation in itself. david rusk uses it as excuse/rationalisation for encouraging annexation of suburbs by cities, while others think he is full of it. i have no idea cuz he seems convincing, but so do his detractors.
thing about that particular problem though is that it has nothing to do with style, nor with with architecture, and is mostly about politics and culture...resolving the issue at the same time as we improve our environment is very hard, but it is inevitably included in the discussion. perhaps rightly so. perhaps not. either way, it is impt that we recognise the problem while we try to deal with others, and not conflate the two...
style and its validity i find more troubling. when the early american settlers drew stone in stucco over brick base was it fake, or a new valid style? if fake then why is it now part of historical style that we are trying to preserve? such things are a very slippery slope with no reasonable resolution other than to declare a preference...which is more than enough...mixing morality with decoration is scary for me though. we have many more much more important things to worry about...i think...
In response to Slantsix's story about his friend, I think that you are right about the issues not being on the radar.
Baba Dioum, a Senegalese environmental activist says that "We will preserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we have been taught".
Although the context of the quote is a little different I think the basic premise applies here. The basic education curriculum in North America is totally lacking in any kind of design literacy and so most people don't understand what the problems with non designed supersized homes and repetitive mono-culture single family house communities are. Like the environmental crisis that Dioum is referring to, however, this does not mean that the problem doesn't exist. More importantly, it means that we as a profession have an obligation to address the issue and raise awareness.
This does not mean telling people that they are wrong, or trying to push some stylistic, high brow architecture agenda.
I wish everyone found a need to hire and architect to design their abode. I would be happy to see all the eclectic styles tossed out there if they were designed by architects, just as long as it was done in and Architectural Manner. I must however be frank. I was recently in a neighborhood of small homes some architectural some crap, and along came an almost star architect and dropped his own home a 21st Century Modern, and it did look just like a pimple on a princess. This guy gets to lecture at places like Harvard and I assume other universities around the country. I wonder how close cropped are his photos to exclude what pre dates his project. Nice but not so nice for the neighborhood....this is the problem with 21 st Century Modern.
no, they are not. will a re-education in the inherent bad-ness of faux grecian urn buildings turn people into proper urban folk? Are designed supersized homes alright?
More to point, early critics of suburbia in london said mono-culture single-family rowhouses on edge of city centre were bad for english culture and a sure sign of dementia and all the rest, but now are viewed as environmentally sustainable models. still mono-culture and repetitive blocks (and to me still slightly mind-numbing). but now models for the good. what happened? attitudes change, even if buildings don't. so my question is what is the issue? is it style, the environment, energy use, or something else? When all thrown together it becomes very hard to take it seriously cuz whatever the intention the feeling from low-culture brats like myself is that someone is taking a digg at my lifestyle and attaching the rationale to something that is actually important like the environment. good architecture is not always good culture.
sorry for sounding preachy, cuz the site is very cool. just that i have this conversation all the time with my family back home and this is more or less what they tell me. and they remind me that not being educated does not mean they are stupid. they just have different priorities based on different knowledge set...and if we really want to plug into the mainstream we are gonna have to acknowledge that alternate approach to life.
"sorry for sounding preachy, cuz the site is very cool. just that i have this conversation all the time with my family back home and this is more or less what they tell me. and they remind me that not being educated does not mean they are stupid. they just have different priorities based on different knowledge set...and if we really want to plug into the mainstream we are gonna have to acknowledge that alternate approach to life."
I think there is a difference between not knowing about something and being so called stupid. If someone is not aware about the relationship between the layout of suburban neighborhoods and obesity that does not mean that there is anything wrong with them or that they are a bad person. It does mean that there might be some things to learn about that are important to them and their family. What I don't understand is the knee jerk reaction that you describe as if there is some kind of threat from knowledge. It doesn't happen in other fields, why design?
fair enough. i am too critical on this topic. that is side effect of recent pressure of phd research (topic is suburbia and compact city). My professors are very sharp and it has made me cynical ;-)
i don't think it is knee-jerk reaction to knowledge though, more a suspicion that something is being sold with an ulterior motive.
case in point...the connection between obesity and suburbia is, as you likely know, not certain. The central argument against the idea is that the causal relationship is not clear. That fat people live in suburbia does not mean that suburbia creates fat people. It might, but it might not too. There are other possibilities (my guess is all those potato chips)...either way, the comment sounds like someone complaining that hippie communes cause people to grow long hair and smoke pot.
Another example is rationalist's pick up above about material honesty. She offered a reason tied to environmental concerns for why a material might be bad. Which is fair enough, but i gotta wonder, shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean here we have a smart person looking for a reason to decide that fake trim is bad. The starting point is that fake trim is bad, not that we should improve the environment...talk about spin. Regular folk pick up on that and react.
My mum never finished high school but she is bright and very well informed about the world she lives in. She worries that her ex-urban lifestyle is not sustainable and understands the alternatives laid out before her, but she is not willing to live in the city again just the same. And it is the approach which decides an outcome (density) and then finds the problem (suburbia) which gives her reason to doubt. She wouldn't put it that way, but that is pretty much it.
Mike Jencks went so far as to say that there is now so much research for and against the compact city that you can prove the position either way depending on which information you choose to use as supporting evidence. His response to this problem was to suggest we have another look at suburbia and the city and see what is REALLY there, and maybe re-define the problem so it isn't so easy to manipulate.
What i really appreciate about your site is that it is about DOING, not studying. Still, if the desire is to convince masses of people that we need to live more densely and make good architecture in the process i am not so sure it will happen by suggesting they give up their attachment to doric columns...it works for the choir (including me! I don't like suburbia, don't have a car, and don't want one), but for folk like my mum in small-town manitoba? i don't think it does much for them.
kay, will get off soapbox.
I think you bring up some excellent points, jump.
I boil it down to this: from what I understand, there are convincing arguments to live densely.
Knowing this full well, I still don't want to EVER live in a high-rise building again. I like living in the city (in older, 'semi-dense' neighbourhoods) and my girlfriend is, as I type this, looking at apartments for us in Osborne village in Winnipeg, where I'll be working (she's also attending U of M, btw).
Even as a person who's semi-cognizant (and maybe semi-ignorant) of density and design and ecological issues, you still can't convince me that living in a condo in downtown Toronto, for example, is good for the MIND and SOUL.
Most people don't want to feel like sardines packed in a tin. I don't. But I also don't want to move to the suburbs, perhaps for some of the opposite reasons. And that's what we need to figure out - not some new architectural style that's going to save the day, because it's not. I'm a big proponent of design in all varieties, but that is not the same as a style, which is prone to fads, manipulation, and bad copying. Design, on the other hand, is wholistic. To focus on one area much more than another won't take us very far.
"What i really appreciate about your site is that it is about DOING, not studying. Still, if the desire is to convince masses of people that we need to live more densely and make good architecture in the process i am not so sure it will happen by suggesting they give up their attachment to doric columns...it works for the choir (including me! I don't like suburbia, don't have a car, and don't want one), but for folk like my mum in small-town manitoba? i don't think it does much for them.
kay, will get off soapbox."
I appreciate your argument. You are one of the few architects I have met who hasn't just jumped on the architectural bandwagon leaving the rest behind. I appreciate and respect the fact that you are truly concerned about the relevance to the 'average suburbanite' of what the profession is doing and saying about their homes.
I don't think the answer is as simple as just living more densely, or in the city, I also think that there are many more than one answer, and that each area, region, culture, street, person, may actually need/ have their own answer. Or maybe the whole idea of an 'answer' is wrong.
What I am interested in is bringing some design literacy to the public in a somewhat entertaining way so that more people can at least start to look at their surroundings more clearly. I don't have a problem with someone deciding, in a more informed way, that they like doric columns. I do mind them having them just because some slick marketing brochure sold them on them as an "idea of home". For me that is too shallow and disrespectful to the person living there. Homes are too important and too expensive to be sold as a marketing proxy.
If you look at the slow food movement, Petrini doesn't espouse a particular type of food. He says that slow food is good, clean and fair in the way in which it is produced, prepared, and enjoyed at the table. That means many different things to many different cultures, and all of them are 'answers' or responses, or critical resistances to the homogenization of processed, industrialized food.
I would like to think that the same debate, movement could be said with housing. I define a fast house as something that is first and foremost an instrument of capitalist production, created by an industrialized process and sold through a sophisticated marketing program. They are poorly designed (not an aesthetic argument but environmental, functional, etc.) and carelessly made. It is a product that is designed to be consumed without resonance, consequence, or preparation, to quote Albart Borgmann.
Like a Big Mac, they therefore starts to fracture the dense and deep set of relationships between us and our surroundings. Food is about more than the ingestion of nutrients and fast food reduces the engagement of preparing food and the culture of eating as part of a larger social event into a ninety second grab and dash. In fast houses we are disconnected from how our houses are made and their form affects our social relationships. (It can be hard to know your neighbor when there are no sidewalks, no front porches, and no public spaces.
the problem with high density living is that people just don't know when to shut the HELL up!
"In fast houses we are disconnected from how our houses are made and their form affects our social relationships. (It can be hard to know your neighbor when there are no sidewalks, no front porches, and no public spaces."
What I get out of this is that it's less about architecture, and more about planning.
When I look around me, modern and new housing tend not to have porches at all. The old houses do, nearly all of them. But is this addressed in the slow home manifesto? I see no mention of any of these concerns (sidewalks, porches, public spaces) in the Seven Principles. That's not a jab at you or this movement or the principles, but at least from where I'm standing, architecture is but just one of many key areas that can help with your goals.
Maybe a better name might be 'slow communities.'
By the way, I read "SLOW" (the original book) and while some of it was a bit much, I've taken a lot of it to heart. But then, I've never been TYPE A, anyway ;)
the trading off of variation and density in favor of economy and sterility is the essence of many suburbs. Though part of the problem is a design problem, i think it is unfortunately only a tiny fraction of the real problem. It is the nature of every species on earth to grow and expand, pushing its resources to the brink, testing the limits of its population, until finally, its ceiling is reached and its population crashes.
In the modern world there is no real difference. Perhaps we, though conscious and able to stop our often tragic ascent, are not that disimilar from the rest of life as we would like to believe.
This is a very fatalistic statement and i dont mean to say that we are not capable of drastically changing course unless being forced to, but it is hard to deny that it does look like this is as much a human trait as it is animal.
I feel like the trick to developing a more sustainable development pattern comes from altering the sets of priorities that people have discussed above. If we are willing to correlate suburban sprawl with other willfully degrading behaviors like fast food and smoking, perhaps the time is coming that we push for similar reactions, and instead of looking to change peoples minds, force them too. Just as the cig companies have been forced to do, make it mandatory that the ecological cost of that house, that yard, that driveway, that mile long cul-de-saq, that arterial road, that million sq ft shopping mall, be explained and shown. Like the fast food restaurants have been forced to do, present the studies linking car-centric living and serious health issues to all interested in joining in this life style, because in essence, everything is a business.
Developers could care less about any of the issues were discussing as long as people keep buying and building. Subdivisions are businesses; Cities are businesses; and we all know that often what the market dictates (fast food, big cars, filtered cigarettes) are not best.
this might seem drastic, and honestly, im not sure i even support this vein of thought... its just what came to my mind reading these responses. keep it up, this is a great thread
in addition, the vertically integrated system John Brown discusses seems to be a move in that changing of minds direction. The markets that drive unsustainable suburban growth can be altered even if they seem to have unstoppable momentum. I guess im going back on my fatalistic view when i say that though it would be a long long process. its possible that people will change their courses before the apocalypse if the motivation is the right kind.
"It is the nature of every species on earth to grow and expand, pushing its resources to the brink, testing the limits of its population, until finally, its ceiling is reached and its population crashes."
Pardon me?
This might be true for humans, but if you can cite one other animal OR plant for which this statement is true, I'll eat my shorts.
The way we live, as humans, isn't sustainable. Yet gorillas, dolphins, ants, elm trees and slugs seem to be able to do it. There's no wasted energy in nature, as they say. Only a change of state. Other living things don't "push their resources to the brink" and I'm not sure where you got that idea.
This is a great discussion, and I think some great responses have been made. I haven't seen everything on the site yet, but so far it looks smart and engaging. I think it is valuable for making architects realize their own power in changing the tide of development in smaller scale steps. As in the movements it is compared to, such as those against global warming or fast food, its value lies in educating the average person and helping them see that there are options, that their choices make a difference. The intense marketing campaigns of the homebuilder cartels make most people think these are the only alternatives they have. Some might still choose sprawl after learning its effects, but if they are at least making an informed decision, I think we will see a change in buying habits rather than everyone just moving into the biggest subdivision house for which they can land a mortgage.
Having been interested in this subject for a while, I just finished Suburban Nation, and I think that it is particularly relevant to some of the issues raised here by jump and others. One of those that comes to mind while reading this discussion seems to be an idea that the only alternative to suburban sprawl is dense city development. That, to me, is an understandable concern, but can also be a misleading argument that could derail the whole thing. Density isn't the only option; smart development is the key at any density. The problem with suburban sprawl isn't solely its lack of density. It is the fact that it consumes ravenous amounts of greenfield, of which a large percentage is paved for large amounts of roads that end up chaining the residents, not freeing them.
With traditional neighborhoods and development, streets are smaller, more regular, and include mixed uses within walking distance. Sprawl contributes to obesity and global warming not by virtue of the density of development alone, but also because that development is regimented to separate uses, unsafe or impassable areas for pedestrians, and pave enormous amounts of public space to cater to the almighty automobile. This means economic hardship on everyone, as each family essentially is forced to own a car for every licensed family member. Every trip requires an automobile, as even if you want a tube of toothpaste, there is no local store to which you can walk, and the Wal-Mart behind your subdivision, though only a few hundred yards away, is separated by berms and ditches required by the zoning laws.
Thoughtful home and neighborhood development doesn't mean one has to live in a condo in the inner city. While we do need more dense, compact, well-designed urban areas, we also need well-designed small cities, towns, villages, and rural areas based on the traditional models that worked for centuries before the birth of the extreme form of sprawl from which we suffer today.
While I am personally a devotee of modern architecture, I understand that it is unlikely (or at least a long way off) for the general public to embrace it in a large scale - much as it frustrates me at times. Whether that is appropriate or not is another discussion. However, we all have to be concerned about the problems of sprawl and the dangerous communities being built by developers all over the country. I live in a city in which it is necessary to own a car to get almost anywhere; public transit is very weak with no sign of improvement on the near horizon, at least. If I have my way, I will move to a larger, denser city where I can walk or bike or ride the train, and probably just rent a car for weekend trips. My brother, given the choice, would live in a cabin in the center of a twenty-acre wooded lot, drive to work every day in his pickup truck, and maybe go to town for groceries and other supplies a few times a month. There should be room for both of us to live as we like, as well as those in between, but continued sprawl development could eliminate both of those types of living environments if it continues unabated.
species will maximize their populations until their doing so negatively affects the ability for that species to survive. for many species, the change in population is a seasonal variation. Rabbits numbers swell in the spring and summer while resources are plentiful and then decrease in the winter when resources are to scarce to support the spring population boom. i didnt realize this was an off the wall idea
the way deer populations explode when the weather is particularly good and there is fresh green everywhere isnt a sustainable growth pattern either, but the only reason its considered normal is because they dont have the potential to bring about the destruction of the planet.
there, i named one... send me a picture of the shorts eating pretty please? haha just teasing... i think what your describing as a change of state, im calling the point at which a population adjusts back to what its context can support
sorry, i've joined the discussion late... and though i also have views regarding the density/sustainability issue...
and i think you could definately debate the fast food/cig/alchohol analogy... though i think that it would be difficult to make evident certain detrimental side effects from living in the burbs/city etc. however, there was one thing that caught my eye, that actually addresses the disconnect between us and them... and that's this:
"From my academic research into why architects aren't more involved with houses in North America I developed this new kind of firm that restructured the way in which an architect interfaces with their client base. housebrand is a vertically integrated service that provides real estate (we help people buy the right property), design -architecture and interiors (to help them tailor the property as either a new build or renovation to their needs), construction (to realize the design in a comprehensive cost effective way), retail sales (we carry a couple lines of good, simple, well built furniture that is a good price point), and limited run manufacturing (to manufacture the things we can't find in the marketplace). We do about 100 hundred projects/year..."
i think this is the most important way to deal with ANY problem. This kind of consultation, attention, sensitivity....is the real missing link. Not many attempt to bridge our worlds. Certainly, the type of architecture I do is "hands off" by comparison. It's fairly disgusting in a lot of respects. People have priorities, people champion certain ideas, a look, the fact that they bought 50 solar thermal panels and need to stick them on a building (this is happening on a project that needs about 2-3)...
anyway, by providing more attention and care to any givin problem you are going to have a better solution... sustainability in all respects, (bills, energy, happiness, lifestyle)... i think that's a strong message that we could/should impress upon our clients... i think the idea that you sink a little more in an architects/planner/thinking, may give you something valuable... something worth more than the extra square feet a developer can offer. perhaps i'm not in touch with the average home buyer, but i think it could happen... just compare home buying to egagement ring shopping... (which i'm almost done with, but i'm investing a lot of money in something that i need to live with the rest of my life, so i sit down with a few professionals, the give me some advice, i custom design a ring, and have a wax cut so i can see it, then get it made)...
i don't know, i guess i agree with mr. brown on a bunch of points, it's the awareness of value (tangible and otherwise). i disagree, or perhaps i don't subscribe to some of the 10 points, etc, in which a solution to a given problem falls into that mold... (even though I agree with the points in most instances, but i think this advice happens once you evaluate the given problem)
all right, i'm done, i'm starting to not make sense
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