Homes in Suburbia

 The cool thing about a house is that you have the potential to make it a home. 

Suburbia is a funny thing; its full of different flavors and styles and overall experiences. In today's day and age, its massively driven by the context around it, which is great, but also very limiting and exclusive at times. Through my last two semesters with David, we have talked pretty extensively about what it is to occupy a house and what that in turn means in the context of the neighborhood; suburbia.

Some of the interesting topics that come up are that of Charles and Ray Eames, communes, and new urbanism. Charles and Ray Eames really defined what it means to design a home instead of a house with their case study house. They were arguably the catalyst for the popular HGTV shows in which "broken" houses are redesigned to become homes for a specific family. 

Similarly, these preferences, styles, or concepts can be shared in the scope of what we know as communes; a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities. One can argue that these too are homes to these people even though, often, they just seem like shacks or compounds.

The point is, suburbia in and of itself is a collection of people living in an area that they desire (not always the case due to inflated prices and such) and molding their own homes, directly or indirectly, to be a reflection of themselves.