The American Garage

    The American garage. The dirty, messy, chaotic, nonjudgmental, real space in everyone’s home where the occupant feels most comfortable in sharing their personality. I’ve noticed that in America, it seems the average homeowner feels some obligation to maintain a sense of “normalcy” in their house (whatever normal means these days at least). Perhaps it’s so that in the event they have guests over, they won’t be seen as “different” or “weird”. Maybe people are mostly just boring! Or perhaps it’s just because they were never told they could do things differently. 

    Realistically though, people crave some sense of agency in their space at least to some degree, and for whatever reason, we can see the first taste of this “agency in space” expressed in the American garage. It may not be the original “flex space” but it is the one we are all most familiar with. Man-caves, music studios, wood shops, side hustles, science labs, makeshift art studios, the list goes on and on. How many origin stories have we all heard that take place in the humble setting of the American garage? 

    What is it about these spaces that allows the occupant to be so recklessly themselves? Is it the connection to outside that creates a transfer space between the public and private? Is it the industrial concrete floors and walls that create some sort of blank canvas for the occupant to paint? I’d like to argue that perhaps it is the lack of program that pulls from the owner some need to provide it with purpose. In any case, if these same spatial qualities could be created throughout the entire house, would this same sense of obligation persist through the space? Could it create an entire home full of richness, chaos, and personality?