It Isn't Perfect?

 "Little boxes all the same

There's a pink one and a green one

and a blue one and a yellow one

and they're all made out of ticky-tacky

and they all look just the same."

- Malvina Reynolds, 1962

"There is isolation between houses in the suburbs. The homes I like best are totally occupied, busy and useful, weather its a tiny little house or a great big one. Rarely do you find a great big house that's used in a good way."

                    - Martha Stewart Interview in: Martha Stewart is Editing Your Life by Rem Koolhaas and                              Beatriz Colomina

When I think of suburbia I think a lot about a utopia. It is a place made to look so clean and perfect, and almost not lived in and empty. That is how it seems now anyways. Living in the south side of Chicago, I lived in social housing and you could say it was made to be like suburban living, sure, without the nice well-kept yard, or walls that weren't made out of cinderblock. Moving out of the city into a very affluent area, that's when I truly understood what "white flight" meant. Cities have a tendency to be seen as dirty, especially if you are in places like New York or Chicago where millions of people live. However, the suburbs are seen as clean and perfect.

I had 2 black teachers out of my entire time in school when we moved to the suburbs. That is not to say that all schools should have only teacher's of color, but it is to say that the mindset is very different from the city, and unfortunately I saw this in my education as most of my teachers only thought one way. Now this is not to say that the suburbs are bad, because we moved out of the city for a reason, it is to say you can tell there is a repetitive nature in the suburbs with not only the houses, but the people living in them. 

For architecture, this says that clearly residential architecture has become about money and not about experience. What I think Martha Stewart is saying in her interview is people who have smaller homes (live within/below their means) allow all of their spaces to be occupied 24/7 because they are designed to be filled. However, people with larger homes have rooms that are filled with furniture, but left empty most of the year. What is the need for that unused space? Aesthetics? It seems to me like a waste of money and design potential. Why not make larger living rooms instead of dining rooms since most people don't even eat at a dining table anymore. 

When was the last time you ate at a dining table outside of a Holiday? 

"Instead, these “little boxes” should remind scholars of the built environment that we need to understand meaning as well as form, carefully monitor change over time, attend to everyday habitation, and, perhaps most importantly, defer judgment."

                                                                            - Margaret Crawford