Categories
ARCH 502a: FACE VALUE

Instructor: Erin Kasimow

Unboxing the Suburban Home

As we’ve grown accustomed to the uniformity of the suburban neighborhood, we’ve also become increasingly more aware of its successes and failures as a model for domestic bliss. While once symbolizing the iconic image of the post-war American Dream, tensions over financial models, accessibility, and diversity have left these single family homes ready for design re-evaluation and speculation as each generation faces new definitions of family and household needs. Unboxing positions itself among previous artistic and architectural speculations offering alternative suburban perspectives. It acknowledges the trappings of conformity and melancholy underlying many of the picture perfect suburban representations and proposes a reconstructed suburban “model home” that prioritizes re-connecting families and individuals to nature, health, and their community.