Tyler Tarun
Professor’s Simmons and Chambliss
RPG Art Class
03 May 2012
Final Exam Essay
Owning the ideal home is something
that all Americans desire. Over time
minute details behind the ideal home have changed but the core values and basic
necessities of the ideal home have stayed the same. An ideal home is defined by having moral
character, providing safety, being standardized, and is utopian.
The first aspect of that ideal home
as it relates to space and place is the role of faith and moral character in
the home. The importance of faith in
the home has been with society for centuries.
This was evident in the Puritan times as Gwendolyn Wright mentions, “For
the Puritans, architectural structures were a microcosm of God’s exacting
structure and universe a constant reminder of the way He wanted them to live.”[1] This quote clearly shows that the Puritan
house is designed around what they thought god wanted. Today, people celebrate certain religious
holidays with their extended families at their homes and after attending
religious services people return to their homes and discuss what they thought
of the service.
Another key component of the ideal
home is safety. People want to feel safe
wherever they live. In many urban areas
people do not feel safe outside at night.
Hayden states, “The Greenlight Program developed by the Women’s Safety
Committee of City Lights in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and the Safehouse
Program created by Tenderloin tenants for Safer Streets in San Francisco were
two programs designed to bring a greater sense of security in the 1980s.”[2] This shows that some cities have taken the
initiative to assist in the home becoming a safer place. If the home was not a safe place why would
anyone want to own one? Andrea Zittel’s
photos represent and show a lot about in home safety.
The ideal home is also utopic. Hayden states, “The dream houses were
utopian. No one counted how much they
might cost.”[3] This
reinforces the notion of the dream houses being utopic. The important thing to note is there are some
flaws with the dream house being utopic.
If no one is concerned about the cost buyers could end up making poor
decisions and it could lead to a lot of financial problems for the people
purchasing the dream house. We have seen
this in the past decade with the housing crisis.
Along with it being utopic, the
dream home is also standardized. Standardization
is a more recent phenomenon; the home has not always been this way. Hayden mentions developers, “broke with
traditional regional responses to climate (typical of the adobes of the
Southwest or the saltbox houses of New England) in favor of using standardized
plans and materials”[4]
(Hayden 64) Charles Ritchie’s photos
seem to link most to standardization of the home.
As we enter the 21st
century it is important that we change our idea of what the model home should
be. For too long we have lived beyond
our means. Hayden reiterates this notion
with, “Americans must search for an adequate way to organize and pay for the
spaces we live in, a way more compatible with the human life cycle….We need to
reconstruct the social, economic and spatial bases of our beliefs about individual
happiness, solid family life, and decent neighborhoods.”[5] During the past decade Americans thought they
could purchase houses that were well above what they could afford. As a nation we must fix this problem if we
want long term prosperity especially with the home as it relates to space and
place.
When
examining the ideal home as it relates to space and place there are many themes
that are noticeable. Over the past
centuries many of the concepts of the home have stayed the same and a few have
changed. The most important aspect of
the home that we need to remember is that as we enter this next century we need
to find a way to enjoy the aspects of the home but also make sure what
homeowners do is affordable and sustainable.
Bibliography
Hayden, Dolores. “Redesigning
the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life.” W.W Norton and Company. Copyright 2002.
Wright, Gwendolyn. “Building
the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America.” MIT Press.
Copyright 1981.
Pictures
The first three photos, which were all by Andrea Zittel, show
the home at its very basic level. It’s a
shelter for people to live in. It is not
necessarily extremely high end. These
homes are extremely basic.
The final two works were created by Charles Ritchie. These show the home as standardized. It blends in very well with the
surroundings. The house to the viewer’s left of the featured
house does not seem to differ very much from the featured house.
The video just covers America’s housing market
recovery. It mentions, in the future, we
cannot expect housing prices to go up so quickly.
[1]
Wright, Gwendolyn. “Building the Dream:
A Social History of Housing in America.”
MIT Press. Copyright 1981. Page 3
[2]
Hayden, Dolores. “Redesigning the
American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life.” W.W Norton and Company. Copyright 2002. Page 239
[3] Hayden,
Dolores. “Redesigning the American
Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life.” W.W Norton and Company. Copyright 2002. Page 60
[4] Hayden,
Dolores. “Redesigning the American
Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life.” W.W Norton and Company. Copyright 2002. Page 64
[5] Hayden,
Dolores. “Redesigning the American
Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life.” W.W Norton and Company. Copyright 2002. Page 77
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