The Consumer’s House

This has been the year of the house, or a year of retrospection on the evolution on domestic design trends. The much-publicized exhibition of The Un-private House by the Museum of Modern Art is a prime example. Other publications such as Model Apartment: Experimental Domestic Cells by Gustau Gili Galfreti and Single-Family Housing: The Private Domain by Salazar & Gausa come to mind. The interest generated around the subject of the domestic mirrors the political and social climate of our times. At the end of the millennium, we live in a more or less unified world-view of supply and demand, the free flow of capital, and the world-wide- web. In contrast, the early part of the century witnessed the struggles of rival ideologies. And the house was seen as an instrument in the propagation of political ideology, which tended to be an amalgam of socialist concerns. The perfecting of the didactic modern house progressed in rapid succession during the first three decades of this century. Wright’s prairie houses and Le Corbusier’s Villas, in addition to being brilliant designs, expounded greater common ideals.

Now, with the absence of a competing ideology, the house is liberated from the ‘tired’ discussions of social responsibilities. It can be viewed simply as a sponge absorbing the impact of changing technology and social demographics. It can be put to the rigors of marketing analysis like any other consumer goods. The design of houses has become personal and private, catering to the ultimate patron, the consumer. It is akin to identifying niche markets in an ever narrowing vision of alternative life-style, alternative material sensations, alternative privacy zoning, alternative whatever. In the end, the house itself has become an invigoratingly complex piece of consumer goods. Any discussion of house design, in terms of the greater social fabric or even mass production, is rare nowadays.

This seems to be the paradox of our times. As technological changes have allowed us greater, easier, and freer access to our environment, we interact with these changes in hermetic ways. The emergence of the Internet has been hailed as the great democratic/public forum. However, we participate in this public forum usually in the privacy of our rooms. The technological changes during the early part of the century in architecture have been in the realm of material and construction processes. However, changes in electronic technology seem not easily expressed or articulated in material or bodily terms. The house has been and will continue to be the fertile ground of architectural experimentation. Perhaps it is in this nebulous new ground of cyberspace that traditional ideas of spatial boundaries and edges will be transformed.