americana redux
henry kosinski
The American Dream is an allusion to the idea that each citizen possesses equal rights and equal potential.
As the American domestic vernacular was increasingly leveraged to symbolize the American Dream of equality, it did so by problematically signifying equality through formal identicality. While this identicality is useful in manifesting the appearance of a cohesive American national identity, the aesthetics of identicality have political consequences.
Jacques Rancière has argued that aesthetic appearances can be used to narrowly define the political possibility space of the social realm, as well as who counts as a social subject capable of participating in such politics. The norming of appearances reduces and obscures the possibility of politics—of recognizing difference, and of hashing out those differences.
i
K. Michael Hays’ and Andrew Holder’s concept of the eidetic house articulates the manner in which this problematic condition is manifested within the American domestic vernacular. They define this as a condition in which “a building conforms so much to the expected image of a building that the two cannot be distinguished.” However, when the house is taken as a representation of the identity of those it houses, and when it is presented as being equal to its reductive sign, politics is neutralized by the representation of identicality.
The actual diversity and difference of American individuals that this obscure, and their purported equal political capacity it undermines, represents powderkeg of tension lurking beneath the façade of identical appearances.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s concept of the multitude recognizes people through the lens of difference rather than commonality. The architecture should respond to this ideal. In lieu of actual bloodshed, a different kind of American Revolution is proposed—an architectural one. This recognizes the degree to which American vernacular architecture has so far been an architectural apparatus of political neutralization
ii
Giorgio Agamben defines an apparatus, calling it “anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living things.” More importantly, the interaction between beings and apparatuses produces specific subjects. The single-family home subjectifies, and subjugates, its inhabitants according to ideas of homogenous identities, prescribed activities, choreographed movements, and rigid relationships.
However, this particular architectural apparatus can be reformulated in both its aesthetics, as well as its organization, to represent, and to catalyze, the equal political capacity of diverse and heterogeneous subjects—enabling, and validating a plurality of uses and spatial conditions that desubjectify its users. A new domestic understanding leverages the architecture as an apparatus subjugating it inhabitants towards a new social cohesion resulting in heterogeneous behaviors
iii
It is important to keep familiarity at the core of the formal and aesthetic strategies applied through this thesis. The aesthetic strategies of this reformulation leverage the potential of near-figure and objectility.
The near-figure strategy pries open the eerie flattening of distance between signifier and signified of Hays’ and Holder’s eidetic house, revealing the domestic form as uncanny—in order to foreground and estrange it.
Objectility, on the other hand, transforms Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the objectile into an operative method. This concept represents both a set of related objects that are variations of an invisible, underlying meta-object, as well as the meta-object itself.
The norming of appearances reduces and obscures the possibility of politics—of recognizing difference, and of hashing out those differences.
iv
American vernacular, and its adjoining typologies, set the operational basis through which the formal transformations of this objectility can occur.Formally, these spaces can vary indefinitely; however, they are rooted in the abstraction of American housing vernaculars and ornamentation and tied together through their common underlying meta objects.
The compendium of forms acts as an objectile from which infinite formal and programmatic variations can begin to emerge, enforcing the notion of heterogeneity in domestic housing environments.
Meanwhile, this formal and programmatic variation is coupled with new forms of organization that, in Deleuzian terms, smooth out the striated conditions that are typical of America suburbia and city planning.
v
New socio-spatial conditions are formed with folds— a term defined by Gilles Deleuze —as interpolations between existing form that preserve difference within continuity. These create an out-of-focus condition, at varying scales, establishing unorthodox adjacencies, and resulting in non-normative liminal spaces with expanded functionality and usability.
The fold also operates as a volumetric yet porous edge condition, creating a spatial interruption between programmed spaces and differing formal languages that retain social and architectural continuity.
vi
Through imbuing porosity into previously impenetrable boundaries, such as the wall, the property line, the roof, etc., a new social cohesion starts to emerge in which the inhabitants understanding of domestic and non-domestic spaces becomes blurred. Traditional functionalities of the house are expanded upon, yet at times diminished, to create an architecture in which the user gains heightened authority and ownership over one’s own space and the events that occur.
2 americas
Gregory Crewdson uses the US suburban condition as the stage for his surrealist photographs. Crewdson inserts characters and non-normative functions within suburbia subverting our understandings of the mundane. The resultant an earie condition in which the hyper familiar is imbued with the absurd creating uncanny conditions. Within this world, a plethora of opportunities begin to emerge. In the case of Crewdson, these narratives take the form of the surreal.
Jasper Johns, Flag
Abstract Show. Lawnmover
The grass lawn is emblematic of privatization and a subsequent national identity. The lawn precedes the house and stands as a symbolic representation of an American dream. The Lawnmover affords the opportunity for all to own a slice of land. The object becomes an apparatus of privatization and land ownership, a pillar to an American identity which becomes further leveraged to include the single family home. It becomes an object of pride that is carried at all times.
The grass lawn is emblematic of privatization and a subsequent national identity. The lawn precedes the house and stands as a symbolic representation of an American dream. The Lawnmover affords the opportunity for all to own a slice of land. The object becomes an apparatus of privatization and land ownership, a pillar to an American identity which becomes further leveraged to include the single family home. It becomes an object of pride that is carried at all times.
The grass lawn is emblematic of privatization and a subsequent national identity. The lawn precedes the house and stands as a symbolic representation of an American dream. The Lawnmover affords the opportunity for all to own a slice of land. The object becomes an apparatus of privatization and land ownership, a pillar to an American identity which becomes further leveraged to include the single family home. It becomes an object of pride that is carried at all times.
The grass lawn is emblematic of privatization and a subsequent national identity. The lawn precedes the house and stands as a symbolic representation of an American dream. The Lawnmover affords the opportunity for all to own a slice of land. The object becomes an apparatus of privatization and land ownership, a pillar to an American identity which becomes further leveraged to include the single family home. It becomes an object of pride that is carried at all times.
The grass lawn is emblematic of privatization and a subsequent national identity. The lawn precedes the house and stands as a symbolic representation of an American dream. The Lawnmover affords the opportunity for all to own a slice of land. The object becomes an apparatus of privatization and land ownership, a pillar to an American identity which becomes further leveraged to include the single family home. It becomes an object of pride that is carried at all times.
The grass lawn is emblematic of privatization and a subsequent national identity. The lawn precedes the house and stands as a symbolic representation of an American dream. The Lawnmover affords the opportunity for all to own a slice of land. The object becomes an apparatus of privatization and land ownership, a pillar to an American identity which becomes further leveraged to include the single family home. It becomes an object of pride that is carried at all times.
The grass lawn is emblematic of privatization and a subsequent national identity. The lawn precedes the house and stands as a symbolic representation of an American dream. The Lawnmover affords the opportunity for all to own a slice of land. The object becomes an apparatus of privatization and land ownership, a pillar to an American identity which becomes further leveraged to include the single family home. It becomes an object of pride that is carried at all times.
Two contrasting ideologies: one demands formality and classicism while the other is emblematic of leisure and modernism. In a constant fight within themselves, there is a jostling for a dominant language. The internal differences are masked by the overall homogenous form that pays little regard to the chair’s struggle and treats all pieces equally. Areas of conflict and friction between the two parties give way to new form making and ideologies. The combinatory effect challenges our preconceived notions of the inherent differences and begins to create a methodology of remediation and understanding of the two.
Levittown stands as the original modern American suburb. This case study looks to subvert our understanding of Levittown as a site of homogeneity and rejuvenate it as a space of heterogeneity through combinatory logics resulting in non normative functions and spaces. A redistribution of domestic and non-domestic programming results on a folded landscape with expanded use functionality and affordances tailored towards the multitude.
Levittown Case Study
Alec Soth,Untitiled
Greg Lynn, Flatware
Muscatine serves as a unique condition in which difference can and conflict can become leveraged to deploy an architectural response rooted in continuity, despite those differences. Socially Muscatine is classified as a purple town, where the bi partisan vote split is within a percent of 50/50. This condition demonstrates a diminishing condition across the United States in which there is a conglomerate of heterogeneous ideas located within a small city scale. Muscatine therefore serves as the grounds in which a heterogenous architecture can be deployed.
Taxonomize
A survey of historic houses start to reveal the homogeneity present within the American vernacular. When viewed sequentially, the differences become blurred and tertiary as the overall aesthetic and architecture is that of similarity. Differences become apparent when the sequence breaks down.
Planimetric diagramming once again enforces the homogeneity as the forms become derivative of a similar underlying meta object, revealing an objectile present across all of the forms, regardless of the ornament and features. This objectile can be read as variations of the American four square and shotgun house. This understanding sets the basis through which new aggregations and organizational strategies can be explored.
Muscatine, Iowa
The prototypical house form is aggregated and proliferated across the site scale creating a plethora of awkward interactions. The organization references the linearity of the surrounding context; however, within the site the overarching organization begins to break down. Forms congregate in field conditions similar to that of schools of fish with smaller aberrations and conditions latching on to the dominant forms within the landscape. This strategy produces a grain through the project with a logic that begins to breakdown at the unit scale. Derived from typological canvasing of the surrounding house forms, the resulting compendium is distilled to two emblematic American housing vernacular forms: the shotgun house and the American foursquare. These typical planimetric forms are overlayed through the site and nested within the pitched roof landscape creating a sprawling multifamily condition. The four square and shotgun house plans acts as a meta object through which units are based upon and dispersed throughout. These interactions are negotiated individually as the four square and shotgun house organizations begin to find its way in between the long CLT panels making up the structure of built forms. There is a constant and indefinite negotiation that occurs as units begin to blend between their rigid parents. The resultant ground floor plan begins to operate according to its own agenda with discrepancies and interactions leveraged to create non normative liminal spaces in which the user imbue programmatic meanings. Breaks in the idiosyncratic planning strategies occur at hyper orchestrated crop circling moments. The location and size are dependent on an overarching grid dispersed through the site.
Superfluous CLT
The CLT blank is utilized as a structural system throughout the whole project. The at its simplest definition is akin to an oversized plywood- a material with familiarity and resonance to all who encounter it. The CLT blank leverages this familiarity and estranges it through its sheer scale difference. While a typical sheet of plywood comes in 4 foot by 8 foot varieties, the blanks used in this project at their most extreme are 12 by 50 feet dimensionally. The continuous large members start to span between multiple units resulting in a plethora of unique conditions. While the blank is typically known for its economic benefits and ease of construction, this project prioritizes its unique capabilities of mass difference. The blank in this context can be understood through Mario Carpo’s notion of the non-standard series in relation to the objectile. The blank itself stands as a meta object through which a series of manipulations create a series of difference connected through the underlying objectile. The manipulations of the blank occur at the detail scale through processes of excess resulting in non-normative queer detailing that respond to breaks and incongruencies between hierarchical planning elements. The details stray from the simple and situate themselves as special conditions resulting in new spatial experiences. Following a single blank through the projects reveals a linear procession of excessive details that respond to their context and surrounding spaces. Superfluous detailing becomes a catalyst that exemplifies the folded conditions helping navigate between structure and space resulting in heterogenous condition and non-normative connections.
