Consuming Architecture

On the occupation, appropriation and interpretation of buildings

Daniel Maudlin, Marcel Vellinga

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317801795
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Arquitectura general

Projecting forward in time from the processes of design and construction that are so often the focus of architectural discourse, Consuming Architecture examines the variety of ways in which buildings are consumed after they have been produced, focusing in particular on processes of occupation, appropriation and interpretation. Drawing on contributions by architects, historians, anthropologists, literary critics, artists, film-makers, photographers and journalists, it shows how the consumption of architecture is a dynamic and creative act that involves the creation and negotiation of meanings and values by different stakeholders and that can be expressed in different voices. In so doing, it challenges ideas of what constitutes architecture, architectural discourse and architectural education, how we understand and think about it, and who can claim ownership of it.

Consuming Architecture is aimed at students in architectural education and will also be of interest to students and researchers from disciplines that deal with architecture in terms of consumption and material culture.

PART 1

Occupations

Part 1, Occupations, addresses the most immediately obvious way in which architecture is consumed: through use and by its users. Whatever personal artistic intentions or communications are involved for the architect, from office, to factory, to school, most buildings primarily exist in order to be occupied and used by people. People need and use a wide variety of different buildings for different uses; however, the chapters in this section focus upon the house, or housing, and the user as occupant. We have focused on houses because home is the centre of most people’s interest in architecture. It is where they invest the most time, where they endow a building with a sense of ownership, where they express their identity or self-image and where they create a personal space. Here, the consumption of architecture through occupation should not be seen as a passive, or perhaps even negative, process that takes place after the creative design process is complete. Rather, it is a central element of what architecture is or can be: a place to dwell. From the perspective of the home-dweller, home is a creative mixture of familiarity and constant change as buildings are altered throughout their lives. Home has familiar ways in and familiar ways out. It has familiar rooms. But it also supports a changing parade of wall colours, furniture, fixtures and fittings, even new rooms, as houses are extended or remodelled. This sense of the home as the centre of the material, social and emotional lives of its occupants places the meaning and significance of a house entirely in its life after completion. For most people this is an entirely normal way of consuming architecture. No thought is given to how a house was built or how it was designed, only to ‘we live here: this is our home; this is us’. Most people live in anonymous mass-produced homes, whether apartment blocks or old or new suburban housing developments. They do not know or care who designed their home. Accordingly, most commercial property developers appreciate the importance of a sense of ownership to homeowners and their sales literature focusses on consumer choice rather than artistic vision. Indeed, most developers do not name individual designers at all.

However, when we turn to the figure of the professional architect we find that the question of ownership is not so clear. The professional architect is a complex character. Architects are highly trained and technically skilled. They are familiar with the financial and legal aspects of building construction. But they are also creative people with their own views and agendas. They can be an artist, a social activist or an environmental warrior and their work an expression of their vision, their personal response to a set of aesthetic and cultural conditions. A building they design is, therefore, not easily handed-over. In terms of housing, architects in small creative practices like to design one-off individual houses or small housing schemes because they are manageable projects, but most importantly because they are stand-alone pavilions for the full expression of their vision. This can lead to tension between the architect’s view of their work as an art-object and that of a building or homeowner’s view of it as ‘theirs’, built to respond to their needs and to express their view of themselves, not those of the architect. This leads to the inevitable questions: Whose house is it? Who owns it? Are some architects justified in their anger when their buildings are altered by the occupants after completion?

The examination of this tension is the thread that links the different case studies and voices encountered in this first part on Occupations. Drawing on the perspectives of writers on material culture such as Arjun Appadurai and Daniel Miller as well as cultural theorists like Henri Lefebvre and Michel De Certeau, the different voices in Part I show us that buildings, especially houses, are not just designed but also social things. Occupations encounters a range of homes and homeowners such as the constantly changing interior lives of anonymous suburban houses in Belgium interpreted through Actor-Network Theory, or the history of Australian migrant homeowners and their everyday acts of self-expression and homemaking through decoration, adaptations and extensions. Beyond the everyday homeowner, we also look at the question of occupation from the specific perspective of individuals with autism and their unique use of houses and understanding of the idea of home. Then in the last two chapters of Part 1, in order to explore the tension between the architect and user, the theme of occupancy is considered from the perspective of the architect, design and architectural practice. This is addressed through the examination of two social housing schemes by famous modernist architects: Le Corbusier and Álvaro Siza. Each chapter presents the respective architect’s differing attitudes to the ‘problem’ of occupation and the decline of their works once in the hands of not just users but the wrong users: uneducated, everyday folk. First, the negative experience of the residents of Le Corbusier’s famous housing scheme at Pessac in France, since its designation as a World Heritage Site, is interpreted in terms of Lefebvre’s writings on architecture and the everyday (where its perceived decline has been arrested and artistic purity restored). Second, the negative and positive experiences of Siza’s Malagueira neighbourhood participatory design project at Évora, Portugal, are explored. Through these first five chapters, focusing on house and home, Occupations offers a range of insights and experiences related to the routine use of buildings and their users.

While Part 1 is concerned with the relationship between architecture, architects and the user, it can be observed that all the voices encountered are those of either architects, building engineers or architectural educators. This perhaps reflects the self-reflective internal engagement of architectural discourse with its own authors and texts and the ‘island’ culture of professional practice that are themselves here at question; but, it also sounds a positive note as a clear indication that many architects, and architectural educators, are concerned with the lives of buildings and their users.

Further reading

Blundell Jones, P., Petrescu, D. and Till, J. (eds) (2005) Architecture and Participation, Abingdon, UK: Spon Press.

Brand, S. (1995) How Buildings Learn, New York: Penguin Group.

Goonewardena, K. (ed.) (2008) Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Graham, B. and Howard, P. (2008) The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, Aldershot, UK and Burlington, USA: Ashgate.

Hill, J. (ed.) (1998) Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the User, London and New York: Routledge.

Hill, J. (2013) Actions in Architecture: Architects and Creative Users, London and New York: Routledge.

Leatherbarrow, D. (2009) Architecture Orientation Otherwise, New York: Princeton University Press.

Miller, D. (2001) Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors, Oxford and New York: Berg.

Miller-Lane, B. (2007) Housing and Dwelling, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Oliver, P. (2003) Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide, London: Phaidon.

Seamon, D. and Mugerauer, R. (eds) (1985) Dwelling, Place and Environment: Toward a Phenomenology of Person and World, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Till, J. (2009) Architecture Depends, London, UK and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Upton, D. (2002) ‘Architecture in everyday life’, New Literary History, 33(4) (Autumn): 707–723.

Webster, H. (2011) Bourdieu for Architects, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Wigglesworth, S. and Till, J. (eds) (1998) The Everyday and Architecture, Architectural Design Profile, 134 (July/August), London.

1

THE (IN)COMPLETE ARCHITECTURE OF THE SUBURBAN HOUSE

Wouter Bervoets and Hilde Heynen

Introduction

The term ‘vernacular architecture’ is known to cover a wide range of meanings, extending from traditional ‘folk’ buildings to commercial everyday environments. Such everyday environments include a great variety of anonymous buildings and places, including suburban houses. Research by Brown and Venturi (1970) on the Levittown suburbs clearly shows how these single family houses, despite being ready-to-use mass products, are subject to change like any other building. Brown and Maudlin (2012) conclude from their exploration of the concept of vernacular architecture, and hereby relying on the work of Stewart Brand, that ‘all buildings are incomplete and subject to change, as the occupants constantly alter and adapt their surroundings in response to changing cultural, economic, social and technological conditions and increasingly, ecological concerns’ (Brown and Maudlin 2012: 353). This chapter analyses the ‘incomplete’ architecture of the single family house in Flanders, Belgium. In particular we analyse how the interaction between a house and its inhabitants is coloured by a changing household situation, focusing on the process of downsizing after children leave the home. What is the impact of the empty nest, when a house meant for four or five is inhabited by only one or two, on the physical appearance of the suburban house?

The Belgian housing market is characterized by the combination of a high share of single family houses, about 79 per cent of the housing stock, and a high share of home owners with almost 74 per cent of Belgian households owning their own house (Vanneste, Thomas and Vanderstaeten 2008: 173). Both elements are the result of a long-standing anti-urban housing policy by the Belgian government and an ongoing promotion of private home ownership. After the Second World War the need for new housing in Belgium was met by the De Taeye Act, providing fiscal incentives for private home builders. Apart from solving the housing problem, the housing policy was meant to promote the values of private ownership, individual initiative and family focus, and to use housing production as a lever for economic growth (De Decker 2011, Heynen 2010, De Vos and Heynen 2007, Ryckewaert and Theunis 2006, De Meulder et al. 1999). The Belgian housing policy resulted in the enormous suburban sprawl which now characterizes the landscape, especially in the Flemish region (Figure 1.1). The omnipresent single family houses were often realized as turnkey projects, based on the same templates with more or less spacious and luxurious finishing depending on the budget (De Meulder 2006, Loeckx 2006).

FIGURE 1.1 A typical post-war residential neighbourhood in Aartselaar, Flanders

Photograph: The author

Today, Belgium is confronted with an ageing population, a differentiation in household types and an increasing amount of small families and households (Ryckewaert et al. 2012). On average more than 50 per cent of the single family houses are underused, meaning that they are inhabited by fewer people than the surface and number of bedrooms would allow for (Vanneste, Thomas and Goossens 2007). Because of the decrease in household sizes, the Flemish region is confronted with a growing mismatch between the existing housing stock, of large single family houses in suburban environments, and the changing demand for smaller houses in more central locations (Ryckewaert et al. 2012). These underused houses, often situated in low density neighbourhoods, are also at odds with a policy of sustainability since they generate high energy consumption for both heating and transport. The Flemish suburban territory offers an interesting case to study the adaptation of an existing housing stock in an ageing society.

Using a number of case studies, we document the intersection of the home’s materiality, imaginaries and home-making practices of empty nesters. This required an interdisciplinary perspective and research approach.¹ Therefore, an architectural analysis of the suburban dwelling is combined with fieldwork methodologies developed within fields like anthropology, sociology and geography. The chapter is based on material stemming from 61 in-home interviews with empty nesters living in detached single family houses in 10 residential neighbourhoods geographically dispersed over the Flemish region.²

The effects of children leaving the house

From the time the first child leaves the house for a student room in a university town, to the youngest child leaving the house definitively, many years pass by. Gradually the activity in the house declines and this ‘step by step’ exodus is reflected in the physical appearance of the house. When children opt for a student room, their favourite books, CDs, posters and some furniture are moved. The decor of their bedroom, the universe of their childhood, is gradually dismantled. When the bedroom is appropriated by one of the siblings still living at home, the original decor is further altered. But then the moment arrives when all the young ones have left the nest and the house, which used to be buzzing with activity, and is now empty. The first months or even years after the children move out, the impact on the use and appearance of the house is rather limited, as exemplified by an empty nester whose youngest child had only left a couple of months ago: ‘The use of the house hasn’t changed yet, except that before the children used the bedrooms, the television might have been on more and the couch probably more occupied … But we still work very hard, we didn’t have the time yet to dwell on it.’³ In this first phase of the empty nest the vacant bedrooms often remain ‘frozen’, as if the child left the day before, with many of their personal belongings and decorations still present. During the first years, when children are building up their independent life, they still tend to stay overnight regularly. In case of relationship breakups or when in-between jobs or houses, the parental home often serves as a temporarily shelter for the children.

When ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Occupations
• 2 Appropriations
• 3 Interpretations
• Index