Building Homes for the Not-So-Nuclear Family

When I first moved to Boston, I became convinced the way we design houses needs to change. A persuasive editorial in the New York Times this week agrees with me. Building cookie-cutter houses for nuclear families has left us with houses that can’t adapt easily to hard economic times, changing lifestyles, and immigration.

In Chicago, one of my friends rented an apartment which was a former coach house and was built above a stable. The apartment was near the main house on the property, but detached from it. When recent graduates need to live with their parents, semi-detached apartments like that would give them autonomy.

Making housing modular – adding entrances and exits, providing small units that are partly detached from common spaces, and not assuming that everyone in the house will be part of a close-knit family – would add flexibility to home construction. If the traditional dream of owning a house is no longer families’ top priority, apartment buildings should be able to accommodate extended families and changes in their life situations.

The New York Times article talks about immigrant families sharing suburban houses. There are at least two more angles to that story:

1. Families of choice are rarely – if ever – a target market for housing construction. But many people who are distant from their families of origin may prefer to share space with their friends. Buildings that combine shared space with private sections or apartments could accommodate this social reality.
2. Since the recession, recent college and high school graduates often live with their parents. Since they are eager for autonomy and may even be in long-term relationships, this lack of privacy could cause family tension. Designing sections of houses with kitchenettes and independent entrances would make their lives easier.

The New York Times article recommends turning old industrial buildings into flexibly designed lofts that can accommodate larger families and changing work situations. A loft-style building would be one potential answer to the dilemma of families squeezing into small spaces in ways that may lead to conflict and stress.

Cohousing is another practical and relatively affordable model. In cohousing developments, shared spaces are surrounded by compact apartments or houses. Cohousing is usually designed for unrelated groups who share social values about common space. The same idea could be adapted for multi-generational families.

Are Cities Alive?

By any cold-blooded measurement of pulse and heartbeat, cities are dead. Like shells, they provide a home for the living creatures who construct them.

Seashell by candlelight (Source: stock.xchng)

But an intriguing post at Treehugger.com links to a video which says cities are alive. Not in the literal, breathing sense of the term – but in the interconnected, fractal, neural network sense of the word. Cities may not live and die the way we do, but they do exist as vibrant, organized webs of activity. Here’s the video which inspired the original post.

TO UNDERSTAND IS TO PERCEIVE PATTERNS from jason silva on Vimeo

This quote from Steven Johnson sums up the idea beautifully:

“Coral reefs are sometimes called ‘the cities of the sea,’ and part of the argument is that we need to take the metaphor seriously: the reef ecosystem is so innovative because it shares some defining characteristics with actual cities. These patterns of innovation and creativity are fractal: they reappear in recognizable form as you zoom in and out, from molecule to neuron to pixel to sidewalk. Whether you’re looking at original innovations of carbon-based life or the explosion of news tools on the web, the same shapes keep turning up… when life gets creative, it has a tendency to gravitate toward certain recurring patterns, whether those patterns are self-organizing, or whether they are deliberately crafted by human agents.”

No wonder reading about news tools online is so entertaining. I’m watching a city of knowledge being built.

Extrapolating this idea to other environments could yield fascinating results.

Design for whom?

About a month ago, I read about an innovative architectural education program called Rural Studio that has been featured on public radio and has also become the subject of a book. Students working at Rural Studio are building houses in a very low-income part of western Alabama. These houses were designed to be affordable, with a $20,000 mortgage, for people living on incomes of close to $637 a month. (No, there is not a zero missing in that first number.) The houses look distinctive – these are not cookie-cutter buildings – but they are basic, functional homes built with low-cost materials. Rural Studio has also been expanding its scope to create other community buildings, including an animal shelter and a bird-watching tower.

I don’t know how much it would cost to construct these $20,000 houses on a larger scale, but there might be a significant untapped market for houses in that price range in the United States (and probably in other countries too).