Evolution of the American Home
18 October 2005

Single Family Home
America was founded on the principles of home living. Uniting a family under one room is not just a reality of traditional American living, but a metaphor for American mentality.

The family home was a modest building. Early American homes were built with local materials, vernacular technology and favored functionality over aesthetics. An early town truly was a community effort, as though in theory family would build their own residence, help was always needed from the neighborhood. Most literally, the early American home was the object of the family who lived there, and was passes along from one generation to the next remaining with the family. These houses featured a kitchen, a living room, and often a single sleeping room for the family to share. As agriculture was the livelihood of most, the early American family enjoyed proximity to their economy by building the house on the farm.

The single family home exists today in a modernized form, and may have lost some of its ideals. Because of the success of Levitt Town and the suburban exodus, most single family homes today exist outside the urban fabric, and since most contemporary Americans work outside of home, this often means lengthy commuting from home to work. Another difference is that residents rarely own their home, and either rent it or pay mortgage to a landlord or bank. The home has evolved to include twice as many rooms as there are people, including bedrooms equal to the number of residents, a kitchen, dining room, living room, home office or den or playroom, and multiple bathrooms, thereby separating the functions and people into arbitrarily compartments.

Due to the failures of translating early single family homes into functional modern residences, new housing types have been invented to cope with a variety of living situations.

Apartment
As American culture shifted form the norm of family living to a more independent lifestyle, American home evolved to adapt to such changes. Home ownership became less important as life became more transitory. Young individuals looking to start a life for themselves may not have had the resources or desire to settle into a permanent home. Living in the countryside or suburbs meant isolation from the bustle of the city; while relaxing to some, many would rather exist within the urban fabric and enjoy the facilities of the city, including mass transit, proximity to the workplace, and civic institutions. Therefore, the notion of renting smaller parcels in denser living situation provided the foundation for apartment living.

Another benefit of apartment living is the ability to sustain a free agent status while benefiting from a home in the meantime. Furthermore, renting an apartment is usually less expensive than maintaining a mortgage. But these are the same characteristics that make apartment living undesirable. In a rental situation, the resident never gains equity from the property, the rental money is gone forever at the end of the month. The resident cannot alter the space in any permanent way since the property is not his to adjust; even simply painting the walls a new color can be forbidden in an apartment. Worse, the resident is subject to whims of the landlord, who may choose to alter the rental price, the rental status, or the rental property entirely. And lastly, the freedom of apartment living is not so free, as the renter is usually subject to a lease that cannot be broken without annoying consequences.

Nevertheless, apartment living continues to be a popular choice, for better and worse. While it makes sense for those who are perhaps leaving their family home for the first time to rent for a while, a darker side of renting exists. Too often, established families never make it past this stage of life as they are priced out of permanent housing in their city of residence due to undesirable gentrification and high property costs.

Condo
The condo is an apartment with one problem solved: ownership. No longer is the resident throwing their money away each month for lack of equity. All the money spent on the condo, all upgrades and permanent alterations are the sole property of the owner. If it comes time to move, the condo owner sells the property, and after paying back the bank the money can be spent on the next home.

While the condo can exist in a variety of settings, the only catch is that the ownership is limited to the interior space of the condo. The condo resident doesn’t own the floors, ceilings, or walls, as they are adjacent to others’ condos. Likewise the garage and yard and front door aren’t even yours. So as the condo answers some ownership problems, it is really only a short term and partial resolution.

Loft
Popularized in Europe, loft living began in America in New York mid-twentieth century. Abandoned warehouses became work spaces for artists, with enough space and amenities left over to accommodate living. The warehouse’s original concrete floors and walls gave the artist a space he or she could drip paint and resin without worrying for its condition, and the floor-to-ceiling windows provided the necessary lighting. Perhaps Andy Warhol and his factory take most credit for popularizing the loft movement. Warhol’s highly publicized and fantastical lifestyle made the loft desirable to emerging artists and the non-practicing art community alike.

This is not surprising: the loft has much beauty and functionality due to and in spite of its industrial beginnings. A standard loft has floor-to-ceiling windows, high ceilings, and often multiple levels bringing drama to the space. If the resident is lucky, one or two walls of her loft will maintain the structural brick interior. Of all spaces to showcase modern art, furniture, and design, only a gallery could compare.

The loft is still an excellent solution to live/work situations, and is equally popular with those who want to produce art at home, set up a home office, and those who want live the stereotype of urban loft artist. The loft is characteristically an urban living situation as it often is developed in existing abandoned buildings in the midst of urbanity. Furthermore, a loft can be either a rental property or a condo, providing more flexible ownership solutions. However, the loft lacks the full sense of ownership a house provides as the layout of loft facilities mimics that of apartments and condos before it, with all of the related problems.

Townhouse
The next evolution of the American home is the townhouse, aptly named as it applies suburban characteristics to an urban or suburban living solution. Townhouses are unlike apartments, condos, and lofts in that shared space is minimized and ownership maximized. Typically, townhouses share walls, but not floors, ceilings, roofs, hallways or driveways. A townhouse has its own front door, and thus a more tangible threshold from town to home. Also, the opportunity to alter your home, at least the interior, exists in a similar sense to the condo and loft but to a greater degree. Like above examples, the townhouse is a great way for a person without a large budget to own a home and gain equity, while residing in the dense urban fabric and all its associated amenities.

Perhaps the greatest failure of the townhouse is providing an individualized home for its residents. Truly the interior is ripe for customization by the resident, of course not until construction has been completed and the sale is made, but the exterior exists in the same design paradigm as a typical apartment or condo. For all the benefits the townhouse provides, a lack of identity for the homeowner is till present.

New Urban Home
Enter the New Urban Home, which simultaneously integrates the benefits of all above housing solutions. It is a home in every sense of the word, including the pride of owning a unique and custom residence. Its similarity to the loft is immediately apparent, including the characteristic high ceilings, large windows, multi-level living space, open floor plan, and maximum functionality. Yet the New Urban Home borrows most directly from an urban housing project in Amsterdam, Holland. Borneo Sporenburg features 2500 unique residences designed by 60 architects, and though each house begins with the a standardized parcel of land, no house is exactly alike. Furthermore, the individualized facades still remain a cohesive whole as the architects respected certain principles of proportion and overall style when developing this project.

The New Urban Home provides its future owners the ability to determine certain features as the project is built for them. Custom facades, flooring, a choice of built in furnishings or none at all, and finally, your very own front door are some of the ways the New Urban Home owner is included in the process of designing his or her dream home. And like any other house, there is no landlord to answer to when even the most dramatic change is made. In addition, the New Urban Home has evolved form the townhouse and is owned from top to bottom, front to back, side to side by its owner: no adjacent walls. And the New Urban Home is urban, with all the benefits but without the disadvantages. Think of it as an urban sanctuary, a place to be a part of your urban community when it suits, and apart from it when it doesn’t.

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