Newly Built Single-Family Houses:
The Dream of the Good Life and the Tectonics of Attachment
PhD project by Caroline R. Beck
Newly Built Single-Family Houses:
The project investigates newly built single-family houses designed by catalogue house companies. In Denmark, the single-family house is both the dwelling type most strongly associated with the notion of “the good life” and, at the same time, the most climate-damaging housing type. Despite this, newly built single-family houses have been addressed only to a limited extent in architectural research—perhaps because trained architects are rarely involved in their design. However, due to their significant climate impact, prevalence, and strong appeal to the Danish population, it seems deeply relevant that architects understand this typology in order to potentially rethink it so that it operates within planetary boundaries.
The project is divided into two phases. Phase 1 maps the actor network of particularly important building components and their everyday phenomenology. In Phase 2, the project investigates, through design experiments, how changes to parts of the actor network may set off chain reactions with the aim of pushing the typology toward operating within planetary boundaries.
Phase 1 – The Everyday Phenomenology and Actor Network of the Single-Family House
The project focuses on the entanglement between the sensed, material everyday life, residents’ dreams of the good life, building technology, and legislation. This entanglement is analyzed based on Actor-Network Theory, employing a symmetrical analysis and mapping of both human and non-human actors.
The project identifies key building components and spatial technologies that residents of newly built single-family houses associate with “the good life.” Examples may include the transition between inside and outside in the form of foundation vents, electronically controlled windows, and temperature-regulating installations such as ventilation systems and underfloor heating. Other examples include the divided adult and children’s sections, the double carport, and the open-plan kitchen-dining area.
Architectural analysis tools are used to redraw and analyze the identified key building components to uncover underlying structures, logics, and design “scripts.” In line with Research through Design, the investigations are documented and analyzed through visual and spatial production.
Based on the redrawing of the building components, their relations to, for example, ecological systems, legislation, and construction practices are mapped. This is carried out through literature studies and expert interviews. Experts may include academics and practitioners who work with the framework and planning of the housing market. Interviewing experts is, among other things, a strategy for assessing the agency of non-human actors (e.g., a piece of legislation or an administrative procedure). Continuous visual mapping of the relationships between the actors is part of the process.
Focusing on the identified key building components, the project examines residents’ everyday experiences in their homes and how their notions of “the good life” are enacted as material-discursive practices. This investigation will take the form of semi-structured, go-along object interviews, where a room or an element of the house serves as the focal point of the conversation. Special attention will be paid to understanding connections, alignments, or discrepancies between residents’ dreams and notions and their physical, sensory, and spatial experiences of everyday life in the home.
From existing research, we know that demand and our collective notions of “the good life” may be articulated by individuals but are created, maintained, and circulated within an entangled web of technology, construction systems, legislation, media, and our sensed everyday life in the home. This is the actor network that will be mapped in Phase 1. Architecture itself is part of this entanglement, and it is therefore capable of having a transformative character. This will be explored further in Phase 2.
Phase 2 – The Tectonics of Attachment
Building on the key building components, the project investigates their tectonic transformation potential. The aim is to rethink, adapt, and redesign these key points so that the building typology can be guided toward operating within planetary boundaries, while at the same time offering an attractive way of living for residents. This phase will thus explore possibilities for building new, sustainable dreams and, in doing so, creating a chain reaction that encompasses both social and environmental dimensions—actively improving the existing imbalances that the typology creates in the planetary account. How can one create a “tectonics of attachment” in which spaces and materials enrich everyday life and foster communities with humans and other beings? Can building components act as catalysts for a movement toward understanding ourselves as part of a larger ecological whole?
In research, a cultural understanding of “the good life” is often pointed to as a barrier to building more sustainably. Architects’ typical “response” to this is to present good, alternative examples of ways of living. While best cases are valuable contributions, this project takes a different approach. Instead, it asks whether, by changing one part of the actor network—namely the building component—it is possible to initiate a chain reaction that generates more sustainable dreams.
Supervisors
- Marie Frier Hvejsel (main supervisor)
- Søren Nielsen
KONTAKT
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