So, I’m returning to the Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg again this week, because I’m currently reading Academically Adrift, and I can’t even wrap my head around a blog post for that, because it’s not like I’m…
but more like…
…so you’re welcome for that (I don’t do statistics vs I do story time!).
Where were we?
Oh yeah, back to The Great Good Place, looking at a particular passage that I found interesting which is also from the “Hostile Habitat” chapter that I spoke of in my last post on this book. In a section labelled A Tradeoff, Oldenburg speaks to a shift in American culture and the concept of the ideal space, quoting architect Dolores Hayden:
The dream house replaced the ideal city as the spatial representation of American hopes for the good life.
Oldenburg also writes that the model city was to be a cure for social ills, but the dream house has emerged since then as an escape from them. So, we gave up?
This chapter reminded me of the Truman Show a lot.
These ideas and claims of a reversal from ideal city to ideal home is echoed in Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” which I have blogged on previously and which is a must read on these subjects.
I would love to see and figure out how this change in culture, the push to suburbia, and the ideal of a personal home over the ideal of a communal city, has influenced the urban college campus and the urban union, and will have to pocket that question until I get the time to actually get into that research later on in life.
Later on in this section, it gets even more interesting as Oldenburg delves into the changing definition of adequate space was for Americans, stating that since 1950, our houses have gotten bigger and bigger, so that at the time of publishing, on average, the typical American home has 2 rooms for every person, compared to 1 room for every 1.5 people in an Israeli household.
Hey Luigi, maybe if you didn’t have a whole mansion to yourself, it wouldn’t be so creepy.
So, this concept of the larger American space has always kind of fascinated me, and this article from Apartment Therapy caught my attention years ago, and spurred one of my first blog posts on space (and really, one of my first blog posts ever).
There is, of course, a lot that goes into why Americans have so much space or want so much space, including Manifest Destiny, the push to suburbia, a very material culture (think the export of Hollywood and McDonaldization of the world), that is its own sociological endeavor. One of my all-time favorite books on this subject is Material World by Peter Menzel, which goes around the world to explore what it looks like when families from various countries move all their possessions in front of their home. Americans are likely to have more XBoxes than other families are likely to have pots and pans. For a visual learner like myself, this really reinforces the concept of space, idealized spaces, and the importance of stuff for me.
I think this is an area rich for research in exploring how unions came to be built in their current form, and why renovations or rebuilds are needed on 1950s and 60s era unions (think GI Bill). As cities push the envelope and explore the idea of micro units, what does this mean for urban residence halls and urban unions? Does our multifunctional ballroom have a lot in common with the newest 256sq ft micro apartment, while our 250 fixed seat theater has more in common with Kobe Bryant’s mansion? Hmmm.
This…
vs
This?
*Sidenote* I highly recommend the episode of Gadget Man featured below, with my favsies Richard Ayoade, but which looks at the concept of a 12m squared house at about 15mins in. Very interesting concept and ideal of space.
Polar Bears and Coffee 
I’m compelled to reply, if for no other reason than to see if my comment on a post that references a post I commented on leads to the implosion of the internets.
Regarding your observations about private spaces in suburbia and their infiltration to campus, I think there’s evidence of that in residences and even hospitals, whether they are new buildings or renovations of old facilities.
Students typically are clamoring for individual space, whether they’re coming from the nest as a high school graduate, or coming to us from the military or other professional experiences. They had their own space within those homes, with at least a modicum of privacy from siblings and parents, and expect it here too.
I read a fascinating piece recently on hospital rooms becoming private, so that they can spend time with their friends and family, not a fellow patient. Particularly in children’s hospitals, where the patient comes with a much bigger entourage.
http://www.columbusmonthly.com/content/stories/2014/06/new-hospitals-design-science.html
The links in that sidebar are also great.
While hospitals might list disease transmission as a driving factor, I’m guessing privacy is up there too. one of the people on my team told me about a room a student of hers was sharing, to help the fellow patient cope with their mutual predicament, as a countermeasure to the other person’s depression over the situation. It backfired a little bit, as her student was getting a lot more visitors, which actually made the other patient feel worse.
The upshot is that we need to be bigger, to accommodate more people in more private quarters, whether it’s residence halls, hospitals, or fraternity facilities. That concept will surely spill over into the third spaces that have been your focus over the last couple of blog posts.