42
developers who reproduce the same or similar houses and neighborhoods across a multitude of varying locales. Although these models are reproduced throughout the United States, little to no effort is typically made to respond to differences in climate, landscape, regional materials, or vernacular traditions.
The reason for this lack of regional variation is
that the suburbs, like other aspects of popular culture, have been designed to appeal to the mythical average, and as a result appeal to no one, or no place specifically. The design referents for these places cannot be found in their immediate contexts, rather they defer instead to external standards. The standards for these houses and developments were determined by a competitive process where as successful models were produced, copies were made, metrics were determined and the standards were crystallized. This conformity to external standards results in a system which, similar to Theodor Adorno’s critique of the production of popular music, at best discourages and at worst prohibits individualism and innovation.
Notes
46
According to Adorno, products of the culture
industry employ Pseudo-individualization to disguise their 47
46 Theodor Adorno, “On Popular Music” In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: a Reader. Edited by John Storey. (Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2009): 67.
homogeneity. Suburban developers display a mastery
47 Ibid., 68-69.
homebuyers passive consumers of architecture. Adorno
48 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 216.
would likely suggest that living in such a place would limit
of this technique by offering minor variations in facades, material and color, in addition to a limited number of models. These predigested environments make these
its inhabitant’s ability to imagine the world as it could be, and therefore is performing the purpose of preparing them for the monotony of their working class existence.