La casa y el mundo: dinámicas domésticas de la casa suburbana estadouniense de la posguerra

I Este Congreso ha contado con una ayuda del Vicerrectorado de Investigación de la Universidad de Granada obtenida en concurrencia competitiva. © De los textos, sus autores, 2019 © Abada Editores, s.l., 2019 C/ Gobernador, 18 28014 Madrid www.abadaeditores.com Imagen de portada: La cabaña primitiva, frontispicio realizado por Charles-Dominique- Joseph Eisen para el Essai sur l’architecture de Marc-Antoine Laugier, edición de 1755 Fuente: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich Imagen de contraportada: Grabado encabezando el capítulo “Adspectus Incauti Dispendium” del libro de Theodoor Galle Verdicus Christianus, 1601 Fuente: Vilnius University Library ISBN 978-84-17301-24-8 IBIC AMA Depósito Legal M-607-2019 Cualquier forma de reproducción, distribución, comunicación pública o transformación de esta obra solo puede ser realizada con la autorización de sus titulares, salvo excepción prevista por la ley. Diríjase a CEDRO (Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos) si necesita fotocopiar o escanear algún fragmento de esta obra (www.conlicencia.com; 917021970). Coordinador de la edición Juan Calatrava Escobar Equipo Editorial David Arredondo Garrido Ana del Cid Mendoza Francisco A. García Pérez Agustín Gor Gómez Marta Rodríguez Iturriaga María Zurita Elizalde Diseño de cubierta Francisco A. García Pérez II Congreso Internacional Cultura y Ciudad La Casa. Espacios domésticos, modos de habitar Granada 23-25 enero 2019 Comisión Organizadora David Arredondo Garrido Juan Manuel Barrios Rozúa Emilio Cachorro Fernández Juan Calatrava Escobar Ana del Cid Mendoza Francisco A. García Pérez Agustín Gor Gómez Ricardo Hernández Soriano Bernardino Líndez Vílchez Juan Francisco Martínez Benavides Juan Carlos Reina Marta Rodríguez Iturriaga María Zurita Elizalde Comité Científico Juan Calatrava Escobar, Universidad de Granada (Presidente) Tim Benton, The Open University, Reino Unido Miguel Ángel Chaves, Universidad Complutense de Madrid María Elena Díez Jorge, Universidad de Granada Juan Domingo Santos, Universidad de Granada Carmen Espegel Alonso, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Rafael García Quesada, Universidad de Granada Carlos García Vázquez, Universidad de Sevilla Fulvio Irace, Politecnico di Milano Ángeles Layuno, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Marta Llorente, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Caroline Maniaque, ENSA Rouen Mar Loren Méndez, Universidad de Sevilla Josep Maria Montaner, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Xavier Monteys, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya José Morales Sánchez, Universidad de Sevilla Eduardo Ortiz Moreno, Universidad de Granada Francisco Peña Fernández, Universidad de Granada Antonio Pizza, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya José Manuel Pozo Municio, Universidad de Navarra Rafael Reinoso Bellido, Universidad de Granada José Rosas Vera, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Santiago de Chile Carlos Sambricio, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Margarita Segarra Lagunes, Università degli Studi RomaTre Marta Sequeira, Universidade de Lisboa Jorge Torres Cueco, Universitat Politècnica de València Elisa Valero Ramos, Universidad de Granada Presentación.......................................................................................................................... XIX Juan Calatrava BLOQUE TEMÁTICO 1 Arquitecturas de la casa: el espacio doméstico a través de la historia Lo público y lo privado en la forma urbis de Santiago 1910. El espacio doméstico en el Canon Republicano............................................................................................... Josep Parcerisa Bundó, José Rosas Vera 22 La Alhambra habitada. Experiencias del paisaje desde el espacio arquitectónico.. Marta Rodríguez Iturriaga 37 Housing and Children: Architectural Models from the Modern Movement................ Alexandra Alegre 48 Högna Sigurðardóttir. La misteriosa marca indeleble del origen............................... Julio Barreno Gutiérrez 59 Las casillas de peones camineros y su implantación en la costa del sudeste de España.............................................................................................................................. Antonio Burgos Núñez, Juan Carlos Olmo García, Francisco José García Castillo 73 El palazzo all’italiana, de la casa del príncipe al principio urbano............................ Michele Giovanni Caja, Maria Pompeiana Iarossi 82 The City and the House: Going Back to the Future...................................................... Antonio Alberto Clemente 95 Traditional Urban Housing at Alentejo’s “Marble Area”.............................................. Ana Costa Rosado 104 La consolidación del cuarto de baño en las viviendas de la ciudad de São Paulo, Brasil................................................................................................................................ Clarissa de Almeida Paulillo, Tatiana Sakurai 117 La cama amueblada: del objeto a la estancia............................................................... María de Miguel Pastor, Carla Sentieri Omarrementería 126 VI The Spaces, the People and the Ways of Being at Home in the North of Portugal in the 19th Century.......................................................................................................... Alexandra Esteves 136 Casa de John Soane en Londres (1792-1827). Luz, iluminación y patrimonio......... Rosalía Fenutría Aumesquet, José Joaquín Parra Bañón 143 Rita Fernández Queimadelos. Los proyectos de viviendas realizados en la DGRD (1943-1946)....................................................................................................................... Paula M. Fernández-Gago Longueira, Eduardo A. Caridad Yáñez 154 Arqueología urbana en Barcelona: aproximación a los espacios domésticos entre los siglos IV-VI........................................................................................................ Francesc Xavier Florensa Puchol 167 Memoria e identidad: el espacio de almacenaje en el imaginario doméstico........... Marta García Carbonero 178 Between Doorkeeper Apartments and Housemaid Rooms: Ways of Living in a Changing Lisbon............................................................................................................. Maria Assunção Gato, Filipa Ramalhete 188 La casa popular de zaguán, patio y corral. Habitabilidad y protección para el siglo XXI........................................................................................................................... Vidal Gómez Martínez, Blanca del Espino Hidalgo, María Teresa Pérez Cano 196 Casa en transformación: cocina y tecnología en el siglo XX en Cuenca (Ecuador). María Augusta Hermida, María José Cañar, Guillermo Mauricio Torres 206 Granada: la arquitectura doméstica de la ciudad cristiana........................................ Carlos Jerez Mir 218 Consideraciones históricas sobre la casa tradicional gallega y otras construcciones adjetivas................................................................................................ Francisco Xabier Louzao Martínez 230 Modern, Rationalist and Mediterranean: Residential Architecture during the Italian Colonization in Libya........................................................................................... Andrea Maglio 236 El confort en la vivienda canaria: de la arquitectura tradicional a los EECN............ Eduardo Martín del Toro 250 Instalaciones de la casa: el espacio doméstico en el siglo XX en España a través de la tecnología................................................................................................................ César Martín-Gómez, José Manuel Pozo Municio 261 El diedro casa | ciudad en la arquitectura nobiliaria de Sevilla: la plaza del Duque Pedro Mena Vega 272 Un primer acercamiento a la Quinta Nova da Assunção en Sintra............................. Iván Moure Pazos 282 VII BLOQUE TEMÁTICO 2 El proyecto doméstico como núcleo de la modernidad: casa singular y vivienda colectiva, del Movimiento Moderno al siglo XXI The Construction of “Minho’s” Domestic Space in Portugal’s 18th Century........... Flávia Oliveira 294 Arquitectura moderna en la ciudad histórica. Adalberto Libera y la casa Nicoletti (Roma 1932)..................................................................................................................... Carlos Plaza 302 Casa Bellia en Turín: nuevos espacios para la burguesía.......................................... Alice Pozzati 315 Live-Work Architecture. Learning from Peripheral Neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro.............................................................................................................................. Ana Slade 327 The Relationship Between Inhabitants and Vegetation in the Houses of Maceió in the 19th............................................................................................................................. Tharcila Maria Soares Leão, Josemary Omena Passos Ferrare, Veronica Robalinho Cavalcanti 339 The Home and the World: Domestic Dynamics of the Postwar American Suburban House............................................................................................................................... Luísa Sol 350 El hogar de Telva. Miradas femeninas al interior doméstico español 1963-1975..... Jorge Tárrago Mingo, Cristina Sunga Zamora 360 La casa jesuita en Granada: el Colegio de San Pablo................................................. María del Carmen Vílchez Lara, Jorge Gabriel Molinero Sánchez 371 La habitación en la arquitectura agraria granadina...................................................... Eduardo Zurita Povedano 381 Habitar el arte: la casa del coleccionista como modelo experimental de espacio doméstico........................................................................................................................ Ángeles Layuno 394 Domesticidad Mediterránea vs. Modernidad americana de Posguerra. Sert y Rudofsky.......................................................................................................................... Mar Loren-Méndez 411 Tradiciones en las políticas de vivienda pública.......................................................... Josep Maria Montaner Martorell 422 VIII De la Weissenhoff a Oporto, un camino de servicio.................................................... José Manuel Pozo Municio 430 Le Corbusier’s Immeuble-villas and an After Lunch Remembrance......................... Marta Sequeira 441 Le Corbusier. Une science de logis.............................................................................. Jorge Torres Cueco 454 La casa productiva. Propuestas para la autosuficiencia alimentaria durante la República de Weimar...................................................................................................... David Arredondo Garrido 470 Modernità y mediterraneità: sincretismo habitacional de Luigi Figini y Gino Pollini................................................................................................................................ Emilio Cachorro Fernández, Cristina Medina Valverde 482 El piano Fanfani en Roma: la torre de viviendas y la casa patio................................ Ana del Cid Mendoza 496 Feet on the Sand: Living Spaces in Apartment Buildings by the Sea in Maceió, Brazil................................................................................................................................. Camila Antunes de Carvalho Casado, Maria Angélica da Silva 510 Atomic-age Housing. The Fallout Shelter in Cold War America................................. Chiara Baglione 521 De la manzana a la supermanzana. Recuperación e innovación en la cultura urbanística....................................................................................................................... Raimundo Bambó Naya, Javier Monclús Fraga 531 La ventana y el balcón sobre avenida Providencia (1931/1981): evolución y permanencia de la arquitectura doméstica.................................................................. Pedro Bannen Lanata 544 Towards the Modern Block: Evolution of an Urban Type in Kay Fisker’s Prewar Architecture..................................................................................................................... Guia Baratelli 554 La casa en Isle of Wight (1955-1956) de James Gowan, austeridad en la modernidad británica...................................................................................................... Alicia Cantabella Gallego 566 Villeggiatura urbana: una residencia secundaria en el núcleo urbano de São Paulo................................................................................................................................. Sara Caon 576 Otredades en la habitabilidad de un Monterrey moderno: primeros edificios de departamentos como alternativa a la vivienda unifamiliar.......................................... María de los Ángeles Castillo Soriano, Alberto Canavati Espinosa 586 Brutalismo doméstico. Un espacio para la contemplación......................................... Rubens Cortés Cano 597 IX Profundidad espacial. Abriendo el muro. De la habitación sin nombre al jardín de invierno............................................................................................................................ Marta Pérez Rodríguez 1599 Rooms. Aldo Rossi and the House in Ghiffa: Symbol, Dust and Desire.................... Michelangelo Pivetta, Vincenzo Moschetti 1609 La colina habitada: características morfológicas y modos de habitar el campo...... Luigi Ramazzotti 1620 El studiolo como teatro de la mente............................................................................... Jaime Ramos Alderete, Ana Isabel Santolaria Castellanos 1632 Modos de habitar en contexto de montaña: la región oriental del Atlas en Marruecos........................................................................................................................ Miguel Reimão Costa, Desidério Batista 1641 La casa en Santiago de Chile a fines del siglo XVIII: valores materiales y simbólicos........................................................................................................................ Marisol Richter Scheuch 1652 Hombres de condición inquieta y despegada: el fascinante espectáculo de la precariedad...................................................................................................................... Carmen Rodríguez Pedret 1660 Maid Rooms and Laundry Sinks Matter: Modern Houses in a Non-modern Context............................................................................................................................. Silvana Rubino 1671 Inquietante domesticidad............................................................................................... Alberto Rubio Garrido 1679 Houses for Whom? Between the Habitat and the Inhabiting, on Henri Lefebvre’s Quest................................................................................................................................. Teresa V. Sá 1688 Una casa es una «machine de l’émotion»..................................................................... Javier Sáez Gastearena 1698 Espacio doméstico e higiene. Políticas del habitar en Sevilla entre los siglos XIX y XX................................................................................................................................... Victoriano Sainz Gutiérrez 1710 La vivienda de los fareros, entre la casa y la máquina................................................ Santiago Sánchez Beitia, Fernando Acale Sánchez 1720 Naturalezas en la intimidad; acerca del jardín en los espacios domésticos contemporáneos............................................................................................................. Juana Sánchez Gómez, Diego Jiménez López, Isabel Jiménez López 1732 Cármenes, pequeñas historias domésticas.................................................................. Juan Antonio Sánchez Muñoz, Vincent Morales Garoffolo 1743 XVI Algunas casas modernas: de la caverna al hogar........................................................ Rafael Sánchez Sánchez 1755 Recuerdos de una escalera. Experiencias domésticas desplazadas en la obra de Siza................................................................................................................................... Juan Antonio Serrano García 1764 ¿No habitar es modo de habitar? Siglos de permanencia de mitos y criminalización................................................................................................................ Sonia Maria Taddei Ferraz, Evelyn Garcia da Cruz, Paula Andréa Santos da Silva 1778 Tres modos de habitar la casa popular: cereal, vid y olivar........................................ Salvador Ubago Palma 1787 La expresividad de la racionalidad: La casa estudio para Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo ............................................................................................................................... Luis Villarreal Ugarte 1800 Habitar en Iberoamérica.................................................................................................. Graciela María Viñuales 1811 BLOQUE TEMÁTICO 5 Miradas externas: la casa en la pintura, el cine y la literatura Habitar la aventura: casas de Jules Verne.................................................................... Juan Calatrava Escobar 1824 Casas vacías, olvidadas y recordadas: arte, literatura y memoria............................. Marta Llorente Díaz 1836 La villa Arpel: machine à habiter, “donde todo se comunica…” (Mon Oncle, J. Tati, 1958)......................................................................................................................... Antonio Pizza de Nanno 1850 El relato doméstico desde una estrategia vertical....................................................... Agustín Gor Gómez 1855 Fondos de escena en el cine de Ozu............................................................................ Carlos Barberá Pastor 1868 Habitar tras la Transición: los hogares cinematográficos de P. Almodóvar y A. Gómez.............................................................................................................................. Ruth Barranco Raimundo 1879 Espacios domésticos en transición y la ciudad moderna en Ohayo (1959) de Yasujiro Ozu..................................................................................................................... Bernardita M. Cubillos Muñoz 1888 XVII La casa Stahl, una vida de ficción................................................................................. Daniel Díez Martínez 1898 Habitaciones para la escritura: el autor y su espacio de trabajo................................ Tomás García Píriz, F. Javier Castellano Pulido 1909 Ámbitos privados de la residencia colectiva en el imaginario cinematográfico español............................................................................................................................. Josefina González Cubero, Alba Zarza Arribas 1920 Los registros de la luz. Vermeer y Hopper.................................................................... Luis Eduardo Iáñez García 1929 Allí reside el tiempo, mi infancia. La cabaña telúrica de Andréi Tarkovski................ Alejandro Infantes Pérez, Javier Muñoz Godino 1940 La casa, la calle y el territorio. Narraciones fotográficas de Guido Guidi................. Marco Lecis 1951 Entre la literatura y el cine. La casa de Sokúrov en El segundo círculo.................... Pablo López Santana 1961 Habitar un espacio, contemplar un paisaje: mujer, jardín y arquitectura doméstica en China (desde el siglo X hasta el XVIII)................................................... Antonio Mezcua López 1972 Registro de una mirada, Cape Cod House.................................................................... Jorge Gabriel Molinero Sánchez, María del Carmen Vílchez Lara 1981 La casa como metáfora del viaje. Fotógrafos y arquitectos en Mallorca................... Maria Josep Mulet Gutiérrez, Joan Carles Oliver Torelló, María Sebastián Sebastián 1993 La mirada indiscreta: la ventana en el cine como generador de emociones............ Patricia Pozo Alemán 2004 El telar es el cuerpo, el cuerpo es la casa..................................................................... Anita Puig Gómez 2016 El espacio doméstico en el cine de Jacques Tati: del bloque tradicional a la vivienda sobre ruedas ................................................................................................... Helia de San Nicolás Juárez 2024 Fisonomías arquitectónicas. La mediatización de casas de personalidades en Galicia............................................................................................................................... Jesús Ángel Sánchez-García 2034 Mujeres y jardines en la China clásica: espacios domésticos en Sueño en el Pabellón Rojo................................................................................................................... Beatriz Valverde Vázquez 2046 Notas autobiográficas de los autores............................................................................ 2054 XVIII II Congreso Internacional CULTURA y CIUDAD La casa: espacios domésticos, modos de habitar Granada, ETSA UGR, enero 2019 La casa y el mundo: dinámicas domésticas de la casa suburbana estadouniense de la posguerra The Home and the World: Domestic Dynamics of the Postwar American Suburban House Luísa Sol Architect, Researcher and PhD holder, CIAUD - Universidade de Lisboa, [email protected] Resumen Teniendo en cuenta el concepto de Unhomely de Homi K. Bhabha en The Home and the World (1992), aquí se revisará el fenómeno doméstico de la casa suburbana que surgió en los Estados Unidos de América en los años cincuenta, en el auge de la era postindustrial. El éxodo de la clase media estadounidense a la periferia durante los años cincuenta y sesenta, su dinámica y relación de la vida suburbana con la ciudad coincidirá con la difusión de este nuevo elemento doméstico: la televisión. La difusión de la periferia estadounidense y de la televisión son simultáneas y se han influenciado mutuamente. Ambas expandieron la efectividad de las prácticas sociales y las fantasías culturales de la clase suburbana emergente. Teniendo en cuenta el surgimiento de la era postindustrial y el inicio de la posmodernidad, este paper analizará la casa suburbana y sus dinámicas domésticas a través de imágenes de televisión. Palabras clave: casa suburbana estadouniense, postindustrial, posmodernidad, televisión, la casa y el mundo Bloque temático: Arquitecturas de la casa: el espacio domestico a través de la historia Abstract Taking into account the concept of Unhomely by Homi K. Bhabha in The Home and the World (1992), this paper will review the domestic phenomenon of the suburban house that emerged in the United States of America in the fifties, on the rise of the post-industrial era. The exodus of the American middle class to the periphery during the fifties and sixties, its dynamics and relation of the suburban life with the city will have coincided with the spread of this new domestic element - the television. The spread of the american periphery and the television are simultaneous and mutually influenced by each other. Both expanded the effectiveness of social practices and cultural fantasies of the emerging suburban class. Bearing in mind the rise of the post-industrial era and the begginning of postmodernity this paper will analyse the suburban house and its domestic dynamics through television pictures. Keywords: American suburban house, post-industrial, postmodernity, television,the home and the world Topic: Architectures of the house: domestic space throughout history 350 Luisa Sol Television and suburbs are both engineered spaces, designed and planned by people who are engaged in giving material reality to wider cultural belief systems. In addition, media and suburbs are sites where meanings are produced and created; they are spaces (whether material or electronic) in which people make sense of their social relationship to each other, their communities, their nation, and the world at large.1 The American postwar period has witnessed the emergence of a massive built periphery simultaneously with the spread of the Television. Lynn Spiegel points out that the American standardization of the suburbs, and Television, both constitute spaces that create and produce meanings concerning to the relation of the domestic with the community and the world. The increase of visual permeability provided by the the application of some principles of modernist architecture. Such as the wide slidding window, the reduction of distances caused by the banalization of automobile use, the integration of television and in domestic life and the increasingly blurred relations of proximity / distance, inside / outside, made the suburban home and its dynamics a clear example of The World in the Home. Both, the televison and the suburb, have influenced mutually each other and had spread at the same time. Capital, industrial, geopolitical, and territorial prosperity have emerged the United States of America into the bounty, success, and ascendant power that outlined the entire American Twentieth Century; After all, this has been the ‘American Century’ […] This is the century in which America, the young giant, became the mightiest nation on earth [...] This is the century in which she became the richest nation in all of history, with a wealth that reached down to every level of the population.2 The working housing class expanded in the city centers, in thirty, forty or fifty floors, gaining space in height, while lots of houses all alike spread out over the peripheries. The Modernist Architecture has been confined to cities and institutional buildings, while the post-war suburban villa became the ex-libris of the American Dream: They were called public housing projects. But somehow the workers [...] managed to avoid public housing. [...] [and] headed out instead to the suburbs. They ended up in places like Islip, Long Island, and the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, and they bought houses with pitched roofs and shingles and clapboard siding, with no structure expressed if there was any way around it, with gaslight-style front-porch lamps and mailboxes set up on lenghts of stiffened chain that seemed to defy gravity.3 The exodus of the middle class towards the outer city limits represented a conquest based on mobility, powered by the automobile and motorways, and based on the expansionist idea of unlimited territory - the ever-surpassable and transposable frontier - where, supposedly, is located the Promised Land. Moving in to the suburbs was a closest representation of what the Declaration of Independence proposed when it enacted the “Right to Freedom and the pursuit of Happiness” as the inalienable rights of the American citizen. The North American periphery thus constituted the materialization of 1 Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse. Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001), 15. 2 Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to our House, 52. 3 Wolfe, From Bauhaus..., 53-54. 351 La casa y el mundo: dinámicas domésticas de la casa suburbana estadounidense de la posguerra a "post-city" (or what is after the limits of the city) that concentrated in itself, potentially, the best of these both dimensions, and, therefore, the realization of the promise to live in the "America" project. James Brown's "Living in America" music video (1985) is a celebration of how easily distances are overcome - "Super Highways, coast to coast, easy to get anywhere" and the fruitful opportunity to the unlimited freedom to cross the territory in search of Happiness and the Promised Land, but above all the potential possibility of finding them (Happiness and the Promised Land) on the way: Living in America – eye to eye, station to station Living in America – hand to hand, across the nation Living in America – got to have a celebration I live in America, help me out, But I live in America, wait a minute You may not be looking for the promise land, But you might find it anyway. There is an excess - of speed, of information, of brilliance and of exuberance - inherent in this video that reflects the life style full of optimism that prevails in this decade: «American pursuit of happiness degenerated into an obsessive pursuit of pleasure, both indulgent experiences and beautiful things».4 The continuous and intermittent sequence of consumption, optimism, and the various glimpses of activities in the tertiary sector recall what Jameson describes as the paradigm shift in the information, markets, and culture of the new and emerging type of society most famously baptized post-industrial society «(Daniel Bell) but often also designated consumer society, media society, information society, electronic society or high tech, and the like».5 In "Living in America", which simultaneously illustrates status, social ancestry and power, aspects that were increasingly projected in the aura of the celebrities of this decade, are based on the binomial of materialism / consumerism, fomented also by Reagan's speech. Troy reports that: Considered America’s oldest yuppie, his call for capitalist renewal fostered the money-media culture. His celebrity politics resonated with a society obsessed with ‘The Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous’. His easy–listening nationalism gave a communal and even idealistic veneer to individualist, consumerist excess. Delighting in the four million new jobs created in 1983, toasting the trailblazers mastering computers and other modern miracles, Reagan would summarize the year’s accomplishments in his January 1984 State of the Union Address, saying: “Hope is reborn for couples dreaming of owning homes and for risk takers with vision to create tomorrow’s opportunities”.6 Through a "modern", comfortable, house-with-garden and large-garage-for-one-large-car lifestyle, the suburb represents a bittersweet reconstruction of domesticity. On one hand this emphasizes the fulfillment of ambitions and its ostentation, on the other hand gives a new impetus and meaning 4 Gil Troy, Morning in America – How Ronald Reagan Reinvented the 80’s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 119. 5 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London-New York: Verso, 2008), 3. 6 Troy, Morning in…, 120. 352 Luisa Sol to consumer culture and masses. In addition to this search for belonging, identity and meaning, the average American middle-class individual faced the possibility of becoming an owner: By purchasing their detached suburban homes, the young couples of the middle class participated in the construction of a new community of values; in magazines, in films, and on the airwaves they became the cultural representatives of the “good life”.7 The North American periphery, emerged in the 1950s, is based on the dilution of the boundaries between public-private, proximity-distance, domestic-urban. The American middle class found a harmonious middle ground in the massive configuration of tree-lined streets, delimited by singlefamily houses, all with the same type and configuration, with a garden, a barbecue and a garage. Figure 1: “The Passadena”, 50’s North American suburban house-type Source: Mid Century Home Style, consulted on January, 30, 2014 http://www.midcenturyhomestyle.com/plans/aladdin/1951/51aladdin-pasadena.htm Beyond the establishment of a comfortable relationship of proximity-distance with the city, with the neighborhood, and with the world, the suburb carries in itself the idea of an infinite space, reproduced in single-family houses designed and mass-produced, in an illusory personalization of the domestic space. Michelangelo Antonioni dealt with this standardization and subsequent commodification of the house-space in his 1970’s film, Zabriskie Point. The process of appropriating the Los Angeles desert by a megalomaniac project for urbanization is the backdrop to a documentary based on the 7 Spigel, Welcome to…, 32. 353 La casa y el mundo: dinámicas domésticas de la casa suburbana estadounidense de la posguerra late 1960’s American counterculture. The massive and random deployment of a housing complex in the middle of the desert, stuffed with the small luxuries that attracted the petty bourgeoisie, alludes to a kind of colonization / conquest of the wild and infinite space by a Financial Group that manufactures and sells a Promised and Plastic Earth: - Enjoy the full relaxation of outdoor living, in the desert sun by your own private pool. Why be caught in the red race of city life, when you could enjoy life sunny dunes way? Breed the unpolluted air of the high desert, take your sun a quail shooting in the wide open spaces. Get out in the sun and water your own private garden. - You girls will really enjoy the fully equipped sunny dunes kitchen. - Stop driving yourself in that miserable crowded city. Move out today and start over with the Sunny Dunes House in the sun.8 Bhabha would associate, in the postcolonial period, the dilution of the boundary between the Home space and the World space to the feeling of an imminent vulnerability, which transforms what is supposedly familiar in dubious. Tangent and prior to the period in which Bhabha focuses, the emergent and hybrid suburban space - situated between the city and “what comes next” - is thus a de-territorialized, rootless, standardized and normalized space where this search for a Home space is precisely based on turning the uncertain into something familiar. The configuration of everyday life in a single-family detached house evokes a genre of privacy that a block of flats does not offer. At the same time, it encourages the construction of a healthy life within the community, where ideally the community itself appears as the collective emancipation of a certain homogeneous socio-economic, age and racial range, with very specific intentions and objectives, as «… the central preoccupation in the new suburban culture was the construction of a particular discursive space through which the family could mediate the contradictory impulses for a private heaven on the one hand, and community participation on the other».9 The public-private dichotomy is mixed, and the hybridity of being-in-between allows us to be simultaneously far enough and close to everything. It is in this context that this architecture of the peripheral housing ends up defining a very specific type of domesticity: «the domestic architecture of the period mediated the twin goals of separation from and integration into the outside world».10 It was the enforcement modernist architecture principles, such as the dilution of boundaries between interior and exterior space, that became one of the underlying premises in the conception and mass production of the houses that propagated in peripheral America. The contamination of the inside by the outside and vice versa is provided, in part, by large sliding windows, which also emphasized the modernity of these houses. The suppression of the boundary between the inside and the outside has emphasized the ambiguity between the public and the private, between the domestic and the community, which so clearly defines the lifestyle on the American periphery. The fluid frontier between the living room and the garden becomes part of the typology of the suburban house, where the exterior becomes an extension of the house. Lynn Spigel says that «by 8 Michelangelo Antonioni, Zabrieskie Point. (MGM, 1970) 110 min. 9 Spigel, Welcome to…, 32. 10 Spigel, Welcome to…, 32. 354 Luisa Sol far, the central design element used to create an illusion of the outside world was the picture window or ‘window wall’ (what we call sliding-glass doors), which became increasingly popular in the post-war period».11 Spigel further paraphrases Daniel Boorstin, «The widespread dissemination of large plate-glass Windows for both domestic and commercial use ‘leveled the environment’ by encouraging the ‘removal of sharp distinctions between indoor and outdoors’ and thus created an ‘ambiguity’ between public and private space».12 The Window, in this context, allows this fluidity of space between the domestic and its own neighborhood. The large glazed windows were the curtain that enabled the modern-and- sophisticated-mothers-with-their-kitchens-equipped-with-all-the-electric-paraphernalia-apparatuses- to-free-them, to make dinner and other household chores without losing control of their children playing in the garden. Figure 2: American suburban house kitchen-type Source: Afreakatheart, consulted on January, 30, 2014, http://afreakatheart.blogspot.pt/2013/07/1950’s-kitchen-style.html This pleasant relationship with the window and the consequent dilution of the boundaries between home-and-the-world has fostered the emergence of a prominent place for the element that would reconfigure the entire layout and dynamics of the room and suburban family life:«Given its ability to merge private with public spaces, television was the ideal companion for these suburban homes».13 The typology of these new and modern houses provided a wide visual outreach to and with the world, establishing a comfortable relationship of staticity and movement that gave the residents the possibility of being-al-over-the-place-without-ever-actually-being-there . The large windows and the 11 Spigel, Welcome to…, 32. 12 Spigel, Welcome to…, 32. 13 Spigel, Welcome to…, 33. 355 La casa y el mundo: dinámicas domésticas de la casa suburbana estadounidense de la posguerra television allowed the world to enter the house, providing trips that are sometimes near sometimes distant, real and hypothetical to the viewer. With the advantage of exposing it only to its charms, it kept it protected from its threats, enabling an ubiquity, hitherto unprecedented: The new tract homes of the mass-produced suburbs featured sliding-glass doors, bay Windows, and open plans that were designed to maximize the visual field. In addition, the domestic environment was increasingly conceptualized as a vehicle for transport – a place where people imaginatively travelled not only around the globe but even, as President Kennedy promised, to the moon.14 The integration of television into postwar culture precipitated, and was symptomatic, of a profound reorganization of social space. Leisure time undergone significant changes as spectator entertainment - movies, sports, concerts, etc. - had been progressively incorporated into the home. And it is in this context that Baudrillard attenuates the border between an artificial experience and a real experience of domestic television consumption: From the perspective of the satisfaction of the consumer, there is no basis on which to define what is “artificial” and what is not. The pleasure obtained from a television or a second home is experienced as a “real” freedom. No one experiences this as alienation.15 The contamination of the domestic space and of the family routine by the television reality led to a "theatrication" of the (living) room. The layout of the space should privilege the place of the television as the social center of the home. Television would, from now on, assume the place of the stage, and the sofa would assume the place of the audience, giving the residents a bundle of abstraction and more-than-private space within their own home and their own family. The aesthetics and the reconfiguration of the home as a function of the television set was extensively promoted by magazines, catalogs and advertisement of home and decoration: Postwar home magazines and handbooks on interior decor presented an endless stream of devise on how to make the home into a confortable theatre. In 1949, for example, House Beautiful advised its readers that ‘conventional living room groupings need to be slightly altered because televiewers look in the same direction and not at each other.’ Good Housekeeping seconded the motion in 1951 when it claimed that ‘television is theatre; and to succeed, theatre requires a comfortably placed audience with a clear view of the stage.’ Advertisements for television sets variously referred to the ‘chairside theatre’, the ‘video theatre’, the ‘family theatre’, and so forth. Taken to its logical extreme, this theatricalization of the home transformed domestic space into a private pleasure dome.16 The relationship between family dynamics and television became reciprocal. Domestic and family daily life became a frequent theme in the television series and soap operas, particularly from the late 1970s and the 1980s and 1990s. The reversal of the spectator's place is evident in such series as All in the Family (Norman Lear, Johnny Speight, Tandem Productions, 1971-1979), The Cosby Show (Bill Cosby, Ed. Weinberger and Michael Leeson, Bill Cosby & Carsey-Werner Company, 1984-1992) or Family Ties (Gary David Goldberg, 1982-1989). The camera was precisely where the television set was, and in many moments the spectator glimpsed his own portrait: a whole family sitting on the couch, looking/watching at each other on the other side. In any case, the television 14 Spigel, Welcome to…, 2. 15 Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2001), 43. 16 Baudrillard, Selected…, 39-40. 356