Architecture and Suburbia: From English Villa to American Dream House, 1690-2000The American suburban dream house - a single-family, detached dwelling, frequently clustered in tight rows and cul-de-sacs - has been attacked for some time as homogeneous and barren, yet the suburbs are home to half of Americans. Architectural historian John Archer suggests the endurance of the ideal house is deeply rooted in the notions of privacy, property, and selfhood that were introduced in late seventeenth-century England and became the foundation of the American nation and identity. Spanning four centuries, Architecture and Suburbia explores phenomena ranging from household furnishings and routines to the proliferation of the dream house in parallel with Cold War politics. Beginning with John Locke, whose Enlightenment philosophy imagined individuals capable of self-fulfillment, Archer examines the eighteenth-century British bourgeois villa and the earliest London suburbs. He recounts how early American homeowners used houses to establish social status and how twentieth-century Americans continued to flock to single-family houses in the suburbs, encouraged by patriotism, fueled by consumerism, and resisting disdain by disaffected youths, designers, and intellectuals alike. Finally, he recognizes "hybridized" or increasingly diverse American suburbs as the dynamic basis for a strengthened social fabric. From Enlightenment philosophy to rap lyrics, from the rise of a mercantile economy to discussions over neighborhoods, sprawl, and gated communities, Archer addresses the past, present, and future of the American dream house. |
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Page xviii
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Contents
Self House and Suburb | xv |
Built Spaces and Identity | 1 |
Locating the Self in Space | 17 |
Villa Suburbana Terra Suburbana | 45 |
The Apparatus of Selfhood | 93 |
Republican Pastoral Toward a Bourgeois Arcadia | 173 |
Suburbanizing the Self | 203 |
Nationalizing the Dream | 249 |
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Architecture and Suburbia: From English Villa to American Dream House, 1690-2000 John Archer No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
activities aesthetic afforded American dream Andres Duany Andrew Jackson Downing apparatus architects argued articulation became bedchamber bourgeois bourgeois dwelling bourgeoisie building Casino at Marino Castell century chapter closet compact villa Cottage Country House critique culture detached dimensions discussion domestic architecture dream house early economic eighteenth eighteenth-century English Enlightenment essay example Figure floor garden gender Halfpenny History household hybrid ideal identity ideology individual instrument isolation James James Gibbs John land landscape leisure Leon Battista Alberti Levittown living Llewellyn Park Locke Locke's London modern Morris nature nineteenth-century notion one's opportunities pastoral Plate political pursuits realm residents retirement retreat Robert role rural selfhood servants single-family social society space spatial specific staircases Stephen Switzer style suburban suburbia suburbs suited tion Treatise Treatises of Government Twickenham University Press urban urbe William William Halfpenny York