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Why Not Live Inside a Billboard?
A recent article in the Denver Post portrayed the work of Colorado Springs architect Mark Harris, who has proposed transforming ordinary highway billboards into designer homes. What is imagined is the taking of a regular highway billboard and turning it into an 1880 sq. ft townhouse. Sandwiched between the two advertising spaces is the living space, accessible through an elevator in the support pole. "The V-shaped two story dwelling would face away from the highway, with its wider end offering an expansive view of the surrounding countryside and its narrow end containing the kitchen, bath and closet areas." So, why would someone want to turn a house into a billboard? Well, for starters, the house would pay for itself. With subsidies from Pepsi, Ford, McDonalds, etc. the thirty-year loan might get paid off in just a few years. Immediately, it becomes appealing. For those like myself, who can only afford to live in a damp 400 sq. ft cupboard like Dostoevsky's Raskalnikov, the benefits are clear. And, surely, my living condition is far better than some. People sleep under bridges, in water tanks and corn cribs, and the problem is getting worse. The late Le Corbusier, guru of the Modernist movement in architecture, declared, "It is a problem of housing which is at the root of social unrest today." Surely such a statement is even more compelling now. The needs of those without adequate housing are juxtaposed against those who would halt urban sprawl and preserve open space. And, perhaps, this is a solution. Use derelict space already occupied, and turn it into housing. We might do the same with defunct drive-in movie screens and vacant grain silos. These structures are already out there, let's use them! I mentioned this possibility to my architecture class, and was surprised to see how many thought that this was a good idea. Most of them lacked my sense of shock and repulsion at the thought of actually living inside a highway billboard. They were tantalized, hopeful that it could become the cool new trend, the next century's answer to the studio loft. I was surprised, to say the least, but I wasn't sure what to tell them. Why shouldn't we live in billboards? Why was I so offended? First of all, architecture is a public endeavor. This means that creating a work of architecture is different than creating a work of art. Art can be solely an expression of personal values, of the individual artist's emotional state, and because no one other than the artist is forced to look upon it, it stays that way. With architecture this is not the case. A building may be the expression of an artist's inner emotional life, but once built, it becomes part of the public discourse. Architecture is unavoidably social. The buildings we encounter everyday are part of our cultural vocabulary, and they define our world. Putting forth the billboard as an important structure says, simply, that our lives are defined by com-modification.. Products, then, shape how we live, the values that we put into dwelling. Stuckey's nut logs are at the center of our existence, and we'll build around them. But is it different with the case of a person's house? Surely this, at least, is private? Yes, it is. The individual house is at once both public and private. We go to great lengths to define our houses, so that they stick out from the others. This is what motivates the preposterous lawn flamingo, the Precious Moments nativity scene, and other much more absurd expressions of the inner life. So, if I want to express myself with a flashing Coca-Cola sign instead of a garden gnome, what's the difference? The difference is that if our homes blare corporate messages, they will cease to be our homes at all. They will be Starbucks' homes. The billboard is an advertisement first and a home second. In, fact, it is precisely the abolishment of individuality. The Walmart-ing of America seeks to make every person the same. Corporations tell us what we need, and eventually we begin to believe it. All our needs become the same (easier to sell to one kind of need!), and that's who we become: a set of needs that only companies can fulfill. To corporations we are not people at all, we are the absence of products: we are the lack of SUVs, clothes, and soft drinks. If we are going to retain both a public sphere that is valuable to us, and a private life that really is ours, the billboard house must be avoided. The appeal of the billboard to the students in my class was that it would be a cool, new expression of their individuality. But this just shows that they've already bought into the vision of America that corporations want: that our personal expressions are expressions of product choice. Like the infamous Sprite commercials, they wouldn't live in billboards because they were told to by celebrities, but because it was their free, individual choice. The German Phenomenologist Heidegger suggested that in order to build, we must first know how to dwell. The billboard house gets it backwards. Corporations will build houses to suit their needs, and we will adjust the way we dwell to conform to their model. This is not to say the housing problem isn't very real. It is. But this is not the solution. We need to retain a model of living that is ours, and not change our values to conform to what corporations are selling. Bachelor of Arts, Theatre Philosophy, Honors (Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota) Master of Arts, Philosophy (University of Colorado, Boulder). Research Interests: The cultural value of architecture as it relates to the aesthetics of the built environment. |
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1327 N. Cascade Avenue Colorado Springs, CO 80903 719.578.5799 info@studiotenarchitects.com Copyright 2007 |
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