BUILDING INTANGIBLES-WHY HOUSES MAKE US CRAZY
Elizabeth Reader
May 7, 2003
About ten years ago, one of my clients asked me if I had ever seen the movie Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Since I hadn't, he explained that it was an old Cary Grant movie from the 40's, about a New York City couple who go through the trials and tribulations of building a new house. I thought to myself, okay, I'll watch it to humor him, but how is a fifty-year-old, black-and-white movie going to be relevant now?
For those of you who haven't seen this 1948 film, based on a novel of the same name by Eric Hodgins, the Blandings see an old house in the Connecticut countryside, fall in love with it, and pay a fortune for it. They proceed to tear it down, after several engineers tell them it's not structurally sound. They then hire an architect, and design and build their "dream house." The movie humorously recounts all of the headaches involved in this whole process-the desire to build more house than one's budget, the unforeseen construction complications, the cost overruns.
Somehow, it was both maddening, and reassuring, to watch this movie, because the crux of the subject matter hasn't really changed much with the passage of time. When it comes to the construction, renovation, redecoration, buying, and selling of houses, human nature has changed little over the years. If the need for shelter is such a basic one, then why do we make it so incredibly complicated, and why, for many of us, is it so emotion- laden?
In a recent Washington Post article, writer Daniela Deane reflects that, beyond the fact that our houses are usually our biggest financial investments, their worth goes well beyond dollars. Houses are the fruits of our hard work, the places we raise our children, the scenes of our most pleasant memories, the environments we create to escape the outside world-"they are our own version of the American dream." Owning a house gives us a sense of control over our environs, something we may not get in other areas of our lives, like our jobs or our relationships. Deane goes on to quote University of Houston Professor of History Steven Mintz, who declares, "Our houses are absolutely critical to our identities and our whole definition as a people.... They give us a sense of rootedness in our highly mobile, highly impersonal society."1
According to Marjorie Garber, who wrote a book entitled Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses, "The house and all that it symbolizes is the repository of histories, memories, fantasies, self- images, aspirations, and dreams. That is why our romance with houses is-- in every sense-- such a consuming passion.... Many stories have been offered to 'explain' this relationship, stories based on anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, phenomenology and economics.... But none of these 'answers' really touches the heart of our passion for houses...."2
What is at the heart of our passion for houses?
Architecture schools rarely address the emotional component involved in residential design. Architects, critics, and architectural historians tend to think of houses as objects, or artifacts, which are meticulously designed and composed, rather than as shelters, which are inhabited by real people, with untidy rooms, complicated lives, and dubious tastes in lighting fixtures. But the truth of the matter is that residential clients do tend to have higher levels of emotional involvement in, and attachment to, their projects than do the clients for commercial or institutional buildings.
Architects begin residential projects by talking to clients about their functional and aesthetic aspirations for their houses. In this building programming phase, an architect tries to "get inside the clients' head," and to get a grasp on the client's personality, tastes, preferences, biases, motivations, and family dynamic. More than one client has remarked during this building programming phase, "Oh, so you guys are like house psychologists." The goal of all of this building programming is to unearth the clients' dreams, even those that may be totally unrealistic, irrational, or contradictory. One husband- and- wife client, after about a two hour programming session, summarized their renovation goals by saying, "What we're trying to create is a lifestyle." This struck me as odd initially. I mean, didn't they already have a lifestyle? But maybe what they were trying to verbalize is what people really mean when they say they're building their "dream house"-they have an image in their mind's eye of their ideal selves, and they project that ideal version of themselves, living their ideal lives, in a "dream house" that they think will somehow enable them to make that lifestyle a reality.
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