Subjective

It's approaching the end of my first week in this new city, and I have made it out unscathed. As I previously mentioned, one of the biggest (and unforeseen) problems I've encountered has been the boredom, and because of the lack of much to do I have found myself doing more observing than anything else. I have noticed the main places people walk to on the street adjacent to my apartment, and I've picked up on some of the routines that occur: what time certain places nearby get busy, and what kinds of people live around here. It's interesting to observe so many things occurring simultaneously, and to witness two separate people in the same space, doing the same thing, and having entirely different experiences.

My window looks out into a courtyard, in which all of the windows from the surrounding rooms face. Although the windows themselves hardly differ, the ornamentation and light that slips through them varies in color and intensity just enough to notice a distinct difference from window to window. These small changes show just how different the lives of the people who live behind these windows are, and how their individual experiences vary under the same conditions.

How does my experience differ?

Is it to do with my job (or lack thereof)? Is it the size of my apartment or the direction it faces? Do any of these things really affect my experience within this space at all and, more importantly, how will my experience here change?

While I obviously can't answer these questions, in time I know my experience here will change, and I'm excited to see how and when that will happen. If the experience is subjective, then my outlook will become my experience; simply put, if you want to have a good time, think you're going to have a good time. That may be oversimplified, but I'd like to believe it's true.

A Fresh Start

The last week and a half has been the most hectic I've had in a very long time. My girlfriend and I recently moved into our new apartment in Charlotte, just a few days after I had a terrible little episode of pneumonia. However, I made a full recovery and we were able to move in on our scheduled date, which went as smoothly as I imagined it would.
But what about all of this free time? I hadn't planned on having so much time to do nothing at all. I don't know anyone else who lives in this new city, and I don't know what there is to do. I'm sure this new place can't be THAT different than the place I grew up; the people here must like the same things and eat same food and live the same lives. If that's the case, then why is it so difficult to simply find something to do?
It seems like Charlotte tries harder in terms of presentation than Raleigh. This is only a first impression, and may be a completely wrong assumption. I'm excited to get used to living here and develop new routines and favorite places. With all of this new free time, I may just have to catch up on the reading that I've put off for the past few months.

100 Mile House

Last week the Architectural Foundation of British Columbia announced the winners of the 100 Mile House competition. The participants were to design a house within certain size constraints, made entirely from materials grown, manufactured, or recycled within 100 miles of Vancouver, where the contest is based. Student entries were also allowed and encouraged, and a separate category was made for just for them.
While none of the winning designs will likely be built, the contest has raised awareness about sustainable building methods and caused the contestants to develop an entirely different design process. Even further than change in process of design is the resulting product. Just as the 100 Mile Diet has caused people rethink their eating habits and understand where their food comes from, the 100 Mile House has caused the concept of a living space to be reevaluated and redesigned to fit a new range of needs.
One downside to building a "locatat" is the higher cost of local materials. The fact is that 100lbs of lumber is more expensive when it's reclaimed from existing structures than when they're clear cut from massive forests. However, raising general awareness about alternative building practices and materials is the first step to making an affordable zero impact house a reality.
So what's the next step? Involving students in this contest was a great way to tap into unused resources and get some ideas that stray away from the conventional, and should be encouraged in more design competitions. Even sticking to standard building methods, one of the house simply used steel, concrete, and glass, all produced near Vancouver. Just from buying locally, hundreds of miles are eliminated from the journey of materials.
Overall, the final designs were beautiful and innovative, and the amount of thought that went into the project was astounding. I appreciate contests like this, an look forward to seeing more, and hopefully seeing a gradual change in the way we view the cities and homes we live in.
Here is the link to the 100 Mile House page if you'd like to check it out: http://100mh.architecturefoundationbc.ca/

A House, But Not a Home

If you've ever driven through the mountains or coast of North Carolina, you may have been taken aback by the breathtaking scenery and the crisp air. But dotting the otherwise perfect landscape are thousands of "mobile villages" that give a glimpse into the crumbling economies of the former factory and farming towns. Why is it these prefabbed mobile homes act as beacons of poverty, announcing themselves at a single glance?

The money:
When you leave the major cities in NC, the average income goes down exponentially. Raleigh and Charlotte make between $25,000-27,000 per year (both cities place in the top 86% for highest average incomes), creating an immense gap between the smaller towns and the cities. My home town of Wendell, for instance, is just outside of Raleigh and has an annual per capita income of $17,772. Higher earning jobs are confined to the cities, just as it is in most of the US. However, this creates such a financial barrier that to stay in the rural areas is accepting a life that won't ever be lived with the basic comfort of financial stability. 25% of North Carolina towns make at or below the poverty line for a 2-person household (this doesn't even account for families with children), and most of these towns are in the mountains, the southern tip, or near the coast.


What does it mean?
I use trailers as a tracer for poverty, considering the majority of houses in these areas are prefabricated, and they serve as an easy indicator of collective financial struggle. They carry with them a stigma of lack intelligence, motivation, and overall care for those who inhabit them, and that's nothing new; This isn't accurate, but still remains a prevailing stereotype. Many people in rural areas choose to stay in those areas simply because they were raised there, and this only continues to perpetuate the failing rural economies.


Turning it around:
How would one go about changing the overall outlook of hundreds of thousands of struggling families? Aside from improving their financial status, relieving the associated stigma of their living spaces seems the most efficient means possible. Mobile home designs have remained nearly unchanged since their creation, and when the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" method fails, it's probably time to fix it.
The average mobile home ranges between $25,000-$50,000 new, and with the changes in manufacturing, materials, and building styles, the cost doesn't match the product. It would be possible to manufacture a more efficient and modern on the inside and outside. Creating a living space should be more than creating a shelter, it should be a home, and it should make a statement. Inhabitants of a home that represents a certain lifestyle and mindset will typically carry out that perceived lifestyle and mindset, and over the course of the next few months I will be modifying some designs I've been working on to help correct that, and, with time, help turn something previously viewed as an eyesore ino something beautiful.

Strangeness

As of right now I have about 21 days, 1 hour, and 19 minutes until my girlfriend and I step into our new home in Charlotte, NC. It's only 3 hours away from my home in the outskirts of Raleigh, where i've spent my entire life, but it seems like it's on the other side of the ocean. There's a strange sensation to being here though, like everything is sickeningly sweet. The sky is more blue, the people seem to be friendlier, and everything looks more vivid than it has in the 20 years i've been here; It's like the city is playing it's siren song, and I'm just now realizing all of the beautiful things around me. 
Of course I'm just tuning out most of the negative, and I'm just not bothered by a lot of the small things that i used to, but it's strange, I will admit, how this beautiful place is popping up around me out of no where. I'm looking forward, so I'm stuck in this stasis of performing my daily rituals and routines, knowing that they'll change soon and be replaced with a new set of different rituals and routines. I'll be placed in a new setting with everything I know rearranged and new places added. It's all so strange and new to me, but I suppose I'm getting home-sick a little too early.
I was told by my girlfriend that when her friend, who was living abroad, would getting home-sick, he would go to McDonald's and get a cheeseburger. Is that the secret? Is it all about finding those comfort items that remind you of home, or is it a process of adding those into a new lifestyle with new places and new comfort items, molding a new home out of a strange new environment? I think I know the answer to that, but I suppose only time will tell, and in the meantime I'm not going to go on a last minute mission to find everything in that I've never found, and I'm not going to shut it all out: I'm going to sit back and take it all in.

Shift

        Southern summers are unpredictable, and at times it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish the short bursts of wind and rain from the periods of humid evaporation. Make no mistake, the weather is mostly unpleasant, and during the hot or humid days it can be unbearable without the proper equipment (central air conditioning). There's something mesmerizing about the rain, though; It beads down the windows and swallows the outside light, or multiplies it into thousands of little cities that instantly come and go. The situation feels like a scene from a classic movie that no one else has seen, and changes the space into something entirely different.
        An infinite amount of factors go into a space, creating a feeling and life of its own, and I find it so fascinating how quickly a space can shift from one thing, perhaps a dining room, to something completely different, such as the rain-covered window. The same space could be a prison or a safe haven, with the change of time or weather.
If that is the case, and space is completely subjective, then architecture is the greatest play of all, and everyone is the audience, never seeing the same thing twice.

The Death of a Suburb

As of recently I've been enjoying the beginning of what I hope to be a beautiful, warm, North Carolina spring. My drives have become longer, and I've been taking the scenic route to work most days. Today was no exception, and as I drove down the familiar stretch between here and there, I witnessed an unsettling sight: a large sign announcing the future site of "Summerset Court- New, affordable homes!". It wasn't the formerly beautiful 20-something acres of pristine fields and oak woods that this new "Summerset Court" had destroyed that made my stomach turn, nor was it the used car salesman approach at trying to push me into one of these painfully subpar "country" homes (I use the term "home" very loosely here); It was the massive scale that these things are popping up that made me queasy. This is nothing new, and the future subdivision was not actually named "Summerset Court", though it probably was something similar, thought up by some investor in a 20th floor office who'd never seen the land in his or her life. Acres and acres of unrepairable damage done is never justifiable, but the damage these pop-up suburbs are doing to the intellectual integrity of the masses is arguably just as bad.
People choose to live in a replica of 10,000 other houses because they've become accustomed to it, and there wouldn't be a supply if there were no demand. The developers drive a tempting bargain, however, with their bright red display of some price that seems too good to be true (this is usually followed with a microscopic asterisk and a lengthy paragraph at the bottom). So as the masses question if they really want to raise their 2.5 children in a home identical to Mr. Jones next door and Mr. Jenkins down the street, the idea of a house catered to their personal tastes becomes fainter and fainter as they hear price quotes from any architect, contractor, or engineer. 


From this 2 questions arise:
1) Is it worth paying half the price for a space that is only yours on paper?
2) How are these suburban booms taking anything from families?


To answer in short:
Taking into account price of materials, labor, and negotiating skills, it is quite possible to have a home constructed, or renovated, to meet your personal tastes. 
As for the latter question: a house is where most will spend the majority of their lives, and should be treated as such. No individual puts any sort of dent in the housing market, but collectively, it could be turned upside-down. Purchasing a new suburban house perpetuates the cycle of destruction and development, and, with the willingness to look around and not settle, isn't necessary. 


This isn't damning the majority of home-owners, this is an analysis from an architecture student who has a firm sight on a better future.