Sound of Silver Lisa and Leo’s Domesticity Museum by Fake Industries Architectural Agonism for DROOG Open House April, 23rd 2011 / Levittown / NY
The fragile images of everyday-life that kept suburbia in place have not resisted last ten years reversed White Flight. The loss of real estate value implicit in foreclosure crisis speeded up extinction. Meanwhile in Levittown, houses, home-owners and business remain surprisingly unchanged, unaware of their endanger species status. Following, our cautionary tale describing their fate and a proposal to save them from extinction.
Suburban party circa 1952
Sixty years ago, Levittown, NY, was built following suburban promises; consumption met leisure nature in a postwar controlled environment. Criticizing modern architecture’s trust in metropolitan density and, at the same time, fulfilling its promises of functional division of life, colorful images and synthetic materials constructed a hedonistic way of life that left work and politics, seemingly, out of the picture.
Suburban Picnic circa 1956
Lemonade sale in a front yard circa 1951
Senator John F. Kennedy at Levittown, PA Shopping Center, October 30th, 1960
1950s advertisement for domestic equipment
Closer inspections, however, revealed underlying programmatic perversions. Sidewalks became the available for informal economic activities and political rallies were eventually hold in the spaces reserved for shopping. Meanwhile interiors transformed into laboratories of domesticity explored the limits of popular technologies and sexual practices.
Playboy magazine’s bachelor pad design
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown diagram for “Signs of Life� Exhibition, 1976
Yet, it was not long before the utopian impulse dissolved into homogenous boredom. It was hard to find transgression in interiors so malleable that Miss Daisy Duck can consume them all – early American, Modern, early Hogde, Podge, etc. Similarly, exteriors, codified in a series of unfulfilled desires of architectural grandeur, rendered the promise of a different urbanity as the return of repressed architectural paradigms. Page from Walt Disney’s Dasy Duck Diary, March 1954
So, is there hope for Lisa and Leo and their
slightly altered Levittown Rancher House?
Lisa and Leo Vanderburg on the front their living room
“Workmen and the materials to construct a house gathered in a lot before construction” by Tony Linck in Life Magazine June, 1948
As we have seen Levittown houses were conceived, literally, as laboratories of domesticity – flexible arrangements of technical equipment for the practice of everyday-life – surround by informal envelope.
The indifference towards enclosure was parallel to the growing interest on sealed environments. Preservation technologies were developed and tested the Levittown living rooms.
“Tupperware Party” by Bill Owens, 1971
Advertisment for plastic sofa Covers
Private atmospheres, whether at the size of a carrot or a sofa, were relentlessly discussed and questioned. The material effects of these conversations can still be found in those very same interiors.
While paradoxically, only few miles west from those rooms, flexible arrangements and sealed environments were being tested at the scale of life. Not a bad model to follow, owing to its proximity and its success.
“Andy Warhol at the Silver factory� by Jon Naar, 1967
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Display Domes
News and Coffee Lisa and Leo’s Cafe
Souvenirs Museum Shop
Visit Interior Promenade
In the light of these precedents, we propose to preserve Lisa and Robert’s house as domesticity museum. Wrapped in a 0.00059in um s(0.015mm) eo’ se L Mu
& c thick layer of metallized polyethylene terephthalate sa stireflecting 97% of Li me o
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the radiated heat, the front lawn recovers the yard-sale as the museum store. the lemonade sale and Sunday barbecue combine to form the museum café, And the paper boy gets replaced by the local neighborhood association newsletter.
y stic Scene
Inside, scenes of suburban everyday-life make boredom accessible to bystanders and onlookers. Visitors, separated from the locals and their exotic traditions by the customary museum rope, enjoy the last images of a disappearing way of life. In order that they remain the same,
Lisa and Leo’s Domestic Museum Facade
Lisa and Leo’s Domestic Museum Cafe and Gist Shop
Domestic scene at Lisa and Leo’s Domestic Museum
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Lisa & Leo’s Domestic museum
Greetings
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Lisa & Leo’s Domestic Museum
Postcards from lisa and Leo’s Domestic museum
Fake Industries Architectural Agonism are: Cristina Goberna is principal of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism. She graduated from the School of Architecture of Sevilla in 2001, and from the Independent Study Program at The Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona in 2006. As a Fulbright Fellow she was awarded a Ms in Advance Architectural Design in 2007 and an Advance Architectural Research Certificate in 2008 by the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation of Columbia University. She is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture of Barcelona where she develops her dissertation “From Pan to Europan or the Construction of the European Union Urban Imaginary”. Her work has been exhibited internationally and her projects and writings have been published widely. She was a member of the committee and jury of the Architectural League of New York 2010 Young Architects Prize and she is currently a visiting scholar at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts, the curator and coordinator of Van Alen Books, a new center specialized in Architectural publications at Van Alen Institute and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Studio Design at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation of Columbia University. Urtzi Grau is principal of Fake Industries. He graduated from the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 2000, was awarded Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design by the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University in 2004, and is currently completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University School of Architecture on the 1970’s urban renewal of Barcelona. His work and writings have been published in different international journals as 306090, Architect’s Newspaper, Domus, Pasajes de Arquitectura y Critica, Pidgin, Volume, Via Arquitectura or Visions.
www.fakeindustries.org