Prospero | Suburban design

Pomp and paternalism

A new architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art

By C.H. | NEW YORK

EVERY exhibition aspires to make a strong impression. “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) manages to bowl over the visitor within the first 15 seconds. Unfortunately, the impression is one of intermingled bemusement and nausea. For this viewer, the feeling has yet to subside.

The exhibition is disappointing largely because its premise is so fascinating. Barry Bergdoll, MoMA's chief curator of architecture and design, and Reinhold Martin, director of Columbia University's Buell Centre, set out to explore five struggling suburbs. These pockets of the American landscape are in the midst of a transformation. Yes, they were ravaged by the housing crisis, but they were changing even before the recession. Suburban poverty rose by 53% from 2000 to 2010, compared with a 26% jump in cities. In many suburbs, white, nuclear families have been replaced by multigenerational Hispanic ones. The old car culture has become unsustainable, as petrol guzzles a greater share of families' budgets and the need for exercise becomes ever more apparent. All this begs for new types of transport and housing. MoMA wisely seized the chance to imagine a new future for the suburbs. The result, unfortunately, is absurd.

The first thing a visitor sees on entering the gallery is a “screenplay” displayed behind glass. Usually the only books displayed in glass cases are old Bibles or letters from a famous artist, but never mind. Here, “The Buell Hypothesis”, written by Mr Martin and his colleagues, features Socrates speaking with Plato's older brother about globalisation, new urbanism and the financial crisis of 2008. Presumably the curators chose to display certain pages because they were particularly enlightening. “For despite what you may have heard,” Socrates explains, “we do not live in a cave. In fact, in this country there is a term for the place in which we live. It is called the American Dream.” If this is the best of the screenplay, one shudders to think of the rest of the 436-page manuscript.

Still reeling from this display, your correspondent rounded a corner to the main room of the exhibition. The gallery presents a new vision for each of five suburbs. The first project is for the Oranges, in New Jersey. The curators' decision to lead with this design is unwise, particularly as its only proper place is the dustbin. MOS, an architecture firm based in New York, came to the astounding conclusion that the roads of the Oranges should be filled with new buildings. The monolithic new structures would have walls that zig and zag, making it impossible to see if someone was lurking behind a corner. With no conventional streets, there are only narrow paths for bicyclists and walkers. Heaven help residents if a fire ever broke out. Perhaps the firefighters could use scooters?

A design for a suburb near Tampa, Florida is much less dangerous and slightly less silly. The suburb, which never had a town centre, suggested building one at a busy intersection. This sounds quite sensible. But the architects at Visible Weather scrap this plan and propose instead a 225-acre site along a commercial strip north of town. The result is a complex of offices for city bureaucrats and start-ups, with homes on the top floor. Part of suburbia's challenge is creating a sense of community while still preserving privacy. The architect's explanatory video provided a puzzling solution: “Privacy is a sense of realising who is where and what they are doing, and that allows you to be calm.”

The next project makes a bit more sense. Rosena Ranch, between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, has the typical looping roads of a subdivision. Only about 10% of the development was built before the housing market went bust. Andrew Zago imagines building Rosena Ranch with shared outdoor space and many types of homes, so that families of different incomes and sizes could be neighbours. Mr Zago's plan has the benefit of beautiful design—buildings are shaded by intricate, coloured lattices. Yet even this plan, sadly, indulges in the ridiculous. A design for an adjacent zoo of elephants and lions might be forgiven if Mr Zago did not also welcome wildlife into the development itself. He suggests watering holes and feeders to attract not just birds and wild sheep but mountain lions and coyotes. A child's jaunt on a tricycle might become quite exciting.

A plan for Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, may be the most reasonable of the bunch (pictured top). Studio Gang Architects try to accommodate Cicero's influx of Hispanic families. The suburb's old bungalows are replaced by stacks of flats and spaces that can be shared among families. The most enthralling site, however, is the one imagined by WORKac for Keizer, a suburb of Oregon. A high-rise is a stack of individual, peak-roofed houses—a bland suburban form becomes a building block for a fantastical tower. A small mountain has a path that spirals down its slope, passing flats tucked neatly into the hillside. One wonders, however, whether the inhabitants of this hill will relish the scent of compost burning in the mountain's interior. Similarly, residents enjoying a grass-covered roof might be unsettled by the immediate proximity of a grizzly bear, as displayed in the architects' model.

The suburbs may be in need of change, but surely not the changes proposed here.

"Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream" is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York until July 30th 2012

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