These pictures represent what J.B. Jackson describes in "The Domestication of the Garage" chapter of his Landscape in Sight. On pages 118-119, Jackson explains the dramatic shift in the American garage post-World War II. It morphed from a utilitarian enclosure to accomodate a machine to a catch-all car hub-storage facility-alternate entrance to the house-facade. These pictures underscore the dramatic shift in that the facades of the houses are dominated by the garages.
I knew a family growing up who had their living room in the garage. The television, couch, coffee table, etc. And they would leave the garage door open during the nice weather days and just sit in there and hang out because it was their living room. My family referred to them as the "Garage People."
ReplyDeletelol
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in French, fleautomobile , compacting the French for plague- with -tomobile: the g...m car, everywhere.
Noise is my issue: as in traffic and how there cannot be but a slowing but steady shrinking ROI Return On Investment on the purchasing of an automobile.
Ironically, Canada where my parents emigrated from the French countryside as farmers in the late 70's, found themselves dependent on an economy, urban and urbanized, and with the 3d highest rate of urbanization i.e. most exposure to car traffic (CO'2s but also decibels, 24/7) in sprawling exotic remnants of overpriced, over-styled 'housing development, food & gas': result - just another car-only burb in Atrocity.
Noise as nuisance is a factor in atrocious Atro-city www.com
Regards from Winnipeg: Marshall McLuhan's alma mater University of Manitoba History Department, 1960's.
Kenny: that's domestication of the garage in a whole new way, and at a whole new level. J. B. Jackson would have loved it!
ReplyDeleteMike: it would be useful to see a range of treatments--that is, the evolution of the garage over time in a variety of houses.