The current American residential vernacular seems to have been shaped by the work
of Thomas Kinkade almost as much as by the blossoming of post-war suburbia. His
thatched cottage by the brook in the forest is exactly what we want. That, or a
Hobbit hole in Bagend. It must be in our DNA. We want that curved, raggedy-edged
pathway that leads to Bambi’s nest. We want it but can’t seem to get it. The battle
between the ideal and the real is like a disease. We all suffer from it, and we
try to cure it in places like Rose Creek, and Crown Heights, and Gaillardia.
What keeps us from getting our cottage-by-the-glade? Why can’t we build houses that
look like the Kinkade calendars? Is it because we don’t have enough money? No...
it’s because of the roads and the cars and the wires and the fear. And the grocery
stores and the garbage pick-up and the malls and the Oklahoma wind. And because
we live in cities that require us to line up buildings in military fashion. It’s
because we don’t understand that Kinkade cottages don’t belong in cities. But we
keep on trying.
That’s why the vast majority of our houses look so much like… houses. They’re supposed
to look like that. They’ve always looked like that. “We do use that dining room…
sometimes.” And “our living room does comes in handy at least once or twice a year…”
(A house is supposed to have those rooms… right?)
SoSA acknowledges the roads and the cars and the wires and the fear, and offers the
freedom to design buildings accordingly.
