the unprivate house


		As definitions of public and private both shift and overlap, architects continue to be called upon to address the need for a flexible, convertible living space that can be reconfigured to serve different functions. For example, the reintroduction of work into the private house is now pervasive, with some twenty million Americans now using their homes as principal workplaces. Rather than serving as an escape from work, today's home often contains an office for part- or full-time work. Several of the home designs in the exhibition fully merge work and living areas to create a new kind of domestic space.
	Today, a new relationship between public and private has emerged -- one in which the private is engaged with the public through media and technology. In both theory and practice, the ascendency of these digital technologies has become a catalyst for contemporary architectural innovation and experimentation. A number of houses in the exhibition explore this issue, finding new solutions for coexistence with technology in our domestic lives, and envisioning a future with ìsmarterî homes. The private house has been a laboratory for architectural invention throughout the twentieth century. While it might be said that the house is just now beginning to catch up to the fundamental social and cultural changes of recent years, the private houses in this exhibition can be seen as both a collective bellwether of the current state of architecture and a harbinger of things to come. The private houses seen here, and the architects who designed them have not only begun to reconfigure the domestic landscape, but have helped lay the groundwork for the first architectural debates of the twenty-first century



	Hariri & Hariri The Digital House Project 1998; © Hariri & Hariri



	Simon Ungers with Thomas Kinslow T-House New York, 1992 Photo: Eduard Hueber



	Shigeru Ban Curtain Wall House Tokyo, 1995 Photo: Hiroyuki Hirai


		The private house has played a unique position throughout the history of architecture. Despite its small size in relation to other architectural programs, the house figures large in the cultural imagination. It has been and continues to be the man-made environment's fundamental building block, providing an essential daily need: shelter. Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Un-Private House features 26 recent projects by international architects that examine the role of the house in contemporary society, both as a response to changing cultural conditions and to new developments in technology. Designed between 1988 and 1999, the houses in this exhibition -- ranging from New York-style lofts to row houses to detached suburban residences -- depart substantially from the patterns established by the traditional private house.
	The radical transformation of the family since World War II has resulted in new domestic requirements that differ from those of the conventional nuclear family. Today people who live alone or with one other person are the general public in many parts of the industrialized world. In the United States today, nearly a quarter of households now consist of one person. Half of the families in America consist of couples without any children living under the same roof. Situations like these have resulted in new thinking about domestic space as needs for acoustic and visual privacy differ. Many of the homes featured in the exhibition have been designed with unique divisions of public and private spaces for the non-traditional homeowner.


More information about The Unprivate House is available at The Museum of Modern Art, New York website.



	Shigeru Ban Curtain Wall House Tokyo, 1995 Photo: Hiroyuki Hirai