The porch was a deeply civilizing force in the development of American cities and institutions. Rather than simply see the porch as an element superadded to a house, it is more useful to consider its liminality and mutability in grasping the porch’s true transformative agency. A “floating signifier” that absorbs more meaning than it emits, the porch intertwined new combinations of home and economy, not unlike the American urban grid. Through various urban mutations associated with its own rescaling—monumentalization, urbanization, medicalization, frontiering, and placemaking—the porch animated new settlement processes across the U.S. It galvanized new notions of hospitality and spirituality, convening and vacationing, even the electing of presidents. Likewise, the porch suggests compelling future imaginaries.
The installation solicits considerations of the porch structured around four topics: Dwelling, Symbols and Monuments, Resilience, and Urbanism. Ironically, the U.S. enjoyed its highest rate of upward mobility and associational life when its residents were the most active in moving from one place to another. This was coincidental with the porch’s peak in popularity. Could the porch help us confront the mobility recession the U.S. has experienced over the last quarter century?
Sponsors
Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, University of Arkansas
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Design Connects
