Exhibition tip: Suburbia – Rethinking the dream of home ownership

3 min read

A green lawn. A white garden fence. A double garage.

The detached house is more than just a type of building. It is a promise. A promise of a good life, of freedom, of privacy. The ‘American Way of Life’ has exported this image across the globe – and embedded it deeply in our collective imagination.

The exhibition Suburbia – Living the Dream. Rethinking the Housing Crisis at the German Architecture Museum (DAM) takes a close look at precisely this ideal. And it does so with a critical eye rather than a nostalgic one.

Angela Strassheim, Untitled (Elsa). Series Left Behind, 2005

Between Longing and the System

Suburbia explores the visual culture of the American suburbs. Films, magazines and advertising – for decades, they have portrayed the family home as a setting for happiness and prosperity. At the same time, the exhibition traces the history of the detached house in Germany during the economic miracle years.

A collection of issues of Schöner Wohnen from the 1960s and 1970s invites you to leaf through its pages. Amidst pastel shades, carpeted rooms and open-plan layouts, it becomes clear just how closely intertwined domestic dreams, family life and political ideals are. What this reveals is that the family home was never merely about architecture. It was always about ideology, too.

SW Special Issue, undated – Cover of a special edition of Schöner-Wohnen, Constanze-Verlag, c. 1955. Photo: Ursula Rink

Suburbia under pressure

Today, these housing models are under scrutiny. Housing shortages, the climate crisis, an ageing society – the promise of the detached house as a symbol of individual freedom suddenly seems more complicated. Dependence on the car, land consumption, social homogeneity. All of these issues are being debated anew. And this is precisely where the exhibition comes in: not by asking whether the detached house has had its day, but how it can be reimagined.

Man waters lawn; Contemporary Suburbium, 2017, Ed Templeton; Digital print on paper Courtesy of Roberts Projects, Los Angeles

Keep building instead of demolishing

Many detached houses are now occupied by just one or two people. At the same time, there is an urgent shortage of housing in urban areas. Suburbia highlights the potential that lies within the existing housing stock. Energy-efficient refurbishment, extensions, and repurposing – through smart transformation, a significant amount of new housing could be created, particularly in the Frankfurt am Main area. The detached house is evolving from the culmination of a dream into a resource for the future.

Rotonda West, Florida, 2023, Benjamin Grant; Digital print Images created with Overview, original images © Nearmap

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the DAM, in partnership with research initiatives from Munich and Bremen.