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Gail Peter Borden lives in a Modernist 1950s house in a suburban neighborhood in the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina with his wife and partner, Brooke. The suburban condition has profoundly affected Borden's work, both his designs and the research he conducts at North Carolina State University, where he is a professor in the School of Architecture. For the past seven years, Borden has been studying Modern single-family homes and has periodically produced designs, as well, including the Rubber-banded House, which was shown in this space in December 2002. Now the Borden Partnership, as the couple's firm is known, has produced a large-scale project Borden calls 20 Propositions for Suburban Living.

previous image | next image 20 Propositions for Suburban Living [2003] Although Borden created a neighborhood depicting all of his Modernist home models, he actually intends for them to be inserted into existing neighborhoods, where they would coexist with very different styles of houses. Program House [2003] In this house, the program dictates the form. Separate pavilions on the lower floor are designed to be built in phases. The second-floor “sleeping box” partially shelters the open space that connects the downstairs pavilions. Constellation House [2003] This house shifts some of the traditional responsibility of walls to the roof. Only three doors break the solid wall plane, but skylights of various sizes bring several intensities of light into the house. The shafts of the skylights also give the exterior its form. Radial House [2003] The private rooms of this house radiate out from a central public area. Each of the satellite pavilions takes on an individual form that reflects its use and context. Tube House [2003] Public spaces on the lower level of this linear house lead to private spaces upstairs. The narrow footprint would allow for double density on a building site. Porch House [2003] Distinct, programmatically divided pavilions surround a central outdoor "room," creating a porch that is oriented away from the street.

"I was born in suburbia, I was raised in suburbia," Borden said. "In many ways, it's kind of been the lifeblood of my thinking. I have a kind of love-hate relationship with it, because to some extent it's inevitable in a democratic and capitalist system, and in the context of our American geography. I feel, as
a culture, that's where we are, but we can do it better—and that's what these houses are trying to do."

Most of the Borden Partnership's work so far has been research or competition design—although the team has also done some renovation projects—but Borden considers these designs far from impractical.

"I've been trying a variety of methods of deploying these," Borden said. "Anywhere from trying to build my own house, which is probably on the horizon, to doing a spec house."

According to Borden, what separates these houses from other Modern houses is the price. As part of the project, Borden broke down the costs of
each phase of construction for six of the 20 houses, each of which assumes
a 60-by-120-foot lot. Each of the three-bedroom houses would cost between $100,000 and $150,000, not including the land.

"There's plenty of high design out there," Borden said, "but trying to make it affordable is what makes these unique. There's a social conscience that wants to tap a market that's been ignored. It's not hard to make a beautiful home for a lot of money, but you have to work harder to do it less expensively."

Borden envisions these houses being built in conventional "builder" neighborhoods, where they would be interspersed with more traditional home designs. He'd like to see them act as a sort of virus, infecting people's ideas of what single-family home design can be.

"These houses are examples of what we can do, of how architecture can insert itself into this sort of forgotten landscape," he said.

The perception that Modern-style homes are less desirable than traditional ones will likely be Borden's biggest impediment to building these designs, but he thinks that if a few of these houses can get built, people will begin to realize that good design can add value to a home.

"People are adding a lot to their programs: rec rooms and wine-tasting rooms, and that sort of thing," Borden said. "But those things don't really increase the quality of the space; they just add to the list of room names you can write on the floor plan."

By Kevin Lerner