Designing for low energy

Seemingly, nothing is as innocuous as the design of the single family home. Young families throughout North America dream of securing a parcel of land large enough to build their own private oasis wherein children can thrive. This model of home and garden is desired almost universally, transcending socio-economic background, race, and ethnicity. In the years following World War II, an entire market economy predicated on ownership of one’s residence developed to facilitate this dream. Its mechanisms were so effective that by the beginning of the twenty-first century, 40 million new homes were built in North America alone. ¹ Surely, so universal an aspiration has little cause to be the subject of a fundamental re-examination of its tenets. And yet, this is precisely what this chapter undertakes to accomplish. Whether, for reasons related to its wasteful consumption of energy, its denial of high-performance metrics, or more particularly, its reluctance to engage questions of “representation” and figuration, this chapter posits a rehabilitation of the very concept of “home.”