Porches and today
From togetherness to separation.
How our living quarters are designed and situated have a significant reflection and connection to our community and each other. While not often thought about how it impacts our lives and culture, it definitely does and is worth pondering about.
Population growth combined with densification resulted in smaller lots. With the invention of cars and focus on mobility houses moved closer to the front of the lots with garages and parking spots moving households’ outdoor space to the back yard. With the invention of air conditioners and better weatherproofing materials, porches which helped keep weather a little farther from the living spaces adding a separation of insulation, were replaced in favour of more interior space.
New communities, particularly true to North America, are focused on putting as many dwellings as possible into an area with a central commercial plaza to service the shopping needs of the neighbourhoods around. People come into their houses and mostly have no collision spaces with or within the community. Transactional needs have been moved out, and so did most of the interactional opportunities. Apartment buildings which are essentially shelves of dwellings have accelerated the sterilization of the communities.
Rather than encourage new circles of interaction the onus to interact has been moved to people, in less natural environments. It now requires more effort to meet people or you just won’t meet new people. With such, people have moved online to echo chambers and compartmentalization.
Porches, verandas, passages, galleries, otalas, alindas, piazzas, and courtyards have been an architectural staple to bring people together for thousands of years in all parts of the world. It is the original tool for community building. It is still used today to create social gatherings in seldom commercial settings but no longer in residential.
These are the locations where much of human civilization has been built; relationships formed, and learning via play or exchange of ideas from passersby nurtured and cultivated. People spending time together, in person, is our most basic foundation.
You have to think about what kind of nurture this ‘new’ environment provides. We become less tolerant, less welcoming, and less united. Isolationism is a serious trend in the Western and modernizing world. We have more single-occupancy households than ever, the elderly are separated from the picture, and many grow up now without interacting with children in their communities.
Society doesn’t need drastic action for profound changes. Small nudges over time are enough and often more dangerous as they are shapers and create new habits. They condition.
We need to get back to building socializing - society-forward neighbourhoods rather than arbitrary density-forward neighbourhoods.
The word community is derived from the Latin word communis which is a combination of “togetherness” and “performing a service” - which is often referred to as public power. The importance of a strong community has been recognized thousands of years ago and engraved in its name. Weakening a community it to weaken the people.