It's no surprise that the most prominent feature of most houses built in the last half century is the gaping maw of the garage door. On many tract homes it takes up almost the entire facade with a small entrance tucked back on one side. I could rail on the dehumanizing nature that this has had on suburban neighborhoods, but that would be pointless. Form follows function, and the function of the house is to shelter its inhabitants from all aspects of the outside world. This includes such unpleasant aspects as walking and interacting with others except to buy goods or sell our labor.However, we do not like to admit that this, and so we pine for the charming cottages of yesteryear. We gussy up our cheaply built boxes with plastic porches, fake gables, brick veneers, and now, fake french doors. Who are we fooling? It does nothing to change the fact that we only leave the warm of embrace of our television in the climate controlled comfort of our beloved suvs.
Come on people! Embrace your auto-centric lives! You rule the world encased in a protective shroud of steel and tempered glass. Make your portal to the universe of arterials and interchanges and office parks and shopping Mahals reflect that reality with a door that looks as sleek and muscular as your vehicle.
2 comments:
One of the houses across the stree from me has nothing facing the street except their big double garage door. We only see this retired couple entering and leaving their property via this door. Even when they step outside to do yard work, they use the garage door opener. Passing by, one hardly knows that a house exists behind it. Many would think that it is simply the garage for the house next to it. A little disconcerting at times.
Then there was Bob's Java Hut in Minneapolis. All summer they would open up that big garage door out front and make the inside feel huge and airy. Even in the winter, those big slabs of glass made the place feel bigger and brighter. The use of a glass overhead door helped to add to the general ambiance of a coffee shop that catered to the motorcycle crowd.
But I would say that glass garage doors, even with one-way glass, only appeal to those who like to spend time in their garage with their vehicle. Gear heads. Grease monkeys. The suburban SUV owner seems more interested in spending as much time inside as possible. Their vehicle becomes a surrogate home when forced to leave their fortress of isolation. So it would make more sense to put fake french doors on the back end of an SUV to remind them of their den. They already have the full entertainment center.
I guess I just can't get my head around the suburban mindset. I love my car, but what I love about it is the connection to the road and landscape that it affords me.
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