Lecture date 2016-10-20
Hate Suburbia is Olivia Erlanger and Luis Ortega Govela’s new book on the architecture and image of the suburban garage. From Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House to the Apple garage, the book collapses the history of the space exposing it as an architectural typology that reformatted the American territory, the family and production modes successively. The garage was introduced in the early years of the 20th century as the space for the car, its presence in mass-media, films, and in personal narratives has rendered it as a room without function; veiled behind the automatic door, the architecture of the garage became an empty vessel free of expectations, it has been a man-cave that gave birth to the personal computer, a workshop in which teenage angst found its home, and a DIY room where businesses like Disney were founded. The book looks at the garage as a model for spatial occupation that continues to define us today. For the first public presentation of Hate Suburbia in London Luis Ortega Govela and Olivia Erlanger’s will host a conversation around garages, suburbia and their obsession with Gwen Stefani.
Luis Ortega Govela is an architect based in London, his work focuses on contemporary forms of domesticity. He is one of the founders of the collective åyr (previously AIRBNB Pavilion). He grew up in a Mexican suburban home with an attached garage.
Olivia Erlanger is a sculptor based in New York. Her work focuses on looking at how value is constructed and circulated, with a deep interest in materiality. She co-ran Grand Century with Alex Mackin Dolan and Dora Budor.
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